It isn’t quite Nature Strip verses Eduardo, but Ellsberg and Brutality are beginning to rack up a mini rivalry of their own.
The pair have been on a collision course, clashing three times since the late spring with the ledger currently 2-1 in Ellsberg’s favour.
They are set to meet again in Saturday’s Ajax Stakes (1500m) at Rosehill and while Ellsberg is an odds-on favourite to extend his advantage, trainer Gerald Ryan is not quite so bullish.
The five-year-old was a runaway winner of the Liverpool City Cup (1300m) last month, defeating Brutality by 3-1/4 lengths at what was his first appearance since Brutality denied him by a short neck in the Group 2 Villiers Stakes over the summer.
But Ellsberg’s soft second-up record and 59kg topweight, along with a favourable turnaround at the handicaps for his Joe Pride-trained foe, has Ryan issuing a cautionary note to punters.
“He’s robust so I’m not so worried about the weight, but perhaps the weight on a heavy 10 is a worry and we meet the second horse two-and-a-half kilos worse,” Ryan said.
“Brutality and him, I think they’ve met three times and they’ve run the quinella twice and Brutality ran fourth to us once, so they’re pretty evenly matched.”
The Ajax Stakes won’t be the last of their autumn battles with both horses being aimed towards the Group 1 Doncaster Mile at Randwick next month.
The fly in the ointment on Saturday could be Victorian visitor Just Folk, a Group 2 winner during the Melbourne spring carnival who is undefeated on heavy ground.
He is on the third line of TAB fixed odds markets at $8 with Ellsberg a $1.65 favourite, ahead of Brutality at $4.40.