I’ve got a Golden Ticket: The Caulfield clues for the Melbourne Cup

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

Half Yours (St Jean {Ire}) achieved something extremely special in 2025 when landing the G1 Caulfield Cup–G1 Melbourne Cup double, and on Saturday, a full field of 18 will battle it out, many of whom have 3200-metre Cup aspirations themselves.

After second declarations on October 13, just 58 horses remain in the running for a spot in the final field on the first Tuesday in November, and just four have gained ballot-free access to the race by winning a golden ticket race on the way through. The Caulfield Cup is the next golden ticket race on the agenda, and with only three more chances afterwards, the race for a place begins to really tighten.

The haves and have nots

There are currently 11 golden ticket races for the Melbourne Cup globally, and seven have already run, including all three on international soil. Of that three, only one has commented to Flemington for November; Joseph O’Brien’s Defiantly (Fr) (Kameko {USA}) won his way in via the 3000-metre G1 Prix Kergolay in August, and he will carry the Australian Bloodstock silks in his Melbourne Cup bid this year.

Table: Winners of the 2026 G1 Melbourne Cup golden ticket races run so far

“He’s actually had the perfect prep, if you like, for a European horse”, said Australian Bloodstock Director Jamie Lovett to racing.com. “So if he lands and settles in well, he’ll run well.”

Defiantly will be the third of his dam Roheryn’s (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) to attempt to win the race, with his half-brother Buckaroo (GB) (Fastnet Rock) running in both of the last two editions and Middle Earth (GB) (Roaring Lion {USA}) running third last year.

Middle Earth is currently 14th in the order of entry and will line up in the Caulfield Cup to try to secure his spot - failing that, he has been nominated for the other Group 1 golden ticket race, the G1 Cox Plate on October 24.

G3 Belmont Gold Cup winner Tawny Port (USA) (Pioneerof The Nile {USA}) has decided to remain in North America and ran second in the G1 Canadian International Stakes on October 3, while connections of Daiquiri Bay (GB) (New Bay {GB}), winner of the time-honoured Ebor Handicap at York, consider an Australian trip before rerouting to the G1 British Champions Long Distance Cup this Saturday instead.

Three of the four Australian golden ticket winners currently remain in contention - only Listed Roy Higgins winner Whisky On The Hill (GB) (Ribchester {Ire}) is definitely out, currently still spelling after a down the field finish in the G1 Sydney Cup.

Seeking something supreme

Australian Bloodstock - who famously claimed the Melbourne Cup with Gold Trip (Fr) in 2022 and for whom Vauban (Fr) (Galiway {GB}) has run in the race three times - have another runner bidding for ballot-free entry this weekend when Royal Supremacy (Ire) (Make Believe {GB}), the last start winner of the G3 JRA Cup, leads the Ciaron Maher brigade into the Caulfield Cup.

Finishing 15th in last year’s Melbourne Cup, the 6-year-old is one of 12 Maher trainees still in the entries, and is joined at Caulfield on Saturday with fellow entrants Middle Earth, Saint George (GB) (Roaring Lion {USA}), and Zahrann (Ire) (Night Of Thunder {Ire}), with Juja Kibo (Ire) (Belardo {Ire}) and Point Of Law (GB) (Frankel {GB}) amongst the emergencies.

Lovett was bullish in the week about Royal Supremacy’s chances on Saturday.

“He’s coming off a really good season where he won the Metropolitan and Q22, but I think he’s going better than ever,” he said. “He ran fifth in the Caulfield Cup last year and he’s going so much better this time. I think they’ve worked him out. He was a real hard-pulling horse and I reckon they’ve worked him out as he’s racing so much better now.

“Mark Zahra said it (the JRA Cup) was the best he’s ever felt in the run. Depending on how he goes on Saturday, I reckon we could do a Gold Trip with him and back him up in a Cox Plate.”

Of the others in Maher’s Caulfield Cup squad, his assistant trainer Jack Turnbull said it is a credit to the team to have so many ready for the race, and in form.

“Zahrann is probably our top pick,” he told racenet.com. The Aga Khan Stud-bred entire won the G3 Naturalism Stakes two starts ago before going unplaced in the G1 Turnbull Stakes. “We know he stays 2400 metres, and he's going to like it back on top of the ground.”

However in speaking to RSN, Turnbull also noted that Middle Earth could be “under the radar” now he gets back to handicap grade.

“He's a horse that only has a few races on the calendar that really suit him,” Turnbull said. "He's a genuine staying horse and now that we're at 2400 metres after a couple of prep runs, his fitness is there and can start to show his true potential.”

The raiders

A third Australian Bloodstock runner joins the fray on Saturday, but with his English trainer Harry Charlton retained; Wine Dark Sea (GB) (Ulysses {GB}), carrying the eye-catching colours of majority owner Sonny Grebe, arrives having won the G3 Geoffrey Steer Stakes at Newbury in August.

“He’s settled in well after his trip and if he holds that form from the Geoffrey Freer, he’s got to be a live chance,” Lovett said. “He’s running the times, he’s running them on fast tracks, and so he profiles like the right horse for a mile and a half.”

