At least the Derby is safe.

Anything else, it seems, is fair game to a marauding mob of foreign gallopers who at Flemington on Saturday snatched a couple of spring carnival features they'd hardly heard of until a couple of months ago.

And as they did, they snuffed out the chances of half a dozen locals looking for runs in Tuesday's Melbourne Cup.

The hardy middle-distance runner Ruscello and the well-travelled Side Glance, neither of them terribly flash horses, pinched an easy $780,000 from the Aussies with their wins in the Lexus Stakes and Mackinnon Stakes.

"Financially this is as good as winning one of our best races at home," said Ruscello's trainer Ed Walker.

"Most trainers in Britain are thinking about the Melbourne Cup. Fortunately we were steered toward this race."

The steering was done by former Test cricketer Simon O'Donnell and his partner in the OTI racing syndicate, Terry Henderson, who cheered Ruscello home along with a team of English part-owners.

Side Glance won the Mackinnon for one of England's most illustrious racing families, thanks largely to an inspired ride by English jockey Jamie Spencer who, like the horse, was having his first Flemington outing.

Side Glance is trained by Ian Balding, whose father and grandfather are legends in English racing.

"He was bred by my mother, so he's become a favourite of ours and this is his first Group One win, so it's very special," Balding said.

Neither horse is likely to run in the Cup, but there are a dozen-or-so of their mates in quarantine at Werribee who will now be looking at Australia's greatest race with a lot more optimism after Saturday's result.

Cup favorite Mount Athos is a lengths better horse than either of Saturday's winners, as are Brown Panther, Red Cadeaux, Varema, Tres Blue and Dunaden.

While the English cleaned up the support card, they didn't get a look in in the feature event, the Victoria Derby - because they can't.

Thanks to the quirks of geography and thoroughbred breeding, northern hemisphere three-year-olds are four by the time Australia's Derbies are run and are therefore ineligible.

Apart from that it's open slather.