Red-hot favourite Incentivise will be running in a handicap for the final time when he lines up for the Melbourne Cup – and could be aimed at some of Europe’s biggest staying races in the future, says senior part owner Brae Sokolski.

But one of those overseas targets will not – much to Sokolski’s chagrin – be the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe; Incentivise was gelded as a younger horse and the Arc, often thought of as the world’s most prestigious flat race, is only open to colts and entire horses as well as fillies or mares.

“The Arc has got the cachet and that’s the race I would always dream of winning,” said Sokolski, who had previously hoped to target the prestigious prize at Paris Longchamps with his star mare Verry Elleegant, who runs in the Cox Plate on Saturday.

“I still feel like she could hold her peak as a seven-year-old mare, especially under Chris Waller’s tutelage. We saw that with Winx, who he kept at top form for years.

“But unless she is at her prime we are not going to take her to the northern hemisphere and expose her to the best stayers in the world if we don’t think she is going to be competitive.

“If we are honest, my mind has now turned to Incentivise as being the horse that we could potentially parade on the world stage.

“There’s a lot of water to flow under the bridge until then, but he’s a gelding, he’s a true stayer, a mile and a half is most certainly his best trip and there are limited options for him over a mile and a half in Australia.

“Once the handicapper gets you here you have really only got the Tancred as a weight-for-age, group 1, mile-and-a-half race [during the Sydney autumn carnival] and very little else.

“I could guarantee that he will never run in a handicap again once he runs in this year’s Melbourne Cup. This will be the last time this horse races in a handicap. He will just get too much weight in the future.”