Racing Victoria handicapper David Hegan said he would like to have waited an extra week before releasing the weights for the Gr.1 Caulfield Cup (2400m) and Gr.1 Melbourne Cup (3200m).
Hegan said ideally the final handicaps for the Cups would be released after Saturday’s racing in Melbourne and Sydney to ascertain how potential contenders are progressing through the Gr.1 Underwood Stakes (1800m), the Gr. 3 MRC Foundation Cup (2000m) at Caulfield and the Gr.3 Kingston Town Stakes (2000m) at Randwick.
Weights for the Caulfield Cup, on October 19, and the Melbourne Cup at Flemington on November 2, were released on Tuesday with last year’s winner of double – Without A Fight – the topweight for both races with 58.5kg.
That weight is a rise of rise of 3kg on his Caulfield Cup winning weight and 2kg on top of his win in the Melbourne Cup after he was penalised 1kg for his Caulfield Cup victory.
It is almost 50 years since a horse has carried more than 58kg to win either Cup, which Hegan said would make for a difficult task for Without A Fight to go back-to-back in either race.
“The weight of history is against Without A Fight in doing this,” Hegan said.
“In over 50 years we have had 45 attempts in the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups combined with 58.5kg for only one win, and that was Think Big when he went back-to-back in 1975.”
The Chris Waller-trained mare Via Sistina sits second on the weights for both races with 56kg while last year’s Melbourne Cup favourite Vauban has 55.5kg, a rise of 0.5kg, and will be this year’s Cup topweight should both Without A Fight and Via Sistina not start.
Fawkner Park will be Caulfield Cup topweight should the two at the top of the weights elect to bypass the race as Vauban is not entered at Caulfield.
There are 19 New Zealand bred gallopers nominated for the Melbourne Cup and 14 nominated for the Caulfield Cup, with Warmonger (53.kgs) guaranteed a run in both.
For the full list of Caulfield Cup weights, please click here
For the full list of Melbourne Cup weights, please click here
