No weight penalties for stayers

Stayers Cefalu and Get Up Jude will not receive a weight penalty following their wins last weekend.

Racing Victoria Limited chief handicapper Greg Carpenter said on Tuesday that the pair had not done enough to warrant extra weight for the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups.

Cefalu was a shock all-the-way winner of the Listed JRA Cup (2040m) at Moonee Valley last Friday night, while Get Up Jude saluted in the G3 Colin Stephen Quality (2400m) at Randwick on Saturday.

Both horses are still low in the order of entry for the spring features and are likely to have to win another rich staying race to rise up the list.

Carpenter said Cefalu, currently equal 42nd on the order of entry for the Caulfield Cup and 58th for the Melbourne Cup, needed to win a race like the Moonee Valley Cup to have his initial 50.5kg lifted for both races.

"As a seven-year-old his form is very well exposed," Carpenter said. "He was a surprise winner when he set up the pace and fought on and beat Majestical, who is coming through the grades."

"I certainly didn't think that on that performance alone it was enough to warrant penalising him for the Cups."

Get Up Jude's win in Sydney, where he carried the minimum 53kg in defeating 2007 AJC Derby winner Fiumicino, qualified him for both major spring cups.

"But from the way the race was weighted it wasn't enough for him to get a penalty," Carpenter said.

The lightly-raced five-year-old was 48th and 66th in the pecking order for the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups.

There will be four races this weekend in Victoria and Sydney - the Epsom Handicap (1600m), the Metropolitan (2400m), Bart Cummings (2500m) and the Benalla Cup (2300m) - where the winner is liable to a re-handicap.