Melbourne Cup

By now, you’re sick of the Cup, we’re sick of the Cup. But here’s a doozy of a dilemma regarding the luckiest and most ungrateful punter in Australia.

On Tuesday, a friend of The Punch’s went to the TAB to put on his bets. Before leaving, he asked his workmates if he could put any bets on for them.

One guy in his 60s gave our friend $6 for a “mystery box trifecta”. That’s when the TAB computer randomly selects three horses and if they run the placings any which way, the bet wins.

Continue reading "Friday Dilemma: How to reward a Melb Cup angel?" »

Well damn. At First Sight didn’t win. Neither did Americain.

However, we can all be winners if you share with us some of your wit and pith in our Wednesday caption competition. This week featuring the photo finish of photo finishes. Winners will be displayed and showered with accolades in tomorrow’s Open Thread.

It’s Hump Day, folks. What’s on your mind?

Once upon a time, it would have been a huge story for the Melbourne Cup to go to an overseas trainer. Today, after French horse Dunaden nosed out English horse Red Cadeaux in a thrilling finish, exactly the opposite is true.

How ironic - in a week when an Australian icon in Qantas has bulldozed a path towards an ostensibly less Australian future - that another Australia icon, the Melbourne Cup, is now as distant from its origins as Qantas is from a dinky-di outback air service.

Dunaden prevailed in the narrowest of narrow finishes and as ever, provided a great story. The horse’s jockey, Christophe Lemaire, flew out just yesterday after local jock Craig Williams had an appeal against a suspension dismissed. In a further irony, his arrival was delayed by the Qantas shutdown.

Continue reading "Our Cup runneth overseas" »

It’s on again. The Melbourne Cup. The race that stops the nation. Or at least, the race that stops the nation working.

This year’s Cup is like no other. Well might we say “stop the boats” as refugees seek asylum on our shores, but maybe we’d do better to stop the planes. This year, more foreign raiders than ever before are trying to steal our riches and destroy our way of life. It’s just not horse racing.

So who’s going to win? The Punch proudly presents Australia’s most devastatingly honest and accurate form guide to help you decide for yourself.

Continue reading "Australia’s bitchiest Melbourne Cup form guide" »

On the first Tuesday of November, around three-ish, every fair-dinkum Australian gathers round for “The Race That Stops the Nation”. They show it in pubs, clubs, old-folks homes and school class-rooms. TABs fill up with people who couldn’t tell you the difference between a trifecta and a trilby, having their one bet for the year.

Suddenly you find yourself surrounded by racing experts who know all about form, breeding, lead-ups and how the raiders can’t handle the hard Aussie tracks.

In workplaces right around the country, people chuck in for $2 sweeps and agonise about drawing the 200-1 outsider with a name they can’t pronounce. And right around the country, in every state bar Victoria, work shuts down at 12.

Continue reading "Make Melbourne Cup Day a national public holiday" »

Tom Waterhouse has driven me to this.

The scion of the Waterhouse racing family appearing far too often on my television to declare that while he possessed no actual talent he would happily part me with my money was – as they say – the last straw.

Watching the Wallabies get smashed by the Kiwis in the World Cup was hard enough without watching Waterhouse continually pop up on my screen asking for cash like some transient beggar.

Continue reading "Why I’m boycotting the punting slaughterhouse" »

Here we go again – time to dig out the fascinator, grab a six-pack of Bacardi Breezers and wobble off on impractically high heels to Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival.

At any other time of the year, the races are likely to be associated with dodgy bookies, the barbarism of jumps racing and problem gambling. Around this time, however, we start referring to it as the “sport of kings”, an elite, glamorous cultural event.

But how glamorous is it really when, for every one expensively-preened Fashions on the Field entrant, there are five young men wearing that consistently hilarious combination of tux and Aussie flag boxers? You can bet that while Lillian Frank or Peter Jago praise the young ladies present for returning to the modest and elegant trends of the 1920s, most people won’t go home without seeing at least a dozen women clutching a pair of vomit-speckled stilettos.

Continue reading "The ugly truth of spring racing" »

Something’s in the air and it’s not just a truckload of pollen. National stockpiles of Zyrtec, Tuscan Tan and ostrich feathers are all being hammered relentlessly.

The Spring Racing Carnival is upon us. Originally a celebration of the finest in equine flesh, the event has diversified into an exposition of both equine and female flesh.

Like musk sticks or anchovies, etymology either does it for you or it doesn’t. I would be happy to see the recipe for musk sticks go up in flames, but I do dig a bit of etymology.

Continue reading "Best of the breast as the Spring Carnal kicks off" »

As you check the form for today’s Melbourne Cup, spare a thought for some of the jockeys who won’t be taking their place in the field.

They all have great experience, have shown extreme courage under pressure and a determination to succeed that does their profession proud.

Sadly they are also among the scores jockeys who suffer career-ending injuries every year.

Continue reading "On Cup Day think about the jockeys that aren’t there" »

A great editor once told me to “back the story” when punting on the Melbourne Cup. Wishful thinking, no doubt, but he honestly believed that the horse with the best story often won.

Of course, like all punting theories, this one is complete rubbish. If my mate the editor was right, topical tip Alcopop would have won in a canter last year, what with Kevin Rudd’s obsession with taxing said bevvies.

