Early Days Of The Melbourne Cup
The Melbourne Cup is famously known as the “race that stops the nation” in Australia where it is run on the first Tuesday in November. The cup history dates back to 1861 when it was founded by the Victoria Turf Club. It has become known today as the greatest 3200 meter handicap horse race in the world. Today the race is an important cultural part of Australian life and it is celebrated all around Australia and watched by nearly every Australian from their television sets. A considerable growth in audience since the original race in 1861 was viewed by around 4000 people.
Initially it only attracted around 4000 spectators, but now hundreds of thousands come to the Flemington Racetrack, where it is held, to watch the race and millions more view it on their televisions. Flemington is located only 15 minutes from the Melbourne central business district and it is now known as much for the fashions on the field as it is for the horses.
AT first the cup was run on a Thursday, but it was changed to a Tuesday in 1875 and has been run on that day ever since. The race is always held on the first Tuesday in November. By the time that the day of the race was changed the annual crowds turning up to Flemington were exceeding 100,000 an amazing number considering that the population of Melbourne at that time was a mere 300,000.
At the end of the 19th century Australia had an economic depression that saw up to one third of the workforce unemployed. Due to the economic hardships that the country was going through the trophy was not presented between 1894 and 1898.
As the turn of the 20th century came Melbourne and the rest of Australia was recovering from the economic meltdown and federation would make Australia a nation. The recovery was to be short lived though as the start of World War I in 1914 put the race on the back burner for most Australians. In 1906 a horse called Poseidon became the only horse to have won the Caulfield Cup, Melbourne Cup, AJC and VRC Derby in the one racing season.
In 1930 Phar Lap entered the public conscious and became the most famous cup winner in its entire history. The odds that Phar Lap had coming into the Melbourne Cup in 1930 were the lowest odds that have ever been put on a horse in the cup’s history – 11/8. At a time during the Great Depression when few people had any money people put their last few coins on the horse and were rewarded as it thrashed the competition. At the time Phar Lap was the greatest race horse in the world, but it was to meet a suspicious fate in 1932 when it was found dead in California.
The photo finish was brought to the race in 1946 and was required in 1948 to decide the winner Ray Neville a 15 year old jockey with only nine previous rides up his sleeve.
The Melbourne Cup is now the most prestigious sporting event in Australia and attracts horses and spectators from around the world.
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