Alex Crean, Charlton’s travelling foreperson, has the feeling that the gelding could be one to watch, given his high cruising speed.

“He can race prominently, he can race on the speed,” Crean said on Thursday. “He's not a small horse, so hopefully he might be able to get up and get across.

“He's impressed me so far - he's very efficient, very economical. He's enjoying being out here. The ground should be in his favour. Hopefully there'll be a bit of speed on and he can get into a rhythm and see what happens.”

Grebe is hoping that speed will get him out of trouble, given he has drawn barrier 19.

“It's rough on the first presentation, but when I think about it, we want him to be outside, we want him to be up forward," Grebe told racenet.com after the barrier draw.

The two other raiders in the Caulfield Cup field with their eyes on November are Enfjaar (Ire) (Lope De Vega {Ire}), trained by Roger Varian, and Joseph O’Brien’s Starford (Ire) (Beckford {GB}), who is one of nine in second declarations for O’Brien.

“We've been very happy with him since he came,” said O’Brien’s travelling foreperson Michael Halford, who shared a fairly simple plan for the gelding to earn his Melbourne Cup slot.

“He's straightforward to ride - it's just a matter of dropping him in there, get him comfortable and have him coming home, so I'd imagine we'd keep it pretty straightforward and pretty simple with him.”

Varian hasn’t been to Flemington since he brought My Ambivalent (Ire) (Authorized {Ire}) to the Cup in 2014, where the mare finished 17th.

Enfjaar - whose dam is a three-quarter-sister to champion racemare Rhododendron (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), dam of Auguste Rodin (Jpn) - arrives having won the G3 Glorious Stakes at Goodwood at his most recent start, and jockey Ray Dawson was delighted with barrier one for Saturday.

“He's got a great cruising speed, he proved at Goodwood that he stays the mile-and-a-half very well,” Dawson said. “He goes on all grounds. I'm very confident, especially after sitting on him this (Thursday) morning. We just need a bit of luck really - I think he's good enough to be bang there turning in.”

Waller resting hopes on Ohope

The lightest weight currently within the top 24 in the ballot, 4-year-old Ohope Wins (NZ) (Ocean Park {NZ}) is one of a trio of Caulfield Cup runners for Chris Waller, all of whom are also entered for the Melbourne Cup. Waller would not normally put a 4-year-old mare into a race like the Caulfield Cup, but he has made an exception for the trans-Tasman Group 1 winner, who he believes will improve with distance.

“She hasn’t won at less than 2000 (metres), so I’ve probably taken a little different approach,” he told racing.com earlier in the week.

“There aren’t a lot of shorter races for her, and she’s been to the Oaks distance twice, so it’s not as if she’s going to it for the first time. She’s been there before and where else do you run? She needs 2400 metres. I can’t just save her for the Tancred, and she’s in with a good weight of just 51.5kgs. She is building towards her peak.”

Could she build to a peak in early November? Makybe Diva (GB) (Desert King {Ire}) was still a 4-year-old in the Northern Hemisphere at the time of her first Cup win.

Asterix (NZ) (Tavistock {NZ}) and Soul Of Spain (Ire) (Phoenix Of Spain {Ire}) are both also in the top 24 for Waller. Asterix has a little family history with the Melbourne Cup; a half-sister to his mother produced Mourilyan (Ire) (Desert Prince {Ire}), who ran third in the Cup to Shocking.

Waller has nine still in the running, and his runners highest on the ballot - Aeliana (NZ) (Castelvecchio) and Birdman (Ire) (Free Eagle {Ire}) - are instead nominated for the Cox Plate the following weekend.

Pinhole (GB) (Frankel {GB}) won a spot in the Caulfield Cup via his G2 Herbert Power Stakes win, but Waller chose to give it a miss. The gelding instead heads to the G2 Moonee Valley Gold Cup the following week in search of his golden ticket to Flemington.

The defending champions

The last two Melbourne Cup winners, Half Yours and Knight’s Choice (Extreme Choice), also take the field in the Caulfield Cup on Saturday. Both are within the current top 10 on the ballot order and have essentially secured their place, but Half Yours will be trying to claim back to back Caulfield Cups on the way through - despite carrying the topweight with 1.5kg more than the next runner, and five more kilos than he carried last year.

“He’s perfect,” is how co-trainer Calvin McEvoy described the gelding earlier in the week. “He’s in really good order.”

The weight in the saddle carries no fear for McEvoy, who has examined the Caulfield Cup’s winners’ record. Mongolian Khan, Admire Rakti (Jpn), and Dunaden (Fr) all won carrying 58kg within the last 15 years, as did Northerly (Serheed {USA}) before them, and Best Solution (Ire) was the topweight of his year when carrying 57.5kg in 2018.

Without A Fight (Ire) (Teofilo {Ire}) carried second topweight when he won in 2023, with topweight Gold Trip in third.

