A throwaway line? Maybe. Until you realise Sir Owen Glenn, going all Singo and choppering in to be trackside at the Cox Plate, might actually justify the hopeless punters who like to refer it as "Money Valley" rather than by its real name.
"The Melbourne Cup, as glamorous as it is, is over a [gruelling trip] but there's some bloody good horses in this Cox Plate," Sir Owen says. "There's certainly 10 horses you'd like to own."
And probably only a select few who actually could. The New Zealand businessman - who is one of the world's biggest philanthropists - would have no worries if he so desired.
He is the Cox Plate yin to the yang of Mick Burles and The Cleaner's crew.
The man who once watched his own Cox Plate dream unfold from a luxury yacht off the coastline of Monaco rather than being forced to load a horse onto the Spirit of Tasmania crossing Bass Strait to make it happen.
The man who makes the Cox Plate a tale of the battler and the billionaire - or almost billionaire.
He attempts to set the record straight in his book Making A Difference: "Even though I'm constantly referred to as a billionaire, I've actually never been one. It's only quite recently that I could even put $50 million together."
Sir Owen ploughs his money into numerous charitable efforts around the world, the New Zealand Warriors in which he has a controlling stake and his vast thoroughbred interests.
Yet despite his crusade to lessen child abuse and domestic violence in New Zealand through personally funding inquiries, there is only one special animal who gets the tag of "my boy".
The one he thought would be a Golden Slipper winner, but instead morphed into a classic-winning three-year-old. And now is a Cox Plate contender.
"That's my boy," Sir Owen says when asked about the David Payne-trained Criterion, who is in the upper echelons of betting for the $3 million weight-for-age championship on Saturday. "He's just a big gentle giant.
"He's a magnificent horse. The trainer described him the other day as a bronze statue. He's got a lot of heart, he's powerful and I don't think we've nowhere near seen the best of him.
"You see it romping around [in the paddock] and you get a feel for it. He's a beautiful looking horse as well. He's got the heart and he's got the guts and ... I don't know, he's a pinch away from greatness if you know what I mean.
"If he really romps home after this Plate ... who knows what he does after that?"
Having been introduced to racehorses after an afternoon on his yacht in Auckland - how else? - Sir Owen has spent the last decade farming out horses like Railings and Monaco Consul to a bevy of trainers in Australia and New Zealand.
But a union between an All Black-loving owner, as Sir Owen is, and a staunch Springbok supporter in Criterion's trainer David Payne? Now that would rub salt into the wounds of the embattled Wallabies.
"I've got my speech ready if he wins," Sir Owen jokes. "It's going to open with, 'Do you Aussies know any other games?' You guys give as good as you get.
"We dug up David and were told he had a good reputation and was a quiet bloke, but got on with the job. We gave him Criterion and he's had him since he was a yearling.
"When I was a kid and we didn't have a TV, we used to crowd around the radio and listen to the Cox Plate.
"After I got into the industry in the year 2000, all the trainers and breeders said the race is the Cox Plate. That's the one they want. That's the one they see the real horses in."
Criterion, already being courted by the Hong Kong Jockey Club for its international meeting in December, fits the bill as a "real horse". Now Sir Owen just hopes he is just a little better than the other nine in Saturday's field he would like to own.
