The most remarkable part about the $22,000, 1300m maiden at Kembla Grange on a Saturday in January, 2015, was the 90 per cent humidity. 

Who could possibly have known what was to come? More than two years later and the six-year-old Amelie’s Star is aiming to become the first mare to win the Melbourne Cup since the legendary Makybe Diva completed her threepeat in 2005.

Along the way, Amelie’s Star moved from Peter Moody's stables for a 560-day spell with Darren Weir.

Well, they say patience is a virtue. 

Amelie’s Star had won three in a row, including a Group 3 race at Rosehill, before suffering a tendon injury which threatened her career.

It was only in April 2017 when Weir tested the waters again, this time in Adelaide. Then two runs later, her true potential started to be realised.

Sweeping around the field, she took out the Group 2 Queen of South Stakes at Morphettville. "We spoke to Darren Weir as Peter Moody was no longer training and he understood where Amelie's Star was coming from and what rehabilitation she had been through,” Sydney owner Patrick Hodgens said before the Caulfield Cup. 

“He knew exactly the path we wanted to take and we just sat back and waited.”

The Melbourne Cup was well in her sights after winning the Group 3 Bart Cummings, the race Almandin won last year, before fading to finish 11^th in a wildly run Caulfield Cup.

Canberra trainer Nick Olive wrote a chapter of Kembla Grange history when Single Gaze claimed the $200,000 Keith Nolan Classic last year, one of five career wins in 28 starts.

It came before disaster struck in the ATC Oaks, when Kathy O’Hara suffered a horrible fall and Single Gaze failed to finish.

Another Cup runner Cismontaine made a bigger impression at Kembla Grange when breaking his maiden in July last year.

The Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained five-year-old gelding snared the last ticket into the race with victory in Saturday’s Lexus Stakes.