Canberra trainer Barbara Joseph will be hoping the top weights take their place in the listed National Sprint (1400 metres) to give her runner Just A Blur the best chance of claiming the $125,000 race.
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Just A Blur, last year's Goulburn Cup winner, was originally listed to carry the minimum weight of 54kg like most of the field at Thoroughbred Park on Sunday.
But that would rise if some or all of the four top weights withdraw their interest when acceptances for the final field of 16 are released on Thursday.
Just four of the 27 runners nominated for the race have been given more than 54kg.
Leading the charge is the Gai Waterhouse-trained Ecuador (59kg), which ran second in the group 1 Epsom Handicap (1600m) at Randwick and sixth in the group 1 MacKinnon Stakes (2000m) at Flemington last year.
Whether Amovatio (Chris Waller, 58.5kg), Forget (Kim Waugh, 56.5kg) and Tried And Tired (Leon and Troy Corstens, 55.5kg) make the journey to Canberra will also have implications on the rest of the field.
The same thing happened last year when Just A Blur finished seventh in the National Sprint carrying 58kg.
"If the top weights don't accept on Thursday, it's going to be a whole different ball game because the weights will change if the top ones don't stay in," Joseph said.
"We don't want that to happen this year, so we need some of the top weights to hold the weight.
"I'd prefer to be carrying 54kg, but we're meeting a lot of good horses at 54kg as well.
"Joe Cleary's horse [War Jet] has had the wood on us twice so he's getting in at the same weight, he's a gelding and he's got a lot more form than us.
"If it was on perfect weight, he'd have more weight than us."
The National Sprint will be the first race for Just A Blur in almost two months after running seventh in a group 3 (1600m) at Gosford on January 8.
"She's always very competitive in her first race," Joseph said.
"There were no races for her.
"You've got the Wagga carnival, the Albury carnival and the Canberra carnival, so you've got to give her a break for those other races."
The training partnership of Joseph and her son Paul Jones also have three runners nominated in the $125,000 Canberra Guineas (1400m) - Darts Away, Rock On Zariz and Critical Touch.
But they don't have any runners in the day's two biggest races, the $275,000 Black Opal Stakes (1200m) for two-year-olds and the $200,000 Canberra Cup (2000m).
"We had a couple going [for the Black Opal Stakes], but being two-year-olds, we had them going, then gone the next," Joseph said.
"A couple of them are back in the paddock and they'll make better three-year-olds.
"We haven't got anything in the Canberra Cup this year either, but maybe next year with some of these young horses coming along."
SUNDAY: Black Opal Stakes Day at Thoroughbred Park. Gates open at 11.30am. Tickets at Ticketek.
