Its Cup Time - The Usual Suspects 17/10/01 Why do cup horses have to be so one dimensional for ? This year, we seem to have a much larger contingent of those perpetual 'good cup runs' horses - Universal Prince, Sale of Century, Kaapstad Way, Freemason, in previous years it was The Hind and Skybeau. Week after week, WFA race after WFA race, these usual suspects put in a 'sterling cups trial' to finish 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th - i.e. any position as long as they don't actually win. Of course, come Cup Day, only one of them can actually win anyway, the others will get too far back again, just like they have in all their lead up runs, blocked for runs or just plain disappointing on the day. Often it means most of these will go through the spring without saluting at all, because of their specialist cups campaigns (e.g. Freemason just finally saluted for the 1st time in over a year - pity we did not get this story written before that). Dare we say that to actually be good enough to win the Caulfield or Melbourne Cup you actually need to be good enough to WIN one of the lead up races. And show some FORM. And the capability and the desire to WIN. And to take a position in a race and take a run when it presents. Which means Universal Prince better get a wriggle on as time is running out fast…