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In Russian Camelot, Danny O'Brien has the favourite for Saturday's running of the WS Cox Plate.

Buying a thoroughbred yearling ranks as one of the more imprudent gambles anyone could ever make.

For a start, fewer than half the horses born every year make it to the racetrack, only about 40 per cent of those ever win a race and only a fraction of those winners ever recoup their costs.

So to add an extra degree of difficulty to the exercise should, one the face of it, be unwise.

But that is exactly what the owners and trainer of Saturday's WS Cox Plate favourite Russian Camelot have done.

And thanks to the glorious uncertainty of racing - and some astute training - they have struck gold.

Russian Camelot is in the Flemington stable of Danny O'Brien due to a view that had developed in this country that Australian buyers were being treated like mugs when they went to Europe to buy tried horses with the sort of staying pedigrees that aren't available here.

As one of Russian Camelot's part-owners John Wheeler said: "The Europeans aren't stupid, they realised their horses were in good demand in Australia, even if they weren't top class in Europe."

To overcome the imbalance in the supply and demand equation, O'Brien suggested getting in at a lower level and buying yearlings with the desired European pedigrees at auction sales for a more realistic price and bringing them back to Australia.

There is, however, a substantial downside to the plan in that thoroughbred foals in the northern hemisphere are born around six months earlier than in Australia.

As a result a horse born in March in Ireland, as was Russian Camelot, and brought to Australia would have its first birthday on August 1 when it was really only five months old.

With a horse's first two season's of racing - as a two and three-year-old - done almost exclusively against those of the same age, the northern hemisphere-born racehorse is at a disadvantage to its older and more mature Australian counterparts.

They are therefore obliged to delay their racing debut for up to a year, while their owners continue paying for their upkeep without any prospect of a return.

In Russian Camelot's case, he was foaled on March 29, 2017 and raced for the first time on October 11, 2019 in a three-year-old event against horses who were all at least six months older than him.

And he beat them.

When he ran in the G1 South Australian Derby in May of this year, he'd just turned three. The runner-up Dalasan, who had been born in Australia in October 2016 was seven months older. The third horse, Warning was eight months older.

And he flogged them too.

For O'Brien and his owners, the experiment was clearly a success.

"I had the feeling that the prices they were asking for tried horses who often weren't in the top grade in Europe, were getting much too high," O'Brien said.

"So I had a good agent over there, we did our homework and one of the horses we came up with was this colt by Camelot who we paid 120,000 guineas for at the Tattersall's October Sale in 2018."

From his first win in a Ballarat 3YO maiden, Russian Camelot ran second in Listed company at Flemington last November and was sent for a spell, resuming in March this year with a fourth at Flemington and a victory at Pakenham before his SA Derby win.

His current campaign began in September with a second in the G1 Makybe Diva Stakes, victory in the G1 Underwood Stakes and second at his most recent outing in the G1 Caulfield Stakes.

Despite the last-start defeat he has retained favouritism for the Cox Plate ahead of the Irish runner Armory and the West Australian mare Arcadia Queen.

Having beaten the odds with Russian Camelot, who has already won more than $1 million in prizemoney, O'Brien and the owners have been back for another crack, the trainer having purchased eight yearlings at Tattersall's this month.

Despite the success that is tipped to continue at Moonee Valley on Saturday, reality is never far away.

Russian Camelot was one of two yearlings O'Brien and Wheeler bought at the same sale in 2018.

The other, according to the owner, can barely raise a gallop.