Melbourne Cup favourite Septimus continued to work strongly at Flemington this week.
Septimus, the number one Irish hope and the $5 favourite for Australia's greatest race, went out for his usual pair of 1600m gallops with stablemates Honolulu and Alessandro Volta and showed he was approaching the pitchtrainer Aidan O'Brien intends him to be at in two weeks time.
The Irish St Leger winner has been described by the stable as being as good as his stablemate, the 2006 Cup fancy Yeats, but much faster.
"You'll start seeing him work into form from now on," assistant trainer Andrew Murphy said.
"What you'll see on race day is a horse with more speed than Yeats, a lot more speed."
Murphy made it clear yesterday that nothing would get in the way of the programme O'Brien has set the horse and which is relayed to his team's work riders by phone from County Tipperary every morning.
Monday's work will be conducted as the plane carrying O'Brien to Melbourne begins its final approach.
"He gets in at about nine o'clock, but we won't be waiting," Murphy said.
"They're down to do that piece of strong work on Monday and that's what'll happen."
Septimus is rated a vastly superior horse to All The Good, but he has a superior horse's weight.
"But he's the best horse in the race," said Murphy.