Thong Classic (13th in 2002) and Maythehorsebewithu (5th in 2001) would also both have won, creating heaven for headline-writers.

Continue reading "Cup form guide: our summer of English pain begins" »

The Spring Racing Carnival is well under way and the racing industry is doing its best to put on a brave face and pretend all is chipper.

But deep down in the racing industry, hidden behind the glamorous façade filled with celebrities, celebrations, fashion and booze, there looms a very dark secret that the industry is working hard to quell.

Racing lost its first line of defence when it negligently allowed jumps racing to continue in 2008 despite opposition dating back more than twenty years.

Continue reading "The brutal truth about the horse racing industry" »

It’s that time of the year again..Spring Racing, a time when any retailer can bump up their collections by 30% and still see them walk out the door, a time when putting multi coloured feathers and novelty oversized hats on suddenly becomes acceptable and a spray tan fog mist fills the air.

The Spring Racing carnival gives us females the opportunity to stand around in 14 inch heels from dusk to dawn..providing that is that one is included in some form of ‘pre- races champagne breakfast’, which although may seem like a brilliant idea in the morning, may not work to your benefit by 3pm.

A day at the track can be enjoyable, however, it can also be an horrific ordeal ending in blisters, smudged mascara and crusts of what was your lunch smeared on your cheek.

Continue reading "The other form guide for the spring racing carnival" »

Well another day and yet another useless decision on alcohol.

Victoria Police will today continue their blitz on drunks at races with the running of the Oaks at Flemington.

Now it’s great that police are targeting these people to stop alcohol fuelled violence, but I personally don’t believe it’s the right course of action.

Continue reading "Targeting drivers is one thing, what about drinkers?" »

The Ruddster had a win - and he’s going off. Watch it here.

Now that the Cup’s behind us and Shocking has won it, let’s get serious about addressing the massive gap in our national dialogue on gambling. It’s that gap that’s referred to in the title of this piece.

Punch deputy editor Tory Maguire wrote a great piece recently on the scourge of the pokies. In it, she summarised some of the measures proposed to combat that electronic plague. But where is the same debate about racing?

The Melbourne Cup is a great national event. I’ve written about it in glowing, enthusiastic terms twice on this website this week, and countless times elsewhere. I once even argued that Cup Day should be our National Day. Everybody, sing with me: Horse Trainers all let us rejoice…

Continue reading "Shocking result but gambling is the real winner" »

At the risk of being kicked out of the country I am going to ask whose kids had a little flutter on the Melbourne Cup today?

I heard a radio announcer talking about her spend for the day - which was just fine - until she tacked on at the end, “and the kids have a little $10 bet each.”

Okay – let’s forget for a minute that it is illegal for persons under 18 to gamble and think just a bit about the oft documented impact of problem gambling on Australian society. $18 billion a year in losses and seven people affected by each person with a gambling problem.

Continue reading "Should kids bet on the Cup?" »

1. VIEWED
Barrier: 9. Jockey: Brad Rawiller. Trainer: Bart Cummings. Odds: $5
Last year, he was an anonymous 40-1 shot. This year, the ’08 winner is a raging hot favourite who’s added the ’09 Caulfield Cup to his rapidly bulging CV. If he wins, Bart Cummings will be made president of the new Australian republic, alive or dead.

2. C’EST LA GUERRE
Barrier: 7. Jockey: Nicholas Hall. Trainer: John Sadler. Odds: $25
His name means “it’s war”, but last year’s third placegetter won’t fire a shot this year. The jockey’s Dad, Greg Hall, famously waved his whip in triumph in ’97, only to lose in a photo. Young Nick won’t get the chance to make the same mistake this year.

Continue reading "The almost official Punch Melbourne Cup form guide" »

So - members of the sporting community think its sacrilege for women to swan about in fashionable attire as horses race in the background (for in the background they most definitely are), do they? Well, I for one, think it’s cool.

Australia is a sporting nation but with almost every other sport, women get cast aside -  shunted to a cheerleader’s outfit or a cold seat on the sidelines. But with the races, we practically have complete run of the place.

Spring Carnival! Fashions on the Field!  Lawn parties! Make-up tents! Champagne! Vegetarian pies! Could it be any more female oriented?

Continue reading "Racing’s unrivalled appeal to both men and women" »

The spring racing carnival has been hijacked by fashonistas. And a motley assortment of B-listers, C-listers, gibberers, attention-seekers, hangers-on, creeps, drunks, wankers and wannabes.

I’ve never seen the fawning fashion media interrupt a Collete Dinnigan catwalk show to report the result of the fifth from Flemington. Why, then, should a racing carnival as short as an English summer share airtime with the frou-frou set?

When Jean Shrimpton shocked conservative Melbourne with her mini skirt in 1965 (the year Bart Cummings won his first Cup), fair enough. That, at least, was something approaching a real story.

Continue reading "It’s about racing, not fashion" »

Tomorrow, on the first Tuesday in November, millions of Australians will stop whatever they are doing for a few minutes to listen to or watch the Melbourne Cup. All over the country, people will tune into their radio or television for the race which stops a nation.

Much of the excitement of the event will be brought to them by a few race-callers, whose accuracy and colour will live on in their memories of the 2009 cup.

Racing without the callers would be dull. Yet for the first 64 years, there was no radio commentary of the race.

Continue reading "And they’re racing! How I learned to call a horse race" »