Caulfield Cup Information

Race details

The Group 1 Caulfield Cup is one of Australia’s most prestigious races, run every October at Caulfield Racecourse during the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival.

The Caulfield Cup carnival takes place over three race meetings – the Caulfield Guineas meeting on the first Saturday, the Blue Sapphire Stakes meeting on the Wednesday, which as of this year will once again host the Thousand Guineas, and of course the Caulfield Cup the following Saturday.

Often classed as one of ‘the big 4’, alongside the Melbourne Cup, the Cox Plate, and the Golden Slipper, it was first run in 1879 and won by Newminster.

Since then it has always remained at the distance of a mile-and-a-half (2400m), and is the richest 2400m handicap in the world.

Under the handicap conditions, there is no maximum top weight a horse can carry, but the minimum top weight is 58kg. On the other end of the scale, the minimum handicap weight is 49kg for three-year-olds, and 50kg for horses aged four or older.

Caulfield Cup winners

The Caulfield Cup is often used as the main lead up for the Melbourne Cup run three weeks later, but just 11 horses have completed the double in the same year, notably Galilee (1966), Let’s Elope (1991), Might And Power (1997) and Ethereal (2001).

There has been an international flavour to the race more recently, with overseas raiders from Europe and Japan making their presence felt. Mer De Glace (2019) and Admire Ratki (2014) were both Japanese-trained winners, and Best Solution (2018) and Dunaden (2012) from England and France respectively.

Last year’s race was of course won by none other than eight time Group 1 winner Verry Elleegant, who Australian’s will definitely claim as their own despite being bred and doing her very early racing in New Zealand.

Caulfield Cup prizemoney

The Caulfield Cup has a total prize purse of $5million, with the winner collecting $3,000,000 along with $150,000 worth of trophies. See the full breakdown of prizemoney below:

1^st          $3,000,000

2^nd         $700,000

3^rd         $350,000

4^th         $200,000

5^th         $150,000

6^th         $120,000

7^th         $120,000

8^th         $120,000

9^th         $120,000

10^th       $120,000

Ballot exempt races

There are a total of 18 races which hold ballot exempt status for the Caulfield Cup, including nine based overseas.

They include:

Makybe Diva (Craiglee) Stakes (AUS)

Dato’Tan Chin Nam (Feehan) Stakes (AUS)

Underwood Stakes (AUS)

Naturalism Stakes (AUS)

Turnbull Stakes (AUS)

Herbert Power Stakes (AUS)

Caulfield Stakes (AUS)

Mornington Cup (AUS)

Coongy Handicap (AUS)

Nikkei Shinshun Hai (JPN)

Kyoto Kinen (JPN)

Sheema Classic (UAE)

Jockey Club Stakes (UK)

Champions and Chater Cup (HK)

Meguro Kinen (JPN)

Grand Prix de Chantilly (FR)

Hardwicke Stakes (UK)

Princess of Wales’s Stakes (UK)

Where to watch the 2021 Caulfield Cup

The 2021 Caulfield Cup, which can be viewed on Sky Racing, is scheduled to run on the 16^th of October and the team at RacingBet will be previewing the race in depth, along with every other race during the Caulfield carnival.