Interpretation, Lunar Flare in doubt for Melbourne Cup

The third-placegetter from the Group 3 Bart Cummings, Interpretation, will have a Melbourne Cup race-morning vet inspection after presenting lame.

The Grahame Begg-trained Lunar Flare will also be inspected.

Ozzie Kheir, managing part-owner of Interpretation, said connections were disappointed to hear the ruling.

But he was still confident the five-year-old would take his place and race for AUD $8 million at Flemington.

“Our trainers (Ciaron Maher and Dave Eustace) have said they don’t think there’s anything to worry about, so we’re confident he’ll make it to the race,” Kheir said.

Kheir has already had a difficult run in the lead-up to the Melbourne Cup after he lost horses to injury, including highly regarded import Spanish Mission.

Loft, who was the second favourite for the Melbourne Cup, was ruled out last week due to lameness issues, after Le Don De Vie a week earlier.

Lunar Flare, who finished her Cup preparation with a strong second-placing in the Moonee Valley Cup to follow her win in The Bart Cummings, had lameness in the off-fore.

“She presented with some heel pain this morning,” Begg told Racing.com from the Melbourne Cup parade on Monday morning.

“We took the shoe off her and obviously been giving her lots of icing and poulticing up and hopefully the shoe will go back on tomorrow morning, and she’ll be re-inspected at about 7am.

“These things, they go one way or the other. They can come right quite quickly as this has come up quite quickly, and it may resolve itself and all we can do is to try and deal with what we’ve got.

“It’s disappointing but when you are dealing with animals, they are athletes, and they are training every day of the week, so little things pop up.

“That’s the most important thing – the horse’s welfare.”