Ben Lomond Picked For Caulfield Cup

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32011, 11 June 1969, Page 4

Ben Lomond Picked For Caulfield Cup

Ben Lomond has been made outright favourite for this year’s Caulfield Cup by one of Melbourne’s leading bookmakers.

Even at this distance, over four months before the first leg of the famous spring cups double, Ben Lomond is only at 160 to one with Fileur and Rain Lover, joint favourites for the Melbourne Cup.

A horse of Ben Lomond’s class and background will lend colour to the welter of publicity given to the cups double between now and the spring. He has recovered from the injury to a sheaf tendon, suffered in the last Auckland Cup, in which he started one of the hottest favourites for years in one of New Zealand’s big races. ■

Mr E. Montgomery’s brilliant four-year-old is in light training, and it has already been announced by his owner that an Australian trip is likely. His connections feel that the number of spring weight-for-age races in Australia are in themselves attractive enough to make the campaign likely to be continued. I Ben Lomond is on the sec-

ond line of favouritism for the Melbourne Cup, which this year will be worth $75,000. On the third line of Melbourne Cup favouritism is the Auckland Cup winner, 11 Tempo. He shares that position with the New Zealandbred General Command, winner of the 1968 Sydney Cup. Top rating of the other New Zealand entrants for the Melbourne Cup is City Court, winner of this year’s Wellington Cup. Backing a horse like Ben Lomond to win both cups is not an attractive proposition. The odds offered about his chances in one of the first charts on the big double are 100 s.