The Queen Elizabeth Stakes will have an added sense of occasion when Makybe Diva's little sister attempts to win the race that launched the champion's career.

La Amistad, a Redoute's Choice three-quarter sibling to the three-time Melbourne Cup winner, will line up in the Group Two staying race at Flemington on Saturday..

The four-year-old's career has started in much the same way as Makybe Diva's - in a conservative way.

A notoriously slow-maturing family, the sisters both made their debuts late in their respective three-year-old seasons and did their early racing in country Victoria.

And again like Makybe Diva, as La Amistad has been stepped up in distance, she has also improved her form.

She won her maiden at Ballarat two starts ago over 2200m with Dwayne Dunn in the saddle and backed it up for the same result over the same trip at Bendigo for Dean Holland.

Dunn returns to do the steering in the Queen Elizabeth which he concedes will be a searching test.

"She's got a big reputation to live up to pedigree-wise," Dunn said.

"As you've started to see, the longer the trip the better she has got.

"She's a very progressive mare on the way up but she has been looked after and treated kindly early to help educate her."

Dunn has ridden La Amistad in four of her five starts.

He said the Hawkes family training partnership had handled her superbly and despite the class rise the mare wouldn't be out of her depth.

"The stable wouldn't run her if they didn't think she was worthy of being in a race like this," Dunn said.

"She's taking a big leap forward in class but I think her advantage is the distance."

Makybe Diva won the 2002 Queen Elizabeth to qualify her for the Melbourne Cup the following year.

The mighty mare went on to entrench herself in racing folklore by winning Australia's biggest race a record three years in a row.