Albury has borne the brunt of a perfect storm of factors with the event being a week earlier this year and running into the Golden Slipper meeting in Sydney on Saturday and a night meeting at Moonee Valley on Friday followed by the Mornington Cup meeting the next day in Victoria.

Last year’s listed Gold Cup had 26 entries with a full field of 16 contesting the $180,000 feature over 2000 metres.

Twelve months later there are only 18 nominations with seven of those horses running at Albury on Sunday and facing a five-day turnaround to start in the Gold Cup.

Supply And Demand prepared by the Gai Waterhouse-Adrian Bott partnership ran unplaced in the group one Australian Cup at Flemington last start and Sin To Win from the David Hayes-Tom Dabernig operation at Euroa finishing third over 1800m at the same city meeting last start.

Wheal Leisure also ran in the same race at Flemington as Sin To Win and is prepared by Archie Alexander at Ballarat with his other Gold Cup nomination Survived running fourth to Green Sweet last year.

Albury has always had to contend with major meetings in Sydney the day after its Gold Cup and this year’s Golden Slipper meeting includes a group three race over 1900m with prizemoney of $150,000.

In addition to the Mornington Cup there is also a Benchmark 90 2000m race.

Wheal Leisure and Sin To Win are also nominated at Mornington leaving ARC officials with a nervous wait before final acceptances are declared on Wednesday.

Wodonga trainer Craig Widdison has two genuine chances in the race in Willi Willi and Mr Fergus if they run.

A surprise omission from the cup nominations was last start Canberra Cup winner, Almost Court, trained by carnival regular Barb Joseph, who has just one horse entered.

She said the track upgraded on the eve of last year’s Gold Cup was still settling down and Almost Court didn’t like “shifting or wet” going.

“He is going to go to Sydney next weekend for the Neville Sellwood,” she said.

“I looked at the noms this morning and nearly cried.

“The other thing is getting rid of the two days and I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot by going that way.

“It’s lost its carnival atmosphere in my opinion and in other years we’ve brought over 10 to 15 horses with quite a few running on the Thursday so owners aren’t coming across either.”

Joseph attended the Sunday meeting at Albury and said the track had improved.

ARC chief executive Mick Wighton said the club had responded to feedback about the track from a meeting in February and made necessary improvements for Sunday.

“We have to compete with a number of other meetings these days,” he said.

“I don’t know the reason why the (cup) field hasn’t attracted more external people.”

The clashes with Melbourne and Sydney meetings have been a long-standing battle for ARC in attracting the bigger stables from the two major racing cities.

Murrumbidgee Turf Club at Wagga has a better strikerate with the larger Sydney stables for its two-day carnival in early May.

Albury ended its two-day carnival last year when it hosted a heat of the rich NSW Country Championships.