Trainer Voices Concern at Eclipse Noms

French-born, UK-based trainer David Menuisier is perturbed at the small number of runners nominated for Saturday’s Gr1 Coral-Eclipse (10 furlongs), saying he is saddened that the historic mile-and quarter race that began in 1886 has only attracted paucity of potential starters. "We saw there were only six others confirmed [outside of our own] and then people complain about prize-money, I just find it stupid.” Menuisier told racingpost.com, “Let's face it, without talking about mine, if you look at the six – half of them are obviously top-class animals, and half of them are probably below that level… The ground will be near enough good. I just find it sad there are only a handful of horses in such a big, historic race.” Despite that, he plans to leave his stable star Wonderful Tonight out of the contest due to potential drastic changes in weather. "It's 99.9 per cent not the plan to run, we were just considering if there was a drastic change of weather, absolute downpours, and there ended up being just two or three runners then perhaps we would consider it. But it's definitely not the plan,” From the nominated runners there could be a clash of generations this year with the confirmation of St Mark’s Basilica being put in. Winner of the Saudi Cup and Dubai Sheema Classic, Mirshoff will also be running as the 13-8 marginal favorite over St Mark’s Basilica who is a 7-4 chance. There are further forecasts of showers for Tuesday and Saturday making it more difficult to predict conditions for the Group 1 race day.