Melbourne's Cup, the most important horse race of the country

Every first Tuesday in November, at 3pm, Australia holds its breath for 3'30''. That's the time it takes for the 24 horses to cover the 3,200 metres of the Melbourne Cup, on the Flemington racecourse. While waiting for the next race, a little general culture review...

An emblematic race 

Since 1861, this historic race thrills the whole country. Run at Flemington Racetrack in Melbourne, this is a Group 1 handicap race for 3-year-olds and over, 3,200 metres long, run on turf, left-hand string. The prize money is AU$ 8, 000,000. The Melbourne Cup is a major sporting event in Australia, with between 100 and 120,000 people attending the racecourse and more than 650 million people around the world follow this major sporting event. Traditionally, many businesses stop work to watch the race on television. The streets are empty during the race. The Melbourne Cup Day is a public holiday for metropolitan Melbourne, as well as for the Australian Capital Territory since 2007. The author of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", Mark Twain, visited Australia in 1895 and was so impressed by the Melbourne Cup party that he wrote a superlative account of it in his travel diaries "Following the Equator".

Betting fever

On Melbourne Cup day, betting fever gripped hundreds of thousands of Australians. Bets often amount to around AU$ 142 million on the 10 races in the programme. Many companies organise their own betting - what Australians call a 'Cup Sweep'. Employees pay a few dollars to participate, and they draw the name of a horse. Whoever wins collects the amount contributed by all the employee punters. The main financial partner of the Melbourne Cup is an airline, but the event attracts many other groups, such as champagne producers, brewers, casinos, the Australian betting organisations and a chain of department stores. As this is the most followed race it is easy to find many tips for the Melbourne Cup. The owner of the winning horse receives the famous cup. But the trainer and the jockey are also honoured. They receive two miniature copies worth AU$ 10,000 each. In 1865, the winner of the first ever Melbourne Cup won a gold watch.

More and more overseas horses 

Until the historic victory of Ireland's Vintage Crop in 1993, few competitors from outside Oceania tried their luck in this event. Since the 2000s, however, there have been an increasing number of Europeans, and several of them, either trained in Europe or imported from Europe, have made it to the top of the list. In 2016, the Melbourne Cup organisers received entries from 31 foreign horses - bred and trained in Japan, France, Germany and New Zealand, all of whom were candidates to start.  While four horses have managed to do the double in 150 years, the Makybe mare Diva is the only one to have won three times, a feat that has made her hugely popular in Australia. The race record is held by Kingston Rule, winner in 1990 with a time of 3'16"30. Coach Bart Cummings is the record holder with twelve wins between 1965 and 2008. To date, only one Aboriginal jockey has won the cup: Frank Reys, riding the Australian horse Gala Supreme, in 1973. Last year, the race was won by Twilight Payment, an irish horse, ridden by Jye McNeil and trained by Joseph O'Brien.