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By Ray Hickson

Trainer Edward Cummings concedes his emerging star Duais may need to do something very special to win Saturday’s Group 1 $4m Longines Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2000m) at Royal Randwick.

Trainer Edward Cummings (Pic: Steve Hart)

That’s not just because of the quality among her eight rivals, including his brother James's star colt Anamoe, but due to a racing pattern he’s not keen to tinker with even though it appears likely the flasgship race of The Star Championships may not be run to suit her style.

Duais has produced explosive finishes to win back-to-back Group 1s in the Australian Cup and Tancred Stakes and after drawing the outside Cummings is happy to keep the tactics simple.

“Drawing in might have tempted us to do something she wasn’t ready to do but we know she’s very good ridden cold and the barrier more or less makes it easy for us,’’ he said.

“I think she’s still young, I don’t think she’s ready to cope with being ridden at both ends of the race at the moment. That’s something she will develop and that’s why I think she’s open to significant improvement over the next 12 months.

“With only one likely leader in Zaaki it certainly makes things difficult from our point of view.

“There will need to be horses looking to put some pressure on him hopefully as early as possible in the race to give us something to run over the top of. There’s the chance that Zaaki might get some easy sections too.

“The danger for her is more about race shape and tempo, whether that will suit her or horses closer to the speed.”

What Duais, $5.50 with TAB on Thursday, has in her favour is she’s coming off a 2400m run on a soft track less than two weeks before the Queen Elizabeth whereas most of her rivals haven’t raced since Golden Slipper Day. She also proved herself on a Randwick heavy 10 with an unlucky Chipping Norton Stakes performance.

Of course the Sydney Cup, where she had 51kg, was the original aim for the autumn but Cummings said the relatively late switch hasn’t changed a lot in her training.

He said the Tancred, where she sat back and rounded up eight rivals, was almost as easy on her post-race as the win was to watch which stands her in good stead for her biggest assignment.

“She bounced back very quickly. She had a quiet day but from that point on she’s jumping around, happy and well within herself,’’ he said.

“I think she’d have been able to run two miles when she ran in the Tancred, the way she relaxed and hit the line and did it comfortably.

“In all the work she’s done since the race she’s come off the track bouncing like she could do with more work. In my mind that means she should be absolutely perfect for 2000m on a testing surface.”

The rise of Duais has been a revelation and cemented Hawkesbury-based Cummings as a Group 1 trainer in his own right.

At the corresponding meeting a year ago she ran second in the Australian Oaks, so she’s been able to make the transition, that can be so difficult, to open class weight-for-age racing in quick time and the Queen Elizabeth is shaping as pivotal for her spring.

“If she’s good enough to beat a field like that she might be a Cox Plate type and if she’s not up to them we might go a different way,’’ Cummings said.

“She’s won two weight-for-age races that haven’t been of the same quality this race provides but she’s won both of them well, like she was a cut above the others.

“We’ve had a plan for her every single time she’s come into the stable and we’ve never wavered from it, unless she wanted us to, and she’s always delivered. They are the horses you love to train because you know what you’re going to get on race day.”

Duais wins the Tancred Stakes at Newcastle

Stablemate Three Wise Men needs a scratching to gain a start in the Listed $150,000 Bisley Workwear South Pacific Classic (1400m) and, while it is a class test for the gelding, Cummings is confident a wet track won’t be an issue.

He’s been mixing it with Duais in his work but after finishing in the second half of the field in two runs back he will need to take his morning work onto the racetrack.

“He’s working well, he’s been the sparring partner for Duais over the last seven days and has been doing well around her,’’ Cummings said.

“It’s an opportunity to get him into a decent race, if he can run up to his work he should be competitive.”

All the fields, form and replays for Day 2 of The Star Championships at Randwick