Osborne: 'Yeats can be beaten'
Jamie Osborne has broken ranks from his fellow European raiders by declaring Melbourne Cup favourite Yeats is beatable in Tuesday’s race.
Osborne said his five-year-old Geordieland, currently rated a 12-1 chance, had the credentials to upstage the Aidan O’Brien-trained colt but also admitted he could not be overconfident about his chances in "the race that stops a nation".
Although Yeats had five lengths to spare over Geordieland in the Group Two Goodwood Cup in August, Osborne said the 6lb pull in the weights on Tuesday could help his charge turn the tables on the favourite.
“At that time you’d have to say Yeats was at his peak. He’d just won the Ascot Gold Cup and came back and won the Goodwood Cup,” explained Osborne.
“However his last run was substandard and he is capable of chucking a bad run in. If you look at his best runs, in my view they always come after a long break.
“And for him to run not so long ago in an Irish St Leger and then come over here, I think that’s slightly against him.
“We’re coming here the fresh horse of the race. With a three-kilo pull, that gives us every chance of beating him.
“If it was a question that we were getting on the flight from England thinking we were coming to Melbourne competing for second we wouldn’t have done it. I think we can beat him. Whether we can beat the others I don’t know but we’ll give it our best shot.”
Osborne received unexpected support from Andrew Murphy, who is looking after Yeats in Aidan O'Brien’s absence.
Murphy agreed that the pull in the weights could be a decisive factor as the pair lock horns once again.
“We don’t have a handicap like this over two miles for Grade One horses so he’s definitely better off than he’d meet him in Europe because they’d more or less be running off level weights in a Group One in England or Ireland. He has to be there,” Murphy said.
However, Luca Cumani said a case could also be made for his Glistening, a 33-1 chance, if he used Osborne’s reasoning based on European form.
“According to Jamie Osborne, Glistening should win because Jamie makes out a case for his horse Geordieland to beat Yeats, and with Glistening, we beat Geordieland quite well in our last encounter,” Cumani said, referring to the Ebor Handicap when Glistening was second, beaten a head, with Geordieland a further two lengths away in fourth.
“If that is correct then we should beat Yeats as well but somehow I don’t follow that logic. I think that if the right Yeats turns up, he’s the best of the foreign horses.”
