The two maxims I was taught in regards the Cox Plate when I first hit the bookmaking side of the ledger that have stuck with me to this day are that the race is not one for favourites and it is not one for younger horses.

Going back to Surfers Paradise's win in 1991, only four favourites have won Australia's weight-for-age championship. They were Might and Power, Northerly, Sunline and Makybe Diva, arguably Australia's four greatest thoroughbreds of the last fifteen years. Sunline and Northerly won as favourites chasing their second straight Cox Plate as a five-year-old and six-year-old respectively. Beaten favourites include wonderful gallopers like Lonhro, Filante, Elvstroem, Redoute's Choice, Shaftesbury Avenue and Naturalism.

The Cox Plate is also not one for horses aged three or four. So You Think won it last year as a three-year-old as did Savabeel back in 2004 and Octagonal in 1995 but victories for three-year-olds in the Cox Plate are most rare. No horse who has won the Cox Plate as a three-year-old has ever come back the next year and won the race. The last four-year-old to win the Cox Plate was Sunline in 1999. Since Northerly won as a five-year-old in 2001, four six-year-olds have won the Cox Plate along with a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old.

The Cox Plate is not a race for favourites and it is a race, generally, for seasoned horses aged five and above. All of which makes it surprising that So You Think is being quoted as short as $2.50 this far out. Should he obliterate Whobegotyou in the Yalumba this Saturday as expected, he could firm to somewhere around the even money quote. Recent history suggests that So You Think is massive unders. There is also not much value about four-year-old Gai Waterhouse mare More Joyous at $6.00 whose 9 wins from 12 starts is an impressive record but she is unproven the Melbourne way of going and may not have had enough hard racing.

I know I won't be touching either So You Think or More Joyous, even if they both bolt in by three lengths this weekend. I am looking wider and older.

The horse I have come up with is Zipping, the nine-year-old marvel from the Lloyd Williams camp that is racing as well now as at any point throughout his career. He also has more than a shade of Fields of Omagh, the mighty greybeard who claimed his second Cox Plate at the age of nine, about him.

Zipping gets all the ticks.

He is racing in great form with his win in the group one Turnbull Stakes outstanding. He came from midfield and fought doggedly when hitting the front perhaps a little too early, holding off 2009 Melbourne Cup winner and Flemington track specialist Shocking and the in-form Shoot Out. It was a champagne Zipping win: gritty and tough and full of will. He also won the Australian Cup in March, his first group one win, in similar style when racing back, wide and without cover to edge out Sirmione. He also won the Sandown Classic last spring. Zipping has won three of his last five races, an outstanding achievement for an eight/nine-year-old, and he has not lost at 2000 metres or above over that time.

His record in the Cox Plate is just as convincing. He has ran the fabled 2040 metre Moonee Valley circuit on Cox Plate day three times. He ran eighth in 2007 when nearly falling in a roughly run race. He beat all bar Maldivian in 2008 when Michael Rodd got away with murder out front. He whacked away for third last year when ridden unusually forward. Zipping has proven that he can mix it with the best throughout the weight-for-age championship.

When Fields of Omagh won the Cox Plate as a nine-year-old, he did so with a consistent record in previous Cox Plate's and a group one win the previous autumn. Zipping is more than capable of repeating the legendary FOO's heroics.

TAB Sportsbet are offering $11 about Zipping. That is outstanding value and he will be getting mine for the big one. The Cox Plate is one for the oldies and Zipping is a golden oldie of the most esteemed vintage.