Okay, I love a punt. Even more, I love great race horses. And this is time of the year when heroes become legends. It is the time of the year when Makybe Diva won 3 Melbourne Cups, a Cox Plate and countless other Group 1s, when Saintly - the horse from heaven - flew down the centre of the Flemington track, his beautiful mane slipstreaming in his own breeze, and left a class Cup field in his wake, or when the great New Zealander, Kiwi, came from last on the turn with such a rush that he made the local trains look slow. It is the time when that lump of a lady, Empire Rose, thundered to glory, her massive rump shaking and a pounding down the straight, when Might And Power said goodbye to them on the turn and it was dust and daylight from then on, when old warhorses like Doriemus proved that toughness is what it takes to get a hoof on the cup. It is the time of the year when Bonecrusher and Our Waverley Star staged the greatest two horse war the Cox Plate will ever see, when the three-year-old Savabeel left a class field in his wake, and when another old warhorse, Fields Of Omagh, rewrote the record books with two Cox Plate wins and two placings from his five attempts.
It takes something special to win these races. And the horses that do know they have done good. Makybe, out on her feet, spent from lumping a weight carrying record for a mare to her third victory last year, still found enough to pose as she returned to scale to the kind of adulation reserved for only the greatest, no matter the sport, no matter the achievement in life.

As she stood, just in front of the winning post, looking at the crowd that roared and roared, her eyes carried the gaze of champions past with them; for a moment it was possible to feel the prescence of Archer, Phar Lap, Rising Fast, Light Fingers, Galilee, Rain Lover, Think Big, Piping Lane, and to understand that this is a moment in time reserved for immortals, for something extraordinary, for a yet another chapter to be writ bold and glorious.
And so tomorrow the Melbourne Cup will be run again. There is no great champion this year - Makybe Diva is 60 days in foal and happily retired - her former trainer Lee Freedman says she’s even bigger now than she used to be. There is, however, arguably the best horse the Brits have ever sent to steal the mug - Yeats, an equine blueblood. But how will he react on the day?; Will he get spooked by a crowd approaching 130,000? Yesterday, he reared when facing a ‘crowd’ of four watching his last workout at Sandown. Not for me, your honour.
Then there is the utterly brilliant, Efficient, who won the Derby on Saturday with such gusto, speed and ease that he has David Hayes, trainer of Tawqueet, the Cup favourite and winner of both the Metropolitan and Caulfield Cup in the perfect lead-up, officially scared. But Efficient is three, he’s a baby boy who isn’t even a big boy at that either - he’s still growing. He is probably the next genuine Australian superstar of the turf but only one-three-year-old has ever one the Cup and that was a long time ago. If he does win he will become an instant legend - what a story it will be.
And then there are the battlers - every one a story in its own right - but for their owners a hero because they have something most of us will never have - a horse in the Cup. By contrast, there are the rest of the raiders - most highly pampered and expensively bred to boot, from Japan as well as the UK. For me, this is where the story lies.
So for what’s it is worth, I think the winner will come from the two Japanese horses Pop Rock and Delta Blues whose Caulfield Cup runs were outstanding or the weighted-to-win English horse Geordieland. The best outsiders are Zipping, he may just be dour enough to at least run a place, the Brisbane Cup winner, Art Success, whose lead form is very sound and very attractive and the rank outsider Land ‘N  Stars - why? because he’s won four times over 3200 metres, the distance of the Cup. And any old-timer and form student will tell you, never back a horse that hasn’t run the distance.
That said, Pop Rock hasn’t but I think he will and with Damien Oliver - a cup winner on Media Puzzle in that oh-so-emotional victory following the death of his brother in a track-related accident - on his back, he has the pilot. Delta Blues would be my first pick except for the fact he has a Japanese jockey on his back who has never ridden at Flemington before - but, hell, Delta Blues’ Caulfield Cup run was magnificent, three-wide nearly the entire race and he still ran third. Geordieland was beaten five lengths by Yeats at his last start but meets him 3kg better for the beating - and Frankie Dettori has flown 40,000km around the world to ride him. Where there is smoke, there is always fire.
But this is a Cup of many chances - if the overseas raiders don’t fire then it will probably be an upset, and the tale will be worth telling. Whatever, let us hope that all - jockeys and horses - arrive home safely and this day in November will again be one to remember.