“The history of the Caulfield Cup shows that it can be won by a topweight and that gives us confidence,” McEvoy said. “Comparing that to the Melbourne Cup, it is a much more difficult task, but at the end of the day we have an elite stayer that is great at 2400 and 3200 metres.

“If we're too scared to run with big weights, we'll be leaving him at home in the box. We have to attack the challenge head on, and we have good faith in the horse that he can do it.”

Robbie Dolan is looking forward to reuniting with Knight’s Choice as the gelding

“It's great to be back," Dolan said. "He is the horse who changed my life forever.”

Dolan is hoping to see him bounce back into Cup-winning form after getting back into gear over the winter.

“He's obviously a very good horse, but he had a little injury last year and the strangles thing was no good,” Dolan said. “Coming back into the preparation that we had in Brisbane, we were playing catch-up with him the whole time.

“He didn't go as good as he could have last preparation, but now it looks like he is flying.”

Who’s afraid of Cosmic Crusader?

Of course, there is always the chance that a horse with no intention of going to the Melbourne Cup gains a golden ticket. For some members of the field, the biggest threat looms from Western Australian powerhouse Cosmic Crusader (NZ) (Maurice {Jpn}).

The last start G1 Turnbull Stakes winner is having his first step up to 2400 metres on Saturday. The Caulfield track is currently rated a Good 4, a fair bit better than the Heavy 8 that the gelding won the Turnbull on, but owner Bob Peters has to keep the faith in his star.

“I am a bit worried about the track because he didn’t perform that well in the Underwood when the track dried out, and there isn’t much rain around in Melbourne this week,” he told racing.com earlier in the week. “But Group 1s, you all aspire to have a runner and we are lucky enough to have a horse in one.

“(The distance) is a bit of a question mark, but the way he finishes his races off, he always seems to have a bit left there.”

“Cosmic Crusader was not very welcome news,” Damien Lane, who has the ride on Wine Dark Sea, said earlier in the week. He doubled down on the comment on Thursday, telling SEN, "it's hard for me to go past Cosmic Crusader. The way he won the Turnbull, it's always such a great lead-up race.

“The only slight caveat on that is it was a heavy track, and he's won six out of seven on the heavy. He’s going to get a good track on Saturday. But most of his dangers, he beat by 10 or so lengths and that sort of just sticks in my mind.”

Wine Dark Sea will be relying on Cosmic Crusader to give him the perfect tow into the race, given they both draw out wide in the field.

“If he can tag Cosmic Crusader and get a good cart across, I don't think it's as bad as what it looks on paper,” Grebe said. “And look, we've got the early speed.”

The only other Caulfield Cup runners not dual nominated are Gavin Bedggood’s Kingswood (GB) (Roaring Lion {USA}) and Grahame Begg’s She’s A Hustler (NZ) (Ace High), both of whom hope for a fairer fight when stepping up from 2000 metres.

“I thought he stuck to his task well to be beaten only two lengths,” said Bedggood of his grey’s fourth in the G1 Might And Power Stakes, won in track record time by Land Legend (Fr) (Galileo {Ire}). "He's had a good blow and should improve off it.”

The drying track falls in the favour of She’s A Hustler, who was seventh in the Turnbull.

“It was too wet last time, and she can't cope with the high-pressure races,” Begg told RSN, adding that the mare would be ridden quietly and hope for a less hotly run race this time. “She needs a dry track and to be able to come up for air at some time in the run. She needs to be able to come back and then travel through her gears.”

Still all to play for

After the Caulfield Cup, there remains only three chances left to earn ballot-free entry; the G3 Geelong Cup on October 21, and the Cox Plate and Moonee Valley Gold Cup on October 24.

Table: The 2026 G1 Melbourne Cup golden ticket races still to come

While Cox Plate queen Via Sistina (Ire) (Fastnet) has long retired and 2025 Moonee Valley winner Onesmoothoperator (USA) (Dialed In {USA}) is not amongst the Melbourne Cup’s second declarations, 2025 Geelong Cup winner Torranzino (NZ) (Tarzino {NZ}) remains in contention.

At 32rd in the ballot at current, Torranzino will need that golden ticket again, or to earn enough points in his performances over the next three weeks, to guarantee a spot at Flemington on November 3.

He skips the Caulfield Cup this weekend but is amongst the nominations for a Geelong Cup repeat - a feat that has yet to be managed in the race’s 150-year history. Camerine (The Gondolier) has gotten the closest, winning the race in 1885 and 1887.

There is hope in the O’Shea–Charlton stable that a different route can take them to the Cup, with three runners hoping to book their spot via the G3 St Leger at Randwick. Klondike (GB) (Galileo {Ire}), Athabascan (Fr) (Almanzor {Fr}), and Sam Hawkens (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), the latter two in the OTI Racing colours, all made it through second declarations.

“They're all in the Cup, and if they were to perform well, you'd definitely consider it,” Tom Charlton told RSN. “They're not leading hopes at the moment, but if anything put their hand up, we'd jump at it, particularly with Klondike.”

Table: G1 Caulfield Cup field and their order of entry for the G1 Melbourne Cup