Sepoy bearing weight of expectation
- by:Adrian Dunn
- From:Herald Sun
- February 22, 2012 12:00am
Sepoy faces carrying 58kg in the Oakleigh Plate.Source: Herald Sun
LITTLE wonder that Peter Snowden and the Darley operation are digesting the Oakleigh Plate weights before deciding if Sepoy runs in Saturday’s Group 1 race.
Certainly, the enormity of the task confronting Sepoy can’t be understated.
Sepoy, a four-time Group 1 winner, but only once in open company, has been asked to shoulder 58kg in the Oakleigh Plate.
It’s a weight that was last carried to victory by Dual Choice, which lumped the equivalent of 59.5kg in the second of its wins in 1972.
More sobering for Snowden is that no place-getter in that period has carried the impost that Sepoy is being asked to carry.
Rock You, runner-up behind ’98 winner Singing The Blues, carried the biggest weight of a placed Oakleigh horse – 57.5kg. Only five of the past 40 winners have carried 57kg and that includes last year’s winner Eagle Falls, who’ll carry the same weight on Saturday; Undue, winner in 2007 and Fastnet Rock who won with the weight as a 3YO.
When Fastnet Rock won the Oakleigh Plate the minimum weight was 53kg. So in effect the colt was 4.5kg above the minimum, while Sepoy will carry 6kg above the minimum.
Sepoy is unbeaten in his nine Victorian starts. If he’s to improve that fabulous record to double digits he’ll have to run right up to his ranking as the world champion 3YO sprinter.
