One off Australia's most decorated horse trainers Lee Freedman has slammed the Melbourne Racing Club over its proposed weight-for-age Caulfield Cup, maintaining he thought the proposed concept was an April fools' joke.
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Freedman said that it wasn't the place of the club to alter the very fabric of the Caulfield Cup from a handicap to a weight-for-age event.
"I had to check the calendar when I first heard about it. I thought it was the first of April and that it was an April fools' joke," he told Radio RSN on Wednesday morning.
"I think some of these guys who dream up these ideas take too many overseas trips and they forget where they are.
"This is Australia. It is an iconic race. It is one of the world's greatest handicaps and they should be proud of it.
"In my opinion they (the Melbourne Racing Club) are custodians of the race, they don't own the race," Freedman said.
Freedman maintained that not one fellow trainer in Australia had given any credit to a weight-for-age Caulfield Cup.
Last year it was reported that at least four members of the Melbourne Racing Club had flown business class to Tokyo in a bid to recruit horses for the 2400-metre handicap.
"If these sorts of people were fair dinkum about finding out what the rest of Australia think about it, they would pretty soon come to a different conclusion," Freedman said.
"As you can hear, I'm very much against it. For a myriad of reasons there's no point changing that.
"By making (the Caulfield Cup) weight-for-age I think the Arc de Triomphe (one of the world's most important horse races) is run either that week or the week after, or the week before, and you are five minutes away from the Breeders Cup. One wonders what kind of magical weight-for-age horses you are going to attract."
Freedman said that he was shocked that the Melbourne Racing Club would even consider changing the framework of the Caulfield Cup that is known overseas as one of the great races of Australia.
"Don't go changing something that is iconically Australian. It is part of the fabric of the nation. People understand it, people have loved it for 150 years. In your tenure as a race club, don't be the one who ruins the Caulfield Cup."
