Fiorente winning the 2013 Dato' (Image: Slickpix)
You don't have to go back too far for a time when the $250,000 Group 2 Dato' Tan Chin Nam Stakes was the most important early-spring guide to the Cox Plate.
Rubiton, Our Poetic Prince and Better Loosen Up all won both races between 1987 and 1990 and Naturalism might have joined them had he not lost the rider in the 1992 Cox Plate.
Sunline (2000), Northerly (2001) and El Segundo (2007) have completed the double in more recent times, while Makybe Diva, Fields Of Omagh and Maldivian all used the 1600-metre weight-for-age event as a springboard to Cox Plate success.
But the latter, in 2008, is the most recent Cox Plate winner to have contested the race that until 2005 was known as the Feehan Stakes.
The Dato' has been the chief sufferer of a recent Spring Carnival rejig that saw it swap weekends with the Makybe Diva Stakes, which means it is sandwiched between two Group 1 races.
Last year's winner Awesome Rock was the only member of the 2016 Dato' field to run in the Cox Plate, while the previous two editions produced just two Cox Plate runners each and neither finished in the top four.
The Dato' has had a much bigger impact on the spring's two other majors - the Melbourne Cup and Caulfield Cup - with Fiorente winning both races in 2013, the year after Green Moon ran second in the Dato' before winning the Melbourne Cup.
Last year, for the first time in 35 years, it also had an impact on the Caulfield Cup with Jameka bouncing off a seventh placing at The Valley to win the world's richest 2400m handicap.
With Bonneval the shortest-priced runner of this year's Dato' field in CrownBet's Cox Plate market - at $51 - the likelihood is there that this year's race is again more likely to influence the Cups than the Cox Plate.
The real strength of the modern Dato' Tan Chin Nam Stakes Day program lies in the undercard.
The Group 2 McEwen Stakes has again attracted a slick field, including Magic Millions winner Houtzen, Galaxy winner Russian Revolution, track specialist Heatherly and classy types Hellbent and Supido, while this year's meeting continues the evolution of the non-Group events.
The Atlantic Jewel Stakes now carries Listed status and is named after the filly who won the race, when it was just a 1200m fillies handicap, in devastating style at just her second start in 2011.
She went on to win the G1 Thousand Guineas and G2 Wakeful Stakes later that spring before being forced to miss the Oaks, for which she was a raging favourite, due to injury.
Two years ago the Atlantic Jewel again had a big impact on the spring fillies features with winner Stay With Me going on to win the Thousand Guineas and third placegetter Jameka claiming the Oaks.
Also for the three-year-olds is the Sweeney We Know West Handicap (1509m), which Hey Doc won before going on to claim the G2 Stutt Stakes and place in the G1 Caulfield Guineas.
Connections of Sunquest, Aberro and Eshtiraak, among others, would love to think their charges could emulate Hey Doc this year, while Shoals, Sanadaat and Limestone are among the highly-rated fillies engaged in this year's Atlantic Jewel Stakes.
So, Saturday's main race might not be the Cox Plate guide it once was but the meeting is still a crucial one in the Spring Carnival landscape.