Wanganui stayer Blood Brotha will try to emulate what My Scotsgrey did last year and win the Metropolitan Trophy - New Zealand Cup double in the space of a week at Riccarton Park, Christchurch, this weekend.

Blood Brotha, trained by Raymond Connors and beautifully ridden by premiership-leading jockey Lisa Allpress, easily had the measure of his rivals last weekend to win the Metropolitan Trophy and took his career winnings past $75,000. That figure would double were he to win again this week.

Standing in front of Blood Brotha is Bakup who was a creditable second in the lead-up, and two of My Scotsgrey's stablemates - Roi d'jeu, who was slow away on Saturday but made up a good ground for 4th, and Nightime Jockey who won over 2400metres at Ellerslie on Melbourne Cup day.

Joining the two favourites are Chase The Sun, who recently returned to New Zealand from Australia, and the Paddy Payne-trained Kerdem, which had a disappointing run in the Geelong Cup last month. It turns out that was no disgrace as the winner Americain went on to win the Melbourne Cup!

Speaking of Melbourne Cups, New Zealand-bred mare Empire Rose won the NZ Cup 12 months before saluting in the 1988 Melbourne Cup. The 147th running of this year's Group 3 3200m feature starts at 2.36pm EDST tomorrow.

Tomorrow's card also sees the running of the Group One 1,000 Guineas over 1600m at 1.16pm EDST. Twilight Savings, who was third against the colts last weekend, heads a strong field, which also includes her talented stablemate We Can Say It Now, Kings Rose, and Sworn To Secrecy.

Sky2 and Sky Racing World will provide full coverage of the entire meet.