James McDonald feels the emotion of winning the Melbourne Cup on Verry Elleegant. (photo credit Darrian Traynor/Getty Images) With every man and his dog doing Cup previews these days, perhaps a postmortem of the race provides more value - at least for these more serious about the game or want something to refer back to in 363 days' time. It was great to see Flemington basking in the warm spring sun, with no threat of rain which buggers up the confidence you have in the state of the track, an integral part of betting on horses. The crowd was back, at least about 10% of the normal Cup day crowd, but 10,000 more than were allowed last year. Let us never have to deal with these restrictions again in our lifetimes. The TV coverage - well, um, ugh. On Derby Day, I was able to watch the racing.com stream in the UK while Sky Sports Racing kept to their normal NSW-controlled Sky Racing Aus coverage which denies that Victoria and South Australia exist. For Cup Day, they switched to the Chann
The 2021 Lexus Melbourne Cup Group 1 handicap, 3200m AU$7,750,000 Tuesday Nov 2, 1500 local time, 0400 GMT Weather forecast - Fine, 30C Expected going - Good 3/4 Melbourne Cup favourite Incentivise (credit Brett Scala/Racing Photos) For the runner-by-runner preview, please click here . (Note - edits have been made since that article was first posted) There might be quite a solid pace here. I've got five potential leaders and another five racing prominently, and that's without the potential wildcard of Sir Lucan. He's dropped back in virtually all his races apart from his Yeats Stks win in May (2600m), and we know that Gai Waterhouse loves to see her horses up on the pace, especially when they've got a weight advantage on most of the field. Yet if we switch back to Caulfield, we see what happened to Delphi when he tried to run Incentivise off his feet. If they take him on, their own chances suffer and there's no guarantee Incentivise suffers at all. That is, unless