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Two-week gap lures big names from Australian Cup to Queen Elizabeth Stakes

The Australian Cup and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, despite both being Group 1 races over 2000 metres in autumn, have never really been intimately linked.

The Victoria Racing Club's decision to make the Australian Cup weight-for-age in 1979 swiftly elevated it to the best 2000m race in the second half of the season, but it has been at least a decade since it held that honour.

The Queen Elizabeth Stakes has consistently been one of the highest-rating races on the Australian calendar since its elevation to the flagship event of The Championships in 2014.

Australian Cup form has been found wanting in the Queen Elizabeth since then.

Four Australian Cup winners have run in the Queen Elizabeth it in that time with Spillway's fourth placing in 2015 the best result.

Harlem ran last in 2019, Preferment was 12th of 14 in 2016, while Duais was seventh of nine two years ago.

So, Saturday's $5 million Queen Elizabeth will be a good test of whether the year's Australian Cup was in fact worthy of the hype around the first edition run on the last Saturday in March.

The first two home, Cascadian and Pride Of Jenni, are engaged, as is the beaten short-priced favourite Mr Brightside, who finished fifth.

Cascadian earned a Timeform rating of 122 for his Flemington win, which was greater than any of the four who have attempted the double in the past 20 years.

The problem for the Australian Cup horses could be the international influence that has taken over the Queen Elizabeth in recent years.

Of late, the Champions Stakes at Ascot in England has proven a better guide to the Queen Elizabeth than the Australian Cup.

William Haggas' three recent winners, Addeybb (2020, 2021) and Dubai Honour (2023), all ran in the 2012m Group 1 Champions Stakes the previous October.

Via Sistina, the $2.20 favourite for this year's event, ran second in last year's Champions Stakes.

She ran to 117 on the Timeform scale in that race, but elevated her career peak to 121+ with a first-up win in the Group 1 Ranvet Stakes (2000m) at Rosehill on March 23 at her first start for Chris Waller.

The + suggests scope to elevate and if the daughter of Fastnet Rock does it will take a career best performance from almost all of her rivals to win.

Accounting for the four-pound penalty issued to mares for their 2kg allowance over the boys, that figure is at least the equal of the peak of any runner in this year's race, with Mr Brightside's 125 the best peak Timeform rating of the male horses engaged.

Pride Of Jenni, who is also a mare, ran 124 when she won the All-Star Mile but regressed to 117 in the Australian Cup and faces the challenge of repeating her career peak at 2000m.