The Audemars Piguet Queen ElizabethII Cup has a history almost as long as Hong Kong racing's professional era, but the world-class race we will see on Sunday has been around for little more than a decade.
Named by the then Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club to honour the Queen, it began as a humble domestic trophy at Happy Valley in 1975, four years after racing turned professional.
Moving to the new Sha Tin racecourse in 1979, the QEII Cup was contested annually but still had little more than a royal name to distinguish it until a boost of prize money in 1987 to HK$500,000 made it a serious objective.
The first turning point came with the first HK$1million prize in 1992 and a win by River Verdon - then considered the greatest horse produced locally - that sent the message that this was a race only to be competed by the sport's very best.
The Jockey Club was looking to broaden its international horizons and expanding the QEII Cup looked logical.
With another sharp boost to prize money in 1995, the race opened to the world as Dubai-trained Red Bishop beat runners from Hong Kong and four foreign nations for a HK$2.32million first prize that exceeded the 1994 stakes by HK$600,000.
Dubai was again the winner when the world's most powerful stable, Godolphin, turned up for the first time, with two superstars in Overbury and jockey Frankie Dettori, to smash the second international QEII field.
