Jayne Farwell

Joseph O'Brien on his potential squad of TEN that could head to the Melbourne Cup 🗣️ "The first quarantine has just started and there is another couple of weeks until the second quarantine begins. I suppose all of mine have had their final preps now and I don't think anything has knocked themselves off the list of possibles. "Nil Bua Gan Dua is not going to go. He ran well over at Kentucky Downs, but he's probably not going to go, although all the others could. "The horses who have gone into the first quarantine are Small Fry, Omni Man, Starford and Kizlyar. Omni Man and Starford are both going to run in the Caulfield Cup, while Small Fry and Kizlyar will run in preps down there before the Melbourne Cup as well. We just have to finalise which ones."

Joseph O'Brien could run TEN in Melbourne Cup as St Leger hero Highwayman joins trainer's HUGE Australia team 🇦🇺 🔗 - bit.ly/4cMJrCV

Joseph O'Brien's bid to conquer the Melbourne Cup for the third time in a decade is set to be enhanced by the inclusion of James J Braddock 🏆 Read with Racing Post+ 👇

🗣️ Kevin Blake on Joseph O'Brien: "He's got a very similar brain to his father. He's got an unbelievable brain for attention, interpreting, calculating and taking things in. In the morning, there's literally a string of 45 horses going past him and I don't know what's what. But he knows who they all are and when they walk back along he's suggesting taking a crossed noseband off one of them, or has noticed one was a bit keener than it was yesterday. He has an ability to suck in what he's seen and then calculate and process it. It really is off the scale. You see it with Aidan and I've seen it with one or two other people in the industry in my time in it, but it's very unusual and none of this is by accident."