Racing: Cummings confident of Precedence

Bart Cummings. Photo / Greg Bowker

Bart Cummings has ominously declared Precedence a superior 2000-metre Flemington horse to Sirmione who only just failed to win his second Australian Cup a year ago.

Cummings said he was confident Sirmione would give him his 14th Australian Cup last year but believes Precedence can set the record straight today.

"I think he is better stayer on this course at a mile and a quarter [2000m] than Sirmione, and he was pretty good," Cummings said.

Sirmione won the 2008 Australian Cup four months after a shock win at A$61 in the Group One Mackinnon Stakes (2000m) at Flemington on Derby Day.

A year later be broke down getting ready for the 2009 Australian Cup but came back last year and went down in a photo-finish to Zipping while his stablemate Moatize was third.

"I was confident last year he [Sirmione] would win and he just got beaten," Cummings said. "I thought he had almost won it. There was nothing in it, just a bob of the head."

Cummings said Precedence was set an impossible mission last year in the Melbourne Cup when he got too far back.

"I don't really want to say much about it but he was in the second division of the race without any reason to be there. Had he been midfield where I liked him to be he would have been in the placings."

Cummings said Precedence would be set for the Melbourne Cup again this year.

He said the Zabeel five-year-old, who is A$6.50 for the Australian Cup with TAB Sportsbet, had trained on strongly after his second to A$4.60 Cup favourite Heart Of Dreams in the St George Stakes (1800m) at Caulfield two weeks ago.

Warrnambool galloper Moudre (A$6) is second favourite for the Cup while Playing God is at A$9.

- AAP