Racing Victoria chief handicapper Greg Carpenter was tight-lipped on Monday as to what weight he will ask champion galloper Weekend Hussler to carry in this year's Caulfield and Melbourne Cups.
The topic will dominate many bar-room discussions prior to the release of Cup weights in the first week of September.
"It's a challenge. I'm not going to publicly declare what weight he's going to get now because there's a lot of work to be done in making an assessment and a final judgment about it," Carpenter told Sportal.
Not since 2005 when Makybe Diva was aiming for an unprecedented third straight triumph in the race has there been this much publicity surrounding a handicapping decision.
Carpenter has conceded he faced a big challenge in assessing the Ross McDonald-trained three-year-old due to a lack of relevant test cases available in the history books.
Untried beyond the mile, Weekend Hussler has had an unorthodox three-year-old racing season for a horse considered to be one of the biggest hopes in this year's major spring cups.
"A number of three-year-olds have won the Australian Cup or a Cox Plate. His racing has been restricted to races up to 1600m so it's going to take a lot of research to try and get that historical perspective on it," Carpenter said.
Weekend Hussler equalled Kingston Town's record of six Group One victories in a season on Saturday.
But all of Kingston Town's Group One victories in his record-breaking season of 1979-80 came in races 2000m and beyond, while Weekend Hussler has won from 1100m to 1600m at the elite level.
Kingston Town carried 60kg when third in the 1980 Caulfield Cup.
"It's not simply about the number of Group One victories those horses have had and saying he's had more so he has to get more weight, because he hasn't won the traditional three-year-old races, with a view to a Cup preparation, like a Derby," Carpenter said.
Carpenter said Saintly and Efficient, who both won the Melbourne Cup as four-year-olds, would be the 'key horses' to consider when assessing what weight Weekend Hussler would be asked to carry.
Saintly carried 55.5kg to victory in 1996, and Efficient had 54kg in his 2007 triumph.
"Horses that ran in the race are a stronger guide for me rather than horses that were weighted but didn't get to the race," he said.
"When you go back and research previous four-year-olds in the Cups, it's all very well to compare what weight a horse has got but unless they ran in the race that weight is untested."
"The best benchmarks are the horses which actually were able to win the race."
Carpenter said Weekend Hussler's win in Saturday's George Ryder Stakes was 'very significant' from a handicapping point of view.
"Because Racing To Win represents one of the stars of Australian racing over the last few years and he beat him at what I would consider level weights at weight-for-age," he said.
"And his was a dominant win over him. To me that was the most significant victory because of the quality of the opposition."
"In arriving at a final decision you certainly take into account all these wins; weight-for-age wins count as much as the handicap ones."
"You've got to look at the horses he's beaten on the way through, whether or not that particular win has any relevance in determining the weight he has for the Caulfield or Melbourne Cup."