Maridpour 09/09/00 You don’t get much bigger duds than this. Maridpour was the star of our feature article on last year’s Caulfield Cup feature, "Mardipour’s Big Adventure". One of the overseas "raiders", he came halfway around the world to run in the Caulfield Cup, started 50-1 and finished 14th of 18. Following such a slashing run the next logical step was of course the Melbourne Cup where he run a magnificent 12th of 24, beaten only a measly 15 lengths or so. Autumn glory beckoned and Maridpour continued to shine out, finishing 10th of 14 1st up over 1400M at Caulfield on April 1 2000, when he was only beaten 3.6 lengths, the closest he has finished since arriving in Australia. Of course it is hard to maintain such lofty peaks, so in his following run he could only manage a 10th (beaten 13 lengths), 13th (beaten 18 lengths) and Last (beaten 11 lengths) before the strenuous autumn campaign took its toll and he was sent out for a well deserved break. Resuming on Saturday 09//09/2000 at Flemington, Maridpour was again showed a distinct liking for the track, finishing an impressive 12th beaten only 10 lengths. His Australian form line reads : 7 starts 0-0-0 beaten by a total of 80 lengths. In this time, he has managed to beat home 26 horses total, for a strike rate of finishing in front of 3.70 horses per race. Unfortunately, our statistics do not allow for greater interpretation of these results, we do not know for instance how many horses broke down, or pulled up lame in these races, so these statistics may be an over estimate of his ability. HoofNote : Somehow, Maridpour , through some ancient law written on stone tablets by a man in robes with long grey hair, is still automatically qualified to run in the Melbourne Cup. Even more mystically, he is actually allowed to run and not told to pack his bag and go home. Starting way unders at 500-1 his does his job well, leading and setting up a fast pace, before stopping like he'd been hip'n'shouldered to run last (not even managing to beat home the lame cripple that ran 23rd). Fortunately, he managed to cause little interference to those behind him, as most jockeys knew what was coming. Others were made aware by the warning traffic sign installed on the home turn, showing a horse's backside coming back into a jockeys face.