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.
Walter Haefner was a Swiss businessman and a thoroughbred racehorse owner and breeder in Ireland.
Northerly was an Australian racehorse who is considered arguably Australia's best middle distance Thoroughbred horse of the early 2000s. Northerly, trained by Western Australian harness racing legend Fred Kersley, won nine Group One (G1) races, including the Australian Cup twice, and the Cox Plate, regarded as the Weight for Age championship of Australasia, also on two occasions.
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.
Vintage Crop was a British-bred Irish-trained Thoroughbred racehorse best known for becoming the first northern hemisphere trained runner to win Australia's premier race the Melbourne Cup. The chestnut gelding competed in flat racing in Ireland, England, and Australia from 1992 to 1995. He won 16 races in Ireland, England, and Australia. For his performance during the 1993 racing season he earned the Cartier Award for Top Stayer.
The 2002 Melbourne Cup was the 142nd running of the Melbourne Cup, a prestigious Australian Thoroughbred horse race. The race, run over 3,200 metres (1.988 mi), was held on 5 November 2002 at Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse.
The Geraldton Cup is an unlisted Thoroughbred horse race, held at the Geraldton Racecourse, 435 km north of Perth, Western Australia. Hosted by the Geraldton Turf Club, the Gold Cup is raced over 2100m.
Media Puzzle, foaled in the United States was an Irish horse best known for his win in the 2002 Melbourne Cup.
Phar Lap is a 1983 Australian biographical drama film about the racehorse Phar Lap. The film stars Tom Burlinson and was written by David Williamson.
Dermot K. Weld, a former jockey is one of Ireland's most successful racehorse trainers. He set a new record for the most winners trained in Ireland with 2,578 in August 2000, holding the record until Willie Mullins overtook it in May 2024.
Eric O'Keefe is an American author, editor, and journalist based in Texas. His most recent book is the Palm Beach polo murder mystery The Perfect 10. He authored the book The Cup and co-wrote the screenplay for the Village Roadshow feature film The Cup. O'Keefe has served as the editor-in-chief of The Land Report since its founding in 2007. In January 2021, The Land Report published O’Keefe’s investigative report on the extensive farmland holdings of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. His cover story revealed Gates to be the largest private farmland owner in the United States with 242,000 acres in 16 states in 2020.
Into the Straight is a 1949 Australian horse racing melodrama directed by T. O. McCreadie.
The Cup is a 2011 Australian biographical film directed by Simon Wincer. The film is about the 2002 Melbourne Cup race won by Damien Oliver. Starring Brendan Gleeson, Stephen Curry, Daniel MacPherson, Tom Burlinson and Bill Hunter, in his final film before his death.
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.
James Edward Pike, also nicknamed "The Master", was an Australian jockey who was known for riding Phar Lap to victory in the 1930 Melbourne Cup.
The 2013 Emirates Melbourne Cup was the 153rd running of the Melbourne Cup, Australia's most prestigious Thoroughbred horse race. The race, held on 5 November 2013, at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria, was won by Fiorente. The horse, owned by Andrew Roberts and Barry Pang, was bred in Ireland, trained in Australia by Gai Waterhouse, and ridden by jockey Damien Oliver. It was Oliver's third victory in the event, after previous wins in 1995 and 2002, and his first start after a ten-month ban for a betting offence. Waterhouse, the daughter of Tommy J. Smith, who trained winners in 1955 and 1981, became the first Australian woman to train a winner.
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”.
The 1905 Melbourne Cup was a two-mile handicap horse race which took place on Tuesday, 7 November 1905.
