The Melbourne Cup is an annual Group 1 Thoroughbred horse race held in Melbourne, Australia, at the Flemington Racecourse. It is a 3200-metre race for three-year-olds and older, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club that forms part of the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival. It is the richest two-mile handicap in the world and one of the richest turf races. The event starts at 3:00 pm on the first Tuesday of November and is known locally as "the race that stops the nation".
Thoroughbred horse racing is a spectator sport in Australia, and gambling on horse races is a very popular pastime with A$14.3 billion wagered in 2009/10 with bookmakers and the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB). The two forms of Thoroughbred horseracing in Australia are flat racing, and races over fences or hurdles in Victoria and South Australia. Thoroughbred racing is the third most attended spectator sport in Australia, behind Australian rules football and rugby league, with almost two million admissions to 360 registered racecourses throughout Australia in 2009/10. Horseracing commenced soon after European settlement, and is now well-appointed with automatic totalizators, starting gates and photo finish cameras on nearly all Australian racecourses.
Makybe Diva is a champion Australian Thoroughbred racehorse who is the only horse to win three Melbourne Cups and the only mare to win it more than once. She achieved the feat in 2003, 2004, and 2005. She also won the 2005 Cox Plate. She was the highest stakes-earner in Australian history, winning more than A$14 million.
Kingston Town was a champion Australian Thoroughbred racehorse who won three Cox Plates and 11 other Group One races and was the 1980 Australian Champion Racehorse of the Year.
Vain was a champion Thoroughbred racehorse that dominated Australian sprint racing in the period 1968–70, when he won 12 of the 14 races he contested and ran second in the other two. He went on to become a leading sire in Australia.
Carbine (1885–1914) was a champion New Zealand-bred Thoroughbred racehorse who won 30 principal races in New Zealand and Australia. He was very popular with racing fans, and sporting commentators of the day praised him for his gameness, versatility, stamina and weight-carrying ability, as well as for his speed. He was one of five inaugural inductees into both the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame and the Australian Racing Hall of Fame.
Robert James Skelton was a New Zealand jockey who competed from the 1950s through the 1980s. In total he won 2129 races. Among his many major race wins, Skelton rode Great Sensation to three victories in the Wellington Cup in 1961-63 and won the Auckland Cup on Rose Mellay in 1974 and again in 1977 on Royal Cadenza. In 1976, he rode Van der Hum to victory in Australia's most prestigious race, the Melbourne Cup, and ten years later rode Rising Fear into second place in the 1986 Cup. He was also successful in completing a double in the Perth Cup on Magistrate in 1980 and 1981. Overall winning 20 3200m and two mile races.
David Lee Freedman is an Australian thoroughbred racehorse trainer. and Hall of Fame inductee. In partnership with brothers Anthony, Michael, and Richard, he has been a prolific winner of Australia's major races in past 20 years, with four Golden Slippers, four Caulfield Cups, two Cox Plates, and five Melbourne Cups, including two of the three won by Makybe Diva. On 19 June 2007 he won the prestigious King's Stand Stakes at the United Kingdom's Royal Ascot racecourse with his champion mare, Miss Andretti.
Gabriel Marie "Gai" Waterhouse is an Australian horse trainer and businesswoman. The daughter of Tommy J. Smith, a leading trainer of Thoroughbred racehorses, Waterhouse was born and raised in Sydney. After graduating from the University of New South Wales, she worked as an actor for a time, appearing in both Australian and English television series. Having worked under her father for a period of 15 years, Waterhouse was granted an Australian Jockey Club (AJC) licence in 1992, and trained her first Group One (G1) winner later that year.
Flight (1940–1953) was an Australian Thoroughbred racemare that was the highest stakes winning mare in Australasia. Her courageous efforts made her a crowd favourite during the post World War II era and she had victories over some of the great horses of the time including Shannon, Bernborough, Royal Gem and Russia.
Shannon (1941–1955), named Shannon II in America, was an outstanding Australian Thoroughbred racehorse who was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He created new racecourse records in Australia before he was sold to an American buyer who exported him to California in 1948. There Shannon equalled the world record of 1:473⁄5 for the nine furlongs in winning the Forty Niner Handicap Stakes, then one week later equalled the world record of 1:594⁄5 for a mile and a quarter. Shannon was named the 1948 American Champion Older Male Horse. At stud in America he proved to be a good sire.
Etienne Livingston de Mestre, was a 19th-century Australian breeder and jockey of Thoroughbred racehorses. He was Australia's first outstanding racehorse trainer and racing identity. In his 30-year career, he experienced all the highs and the lows of the turf in a career which ended with him dependent on donations from racing friends.
Blue Spec was an Australian Thoroughbred racehorse who established a new record in winning the Melbourne Cup in 1905. He was a brown stallion bred by Augustus Hooke, jnr. and foaled in 1899 at his Tia River Station, Tia, near Walcha, New South Wales.
Michelle J. Payne is an Australian jockey. She won the 2015 Melbourne Cup, riding Prince of Penzance, and is the first and only female jockey to win the event.
Comic Court (1945–1973) was a most versatile post-war Australian bred Thoroughbred racehorse who set race records at distances of 6 furlongs and 2 miles. He won the 1950 Melbourne Cup carrying 9 stone 5 pounds (59 kg) and set an Australasian record of 3 minutes 19½ seconds.
Carbon Copy was an Australian chestnut Thoroughbred horse, who raced from a two-year-old to a five year old recording 14 wins from 1 mile to 2 miles with regular jockey Scobie Breasley winning eight races was a member of a vintage crop of three year olds 1948–1949 including Comic Court, Foxzami, Vagabond and Bernbrook.
Hall Mark (1930−1953) was a versatile chestnut Thoroughbred stallion. He performed in Australia, trained by Australian Racing Hall of Fame trainer Jack Holt. He raced from a two-year-old to a five-year-old, recording 18 wins from 6 furlongs to 2 miles. Ridden mostly by champion jockeys Bill Duncan and Frank Dempsey. Hall Mark was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2019.
Brent Thomson is a New Zealand jockey, who is best known for winning the Cox Plate on four occasions and his association with the champion horse Dulcify.
Murray Baker is a New Zealand thoroughbred racehorse trainer and former representative cricketer.
