THE most telling post-race comment came from trainer David Hill.
'You have to see this track to believe it,' he said after local champion River Verdon had failed to make much impression in his Melbourne Cup lead-up, Moonee Valley's Group One W.S. Cox Plate which is the best weight-for-age contest in the Southern Hemisphere.
Moonee Valley is as tight as Happy Valley and, according to jockeys who have experienced both tracks, doesn't ride as well.
River Verdon was held up in a race which was meant to be run at a helter-skelter pace but was actually run at a crawl.
He had nowhere to go but challenge wide on the final corner from which point his task was a forlorn one.
The straight was too short and the bends too tight for River Verdon and, it has to be confronted, the company may well have been too hot.
