Old truths no longer apply in new Cup world Defying conventional wisdom: Vintage Crop pulls ahead of Te Akau Nick (rails) to win the 1993 Melbourne Cup. The past is another country. They do things differently there. They certainly did when it came to preparing cups candidates, which is why the old certainties cannot be relied on in the way they once were. In the days before European invaders began arriving en masse for the Melbourne Cup, there were certain nostrums that trainers ignored at their peril. Cups king Bart Cummings proclaimed almost as a sacred truth that a horse couldn't win the Cup unless they had covered 10 kilometres in their preparation. That's a lot in just over three months, but those tough, hardy Australian breeds of the past seemed to manage OK. Cummings has 12 Melbourne Cups (on five occasions saddling the first two home) to his name, and five Caulfield Cups, so the maestro need only point to his record as proof of the efficacy of his methods. Despite all that, it's impossible to argue that things have not changed. Eleven of Cummings' Melbourne Cup wins came before 2000, when there were far fewer European horses involved. His only Caulfield Cup winner in the past 22 years was Viewed in 2009. It was also an article of faith that a horse had to run on the Saturday before the Cup to put the final polish on its preparation. Irish trainer Dermot Weld recalls how, in 1993, experts said his stayer Vintage Crop had no chance of winning the Cup if he didn't have a final hit-out at Flemington on the Saturday. Weld didn't buy into it then, and he still doesn't. I knew it was rubbish. The fact that he didn't run in the Mackinnon was in my opinion a good reason why he probably could win the Melbourne Cup," he says. Therein hangs the tale. The European horses that come here are different types, and have been prepared differently. They have often never run over the shorter trips that Australian stayers used to compete in to build their fitness. They are used to long, slower work, gradually building fitness. When their trainers produce them they are usually fit and forward enough to win first time out at 2400 metres or beyond. One of the more interesting features of recent weeks has been the fact that Team Williams has yet to run any of its strong stable of imported gallopers in early build-up races, preferring instead to work the likes of Green Moon and Sea Moon in racetrack gallops on a Saturday instead of actual races. Thus it will be instructive to see how the stable's duo Thought Worthy and Massiyn perform in Saturday's 1500-metre handicap at Moonee Valley. The old metrics still, of course, stand true to a certain extent. Green Moon, last year's Cup winner, ran a storming second in the Dato Tan Chin Nam over 1600 metres at Moonee Valley and took out the 2000-metre Turnbull Stakes at Flemington en route to the Cup, but he was having only his fifth race of the campaign and had covered 6800 metres on the way through. Dunaden and Americain, the French-trained winners in 2011 and 2010, had light preparations as they had to spend time in quarantine. Shocking, the 2009 winner trained by Mark Kavanagh, was the last to buck the recent trends. He won the Cup on his seventh run in, having covered the mythical 10 kilometres in the build-up. Greg Carpenter, Racing Victoria's executive general manager, agrees that there has been an evolution in the way horses are now prepared for Australia's greatest race, and rather than just look to the traditional lead-up events for clues to the future winner's identity, punters would be well advised to also look at the form from races like the Prix Kergorlay at Deauville in France, or the Irish St Leger at the Curragh.