Australian Bloodstock's Luke Murrell has been a regular podcast guest, most recently when he was celebrating the scintillating win of Protectionist in the Melbourne Cup.

A lot has happened since then so Luke is back to chat about Protectionist's disappointing autumn campaign and plans for the future, how the overseas horses went overall and what's next for finding imports.

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Today’s Guest:

Luke Murrell

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: Thanks for joining us again Luke. Now you're probably a little bit flat because Protectionist never really hit his straps this time in, but what's your take on his four autumn runs?

Luke Murrell: Yeah he's always going to have a lot of pressure on him, that horse. To be brutally honest, I was absolutely gutted after Saturday. But on the flip side, on my ratings and how I measure horses and if I was buying horses, I've got him in the Australian Cup probably 2 lengths off his career best.

I thought his first up run was more than acceptable, so I was really happy with those 2. BMW run, really happy with, again. Something about this horse is he won't go around corners, hence those bigger Randwick and Flemington tracks are certainly his go.

He probably lost a little bit of momentum in the BMW and if he hadn't drawn 12, any other barrier would probably have 2 pairs closer, and he runs a place, and everyone says, "It's the flashing light".

I was really happy with the runs, up until that point. Then, the highs of the Melbourne Cup versus that on Saturday is a long way apart for me, and unfortunately, he's come out of the race ... He's injured himself during the race, which explains his performance.

Overall, I was happy enough with the horse. He's earned a hundred grand for the prep, and the horse showed to us that he was racing at his absolute ... Well, close to his peak. That's all positive going forward. The big thing for us is coming out of today. He goes and gets some dye through his system and it highlights any hot spots, or where he's actually hurt himself.

That's an unknown, whether it's a minor or serious, but we're not thinking it's career threatening, so that's positive, but yeah, it was very different emotions, I can tell you that.

David Duffield: So early in the prep, he had a fair bit of market support and was seen by some to be disappointing, but you're saying you were happy with those runs right up until Saturday?

Luke Murrell: Yeah, absolutely. I think what you've got to appreciate is that if you go yourself for a run out on the road, and we ask you to sprint from the moment you leave your door and sustain that for such a long period of time, there's very few athletes in the world that can do that.

A lot of people have got to remember that the 1800m and the Australia Cup were never his main aims, but if we have a look at the tempo of those races were run, they were run at suicide type speeds.

For a horse that hadn't raced for a while, to ask him ... And you've got to watch him in the run. The horse is, at his top speed, sort of 100m, 200m, once they've left the gates, so I think they were really credible to finish as close as he did, we were really thrilled with.

I could not believe the market support for the first ... Well, probably all runs this prep. Especially the first 2 or 3. It certainly wasn't sort of stable inspired. Look, the horse was going really well, but you only had to watch him pull up and come back to the yard.

He needed the runs, and we fully expected that. We didn't want to overtax him. He's got a big 12 months coming up. It was never a target,