Australian Bloodstock's Luke Murrell, a regular Spring contributor to our site, joins us on the podcast this week to assess all of the imported runners for this year's Caulfield and Melbourne Cups.

Most Australian punters struggle to line up the overseas form so Luke is well worth listening to. At Australian Bloodstock he has identified and purchased Group performed horses including Lucas Cranach, Mawingo, Master Of Design and Reliable Man.

On the podcast this week he is as honest and opinionated as always and it's fair to say he believes it's a very weak batch of imports this year.

Punting Insights You'll Find:

Why he isn't buying the hype around the Japanese runners

Why this year's European horses are the weakest in years

The importance of the imports adapting to our unique style of racing

One standout horse for the Cups

Today’s Guest:

Luke Murrell

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield:It's been probably a year since we last spoke. I just wanted to run through the major contenders for the cups for this year and get your take on how the imports stack up against the local form. It's a pretty early stage, but what's your view about it’s all shaping up?

Luke Murrell: I think you can get the best guide from a guy like Greg Carpenter where he’s issued the weights and there's obviously no of the good old super stars running around anymore that we've had in previous couple years. It's basically just a glorified set weights and penalties race. Especially the Melbourne Cup this year. I think the highlights probably quite a lack of depth in the race. You go back a couple years to American and Dunaden and personally I think we are 7 to 8 lengths off that. It's a massive drop down this year. But I think that's worldwide. The quality of horses just seems to just be in one of those patches where it's probably not as strong. We don’t have the normal superstars that we normally have.

David Duffield:You think that's just a cyclical thing that we're going through?

Luke Murrell: Yeah I think so. Even for Europe's standards their Arc field if you have a good look at that at the moment. You got your handful of sort of good horses but previously this time of year, in previous years, you could get out and back something confidently at 20/1 that was a real chance but I think in all our majors coming up the chances are very, very skinny. It doesn't mean they're easy to win but I think from a punting point of view there's a lot there that you could put a line through straight away and be confident in doing so.

David Duffield:Where do the Japanese runners fit in to the puzzle then?

Luke Murrell: On your world handicap ratings their probably the D graders compared to what we've seen out here previously. I suppose the two that everyone's talking about are Bande and Admire Rakti. Well Admire Rakti’s the better performed of the two but if you have a look at his form, he's so inconsistent and there are certainly two of him. I don’t know. If it wasn't for the Japanese factor you'd be really happy to put a line through him but they're renowned for their toughness, those horses over there. You've got to respect them but it's an unusual prep for a horse like that. He's only had two runs this year.

I understand they’re walking, as we speak, sort of four hours a day in quarantine which is just amazing compared to, say for example, the Aussie horses how they get trained. He's only had the two runs this year at 3000 and 3200. It'd be an unusual prep. There's not many horses that would win a Melbourne Cup third or fourth up. Personally, I think if you're having a wide sort of bet you got to include them but it wouldn’t surprise me to see him run down the track as well. The form, you know, back in December, he ran eleventh of sixteen and this last run he ran thirteen of eighteen. He's a very hard horse to get a line on from that angle.

The other horse, I think is a typical slow maturing horse.