Waterhouse and Waller lead the great Australian charge Trainer Chris Waller with his Melbourne cup runners Hawkspur and Foreteller. Since its first running in 1861, the same year Burke and Wills withered in the desert, the Melbourne Cup has conjured many images. Archer walking from Sydney to Melbourne that year, winning the first of two. Phar Lap winning during the worst years of the Great Depression. Light Fingers winning the first of a dozen for Bart Cummings. Kingston Town not winning. A single tear running down Jim Cassidy's cheek after winning on Might And Power. Damien Oliver looking skyward after winning on Media Puzzle, days after his brother's death. Makybe Diva winning three in a row. Massive Kerry Packer wagers, winning and losing. Office sweeps. Champers. Fake tan. Addled supermodels stumbling about the Flemington birdcage, wondering what all the fuss is about. But if the Melbourne Cup has represented anything in the past few years, it is the evolving wrestle between a platoon of overseas trainers and their horses, and their Australian counterparts desperately attempting to keep the gold trophy on these shores. On this first Tuesday in November, the battle lines have rarely been so clear. How serious are the internationals? Former Liverpool footballer Michael Owen shelved his Premier League career three months ago to concentrate on winning this year's race with the ominously named Brown Panther. This year, Australian hopes don't necessarily lie with property tycoon and Cup obsessed Lloyd Williams, who has six runners - a quarter of the field - including last year's winner, Green Moon. Instead, it is Sydney's two leading trainers, Gai Waterhouse and Chris Waller, who can keep the rest of the world at bay. And that's been a rarity in the past three decades. Waterhouse has the favourite in Fiorente, and a respected outsider in Tres Blue, which has impressed anyone who has watched him work in the early morning mist at Werribee. Tres Blue has been imported from France, while it took three months for Waterhouse and her husband, Robbie, to buy Fiorente after spotting him at Newmarket in England. Fiorente is her best chance of winning the Melbourne Cup. So, too, Hawkspur for Waller. He's the forgotten runner - only one of five starters who were bred in Australia - who can confirm Waller's status as the country's premier trainer. He had no luck in the Caulfield Cup, in which he started favourite, after he was trapped behind the bulk of the field and could not find a run home. Waller says he's due some. "It's been a long-term plan to get here," he said. And it's not too often you get to the planned race without any setbacks. Even though he hasn't been winning, he hasn't had the best of luck. Maybe we can get it when it counts. That Waller and Waterhouse have such strong prospects in the country's most fabled race will not be lost on those who have watched them contest the Sydney premiership for the past two years. There has been a clear changing of the guard - Waller has won the past two - and some quietly believe it is something that annoys Waterhouse, although she disputes this. Since Waterhouse's father, the late TJ Smith, won with Just a Dash in 1981, Sydney trainers have a poor track record in the Cup. Only Les Bridge with Kensei in 1987 and Jack Denham with Might And Power in 1997 have brought the Cup back to the Harbour City. Cummings is based in Sydney, but his presence is universal, with his Saintly Place stables in the neighbouring streets of the Flemington course. Waller landed on the scene from New Zealand about a decade ago, and there hasn't been a Sydney-trained winner in the 3200m handicap since then. Indeed, just as it's becoming tougher to win the famous race with anything but an imported staying horse, it's less likely that you can win it unless you are a sheik, a prince or just your average millionaire. When Rogan Josh won in 1999 for Cummings, it was a victory for the battler as much as Darwin schoolteacher Wendy Green, who forked out only $12,000 for him. Williams and John Singleton, who has backed his mare Dear Demi off the map, have some of the deepest pockets in racing. They barely compare, though, to Qatari Sheikh Fahad Al Thani, who is trying for a second win with Dunaden. Or His Highness the Aga Khan, whose daughter, Princess Zahra, was at Werribee on Sunday, casting an eye over Verema. Trying to buy the Melbourne Cup is one thing. Winning it is much harder.