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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., 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.
Michael Walker is a New Zealand-born former jockey of Māori ancestry who won the New Zealand premiership and also competed in Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
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.
Gary Lynn Stevens is an American Thoroughbred horse racing jockey, actor, and sports analyst. He became a professional jockey in 1979 and rode his first of three Kentucky Derby winners in 1988. He had nine wins in Triple Crown races, winning the Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes three times each, as well as ten Breeders' Cup races. He was also a nine-time winner of the Santa Anita Derby. He entered the United States Racing Hall of Fame in 1997. Combining his U.S. and international wins, Stevens had over 5,000 race wins by 2005, and reached his 5,000th North American win on February 15, 2015.
The racing of Thoroughbred horses is a popular gaming and spectator sport and industry in New Zealand.
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.
John R. Velazquez is a Puerto Rican jockey in Thoroughbred horse racing. He began his career in Puerto Rico and moved to New York in 1990. In 2004 and 2005 he was the United States Champion Jockey by earnings and both years was given the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey. He was inducted into the Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2012, rode his 5,000th winner in 2013, and became the leading money-earning jockey in the history of the sport in 2014.
The Phantom was a Group One winning New Zealand Thoroughbred racehorse who made several trips to Australia, and completed a remarkable comeback later in his career.
Garrett Keith Gomez was an American Thoroughbred jockey who won two Eclipse Awards and thirteen Breeders' Cup races during his career.
Jim Cassidy, often referred to as "Jimmy" is a retired New Zealand jockey who has been inducted in both the Australian Racing Hall of Fame and the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame.
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.
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.
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.
Antonio "Tony" Vega was a Puerto Rican American Thoroughbred jockey and community activist from New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was a graded stakes winning, three-time champion jockey who competed in North American horse racing from 1982 to 2012.
Dick Roden was an Australian racehorse trainer. He trained Macdougal, who was in 1959, the first horse to win the Brisbane Cup, Metropolitan Handicap and Melbourne Cup in the same year. Roden became in 1959 Australia's youngest ever trainer of a Melbourne Cup winner until 58 years later. He is an inductee to the 2005 Queensland Racing Hall of Fame.
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.
Mervyn "Merv" Maynard was an Aboriginal Australian jockey who rode numerous winners in a career spanning almost five decades.
References
- ↑ https://www.theraces.co.nz/blog/jockey-hotseat-with-tony-allan [ dead link ]
- ↑ Tony Allan
- ↑ 'Culture' of methamphetamine use within racing
- ↑ "Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Tony Allan on comeback trail after 12-year absence". 18 April 2017.
- ↑ "Time heals all wounds for comeback kid Tony Allan | Horse Betting". 29 June 2017.
- ↑ "Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Tony Allan finally cracks four figures". 16 March 2018.
- ↑ "Melbourne Cup-winning jockey in Queensland shift - Racenet".
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