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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.
A jockey is someone who rides horses in horse racing or steeplechase racing, primarily as a profession. The word also applies to camel riders in camel racing. The word "jockey" originated from England and was used to describe the individual who rode horses in racing. They must be light, typically around a weight of 100–120 lb. (45–55 kg), and physically fit. They are typically self-employed, and are paid a small fee from the horse trainer and a percentage of the horse's winnings. The job has a very high risk of debilitating or life-threatening injuries.
Damien Oliver is an Australian retired thoroughbred racing jockey. Oliver comes from a racing family; his father Ray Oliver had a successful career until his death in a race fall during the 1975 Kalgoorlie Cup in Western Australia. In 2008, Oliver was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame. In August 2023 he announced that he would retire at the end of that year's spring carnival.
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.
Patrick James John Eddery was an Irish flat racing jockey and trainer. He rode three winners of the Derby and was Champion Jockey on eleven occasions. He rode the winners of 4,632 British flat races, a figure exceeded only by Sir Gordon Richards.
Archer (1856–1872) was an Australian Thoroughbred racehorse who won the first and the second Melbourne Cups in 1861 and 1862. He won both Cups easily, and is one of only five horses to win the Melbourne Cup twice or more and is one of only four horses to win successive Cups. In 2017 Archer was inducted to the Australian Racing Hall of Fame.
Thomas John Smith was a leading trainer of thoroughbred racehorses based in Sydney, New South Wales.
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.
William James Williamson was an Australian jockey who enjoyed considerable success in Australia during the 1950s and in Europe during the 1960s. He was named after his father William James Williamson, a machinist, and his wife Euphemia Agnes.
Frank Reys (c.1931–1984) was an Aboriginal Australian jockey. He was the first, and as of 2022 the only Indigenous Australian jockey to win the prestigious Melbourne Cup when, in 1973, he rode to victory on Gala Supreme.
Ernest John "Midge" Didham is a retired jockey and horse trainer. Midge's father, Arthur, was a top-class jockey and trained at Wingatui. Midge was the leading New Zealand jockey in the 1969–70 season with 99 wins. He shifted to Australia after he rode Igloo, trained by his father, to finish second to Silver Knight in the 1971 Melbourne Cup.
Brett Prebble is an Australian jockey, currently based in Melbourne, Victoria. Having ridden over 1200 career winners, Prebble's most famous win came aboard Green Moon in the 2012 Emirates Melbourne Cup.
Silvestre de Sousa is a Brazilian flat racing jockey who is based in Britain and was three times champion jockey.
What A Nuisance (1978–2005) was a New Zealand-bred Thoroughbred racehorse. He was best known for winning the 1985 Melbourne Cup at Flemington Racecourse in November 1985.
The 2014 Emirates Melbourne Cup was the 154th running of the Melbourne Cup, Australia's most prestigious Thoroughbred horse race. The race, run over 3,200 metres, was held on 4 November 2014, at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. Protectionist, ridden by Ryan Moore and trained by German Andreas Wöhler, won the race by four lengths, becoming the first German-trained winner of the Melbourne Cup. Red Cadeaux placed second and Who Shot Thebarman third, with Red Cadeaux the first horse to place second on three occasions.
James Scobie was an Australian jockey and racehorse trainer. He was an inaugural inductee to the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2001.
Hugh Munro was a racehorse trainer in Victoria, closely associated with the St Albans Stud of Geelong. He was the father of noted Sydney jockeys Jimmie Munro and Darby Munro.
James Hugh Bowman is an Australian thoroughbred racing jockey. Based in Sydney, Bowman has won the New South Wales Metropolitan Jockey Premiership four times and has ridden 100 Group 1 winners. He was the jockey for Australian champion mare Winx from 2014 through to her retirement in 2019. In 2017, Bowman won the Longines World’s Best Jockey award presented by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. The award capped off a year in which he added to his domestic success with international Group 1 wins in Hong Kong and Japan. In 2019, he was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame, the industry’s highest accolade. Bowman is also renowned for his “She’s Apples” winning salute and his nickname of “the Undisputed Group 1 King”.
Ron Hutchinson is a retired Australian jockey, who won over 1000 races in Europe. In a 37-year racing career, he was successful across three continents.
References
- ↑ Pat Hyland Archived 22 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Chris Hyland Archived 9 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine
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