Melbourne Cup Day

Melbourne Cup Day is Australia's most famous Tuesday. It's a day when a nation stops whatever it's doing to listen to the race call, or watch the race on TV, and even those who don't usually bet buy a ticket in a sweep.

At 3.20pm AEST, on the first Tuesday in November, Australians everywhere stop for one of the world's most famous horse races - the Melbourne Cup.

The 150th running of the Melbourne Cup takes place on the 2nd November 2010 with a special cup and $10M in prize money.

In Melbourne, Cup Day is the peak of the Spring Racing Carnival - when champagne and canapés, huge hats and race track fashions sometimes overshadow the business of the day - horse racing.

Said American writer, Mark Twain, on a visit: "Nowhere in the world have I encountered a festival of people that has such a magnificent appeal to the whole nation. The Cup astonishes me."

The first Melbourne Cup was run in 1861 at Flemington race course and was won by Archer. It has run every year since. Through wars and depression, and the good times too, the Melbourne Cup racing carnival has been one of the stayers of Australian cultural experience.

The Melbourne Cup is one of the world's most challenging horse races, and one of the richest (total prize money in 2001 of $AU4.035 million), and the picking of winners an imprecise art at best. The race is run over 3200 metres and is a handicapped race. This means, theoretically, that the better the horse is, the more weight it has to carry.

The Cox Plate (run between the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups) is considered the race most likely to provide an insight into a horse's form and likely Melbourne Cup performance, but even this is unreliable.

The distance and the handicap ensure that the Melbourne Cup is a horse race in which the mug punter has as good a chance of picking the winner as those who follow the form.

Phar Lap, in his last Melbourne Cup campaign in 1931, carried a 10 stone (68kg) handicap. Even a horse with a heart as big as Phar Lap's couldn't overcome it. The race was won by White Nose.

Phar Lap

Australia's most famous racehorse
Foaled in New Zealand in 1926 by Night Raid out of Entreaty he grew to 17 hands and over his career won more than 65 thousand pounds in prize money and won 37 of his 51 starts. From September 1929 he was the favourite in all but one of his races.

Phar Lap died in suspicious circumstances, some believing he was poisoned. After his death his bones were donated to Dominion Museum in New Zealand, his hide was mounted and put on display at the Museum of Victoria, and Phar Lap's big heart resides at the National Museum of Australia.

Watch Phar Lap win the 1930 Melbourne Cup

Web Link: Melbourne Cup Day

Melbourne Cup Day

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Saturday 11 Sep 2010

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