Motion: Trip to Melbourne Cup is ‘unlikely’ for The Grey Wizard

The Grey Wizard, who finished a distant second Wednesday in the Nashville Gold Cup at Kentucky Downs, is unlikely to make a pioneering trip to Australia for a November run in the Group 1 Melbourne Cup.

“I think it’s unlikely at this point,” trainer Graham Motion said in a text message Thursday morning to Horse Racing Nation.

Hopes were raised in Australia media this week when The Grey Wizard was reported to be “a late entry” into the US$5.3 million Melbourne Cup, billed as the race that stops a nation. In Australia as in Europe, the term entry is the same as a nomination in the U.S.

As Motion said Tuesday, “We’ve had to start looking into it, because things are going to happen quite quickly now if we decide to do it.”

He also said at the time that it came down to how The Grey Wizard looked in the inaugural running of the 2 1/16-mile Nashville Gold Cup.

The 5-year-old Caravaggio gelding owned by Aron Wellman’s Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and the estate of Albert Frassetto settled in last place for the first three-quarters of a mile Wednesday. The Grey Wizard made up ground up the backstretch, and jockey John Velázquez got him within a length of the lead making the last of three turns. The pacesetter Limited Liability answered the challenge, though, on the firm if parched turf. Frankie Dettori extended him to an 8 1/4-length victory over The Grey Wizard, who was sent off as the 4-5 favorite in the race worth $440,000.

Bred and raced early in his career in Ireland, The Grey Wizard earned an automatic invitation to the two-mile Melbourne Cup with his victory June 6 in the two-mile Belmont Gold Cup (G2) at Saratoga. He followed that Aug. 21 with a win in the listed, 1 1/2-mile Cape Henlopen Stakes at Delaware Park.

If The Grey Wizard had won Wednesday, he still might have been a candidate to become the first U.S.-based horse to line up in the Melbourne Cup, a handicap that will be run for the 164th time at Flemington on Nov. 4 U.S. time.

Asked what might be next, Motion said it was “a little bit hard to tell at the moment, but there is a two-mile race at Far Hills in New Jersey.”

That would be the $100,000 John Forbes Stakes, the only flat race on an Oct. 19 steeplechase card.