{"id":169621,"date":"2025-09-30T04:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T04:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/169621\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T04:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T04:24:10","slug":"horse-racing-knights-choice-out-of-2025-melbourne-cup-rsn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/169621\/","title":{"rendered":"Horse Racing: Knight’s Choice Out Of 2025 Melbourne Cup | Rsn"},"content":{"rendered":"

The reigning champ will not race this spring.<\/p>\n

Reigning Melbourne Cup champion Knight\u2019s Choice will not get the opportunity to defend his crown this year.<\/p>\n

An outbreak of strangles at Mount Macedon is set to deny the shock 2024 winner with co-trainer Sheila Laxon confirming he\u2019s out of the spring.<\/p>\n

Laxon could not confirm if Knight\u2019s Choice has actually contracted strangles but the fact that most of the horses currently stabled at Mount Macedon have – apart from six – will wipe out his spring carnival targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, definitely out. Everything is definitely out for all of them apart from the six we\u2019re working,\u201d Laxon told SENTrack & RSN\u2019s Giddy Up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say once we get the clearance they\u2019ll be able to get back to the races in not too long a time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laxon admits you don\u2019t get many chances to defend a Melbourne Cup, but is using a successful tale of yesteryear to keep her spirits high.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot many (chances), no,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Peter Pan won it in 1932 and in 1933 he had a virus. Then he came back the following year and won it again. So there you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"eDM<\/a><\/p>\n

Laxon, who trains in conjunction with John Symons, says it is tough to take but at least she has last year\u2019s Cup triumph with Robbie Dolan to look back on.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cWe won it last year, baby!<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a journey for our little singing jockey (Dolan). All that was a great part of it. He has gone from strength to strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laxon also won the 2001 Cup with Ethereal at her only other attempt at Australia\u2019s great race.<\/p>\n

Knight\u2019s Choice last ran in the So You Think over 1500m at Moonee Valley on September 6 when sixth of 10.<\/p>\n

Possible targets could be the Magic Millions carnival on the Gold Coast in January and the Auckland Cup in New Zealand next March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The reigning champ will not race this spring. Reigning Melbourne Cup champion Knight\u2019s Choice will not get the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2325,51980,26235,13673,76487,8216,4995,1773,3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-169621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-2325","tag-choice","tag-cup","tag-horse","tag-knights","tag-melbourne","tag-of","tag-out","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}