Coursing history in the Victoria Derby

The local lead-up that has produced more Derby winners than any other is the Group 2 Moonee Valley Vase (2040m), which is run on Cox Plate Day.

The Vase is now no longer the only key lead-up run a week before the Derby, however, with the Spring Champion Stakes now occupying that timeslot.

This will be the third year that the 2000-metre Group 1 at Randwick has been run seven days out from the Derby.

For 35 years the Spring Champion Stakes was run on what for a long time was Sydney’s biggest day of spring, Epsom Handicap Day, which gave trainers the challenge of having horses ready for a 2000m Group 1 and then having to keep them up for a 2500m event up to five weeks later.

From 1978, the first year it was run in spring, until the last year it was run on Epsom Day – 2012 – there were 19 Spring Champion winners who went on to the Derby with only Stylish Century (1989), Nothin’ Leica Dane (1995) and Monaco Consul (2009) completing the double.

Between 2013 and 2021 it moved back a week, a period during which four others attempted the double with Ace High (2017) the only one successful.

In its first year as a late-October event, the Spring Champion Stakes provided the Derby quinella of Manzoice and Sharp ‘N’ Smart, but no horse backed-up from last year’s Spring Champion into the Derby.

El Castello is the lone horse out of this year’s Spring Champion lining up in the Derby.

He will join five Vase runners as those on the back-up this weekend; Red Aces, King Of Thunder, Politely Dun and Autumnheat.

The Vase horses don’t have interstate travel to overcome, but they do have some ratings ground to make up on El Castello, who won the Spring Champion in a Timeform rating of 112.

That is the second-lowest rating Spring Champion Stakes in the past 30 years, but El Castello meets a batch of Victorians coming off low-rating lead-ups.

Red Aces won the Vase in 108, which is also the second-lowest winning rating of the past 30 years, while there has only been one lower winning rating returned in the Caulfield Classic than Kingofwallstreet’s 105 in this year’s edition.

What El Castello does have to overcome is the outside barrier and, since 1979, no Derby has started from gate 16.

Only twice in that time has the Derby winner started from the outside alley; Rebel Raider from 15 in 2009 and King’s High won from 11 in 1988.

Post-Rebel Raider, only four horses have won from a double-digit gate with the other 11 winners having started from gate seven or inside.