by H. G. Nelson
The race kept going through the great catastrophes of the nation’s history. All through World War One, Diggers’ spirits were buoyed by knowing that in 1914 Kingsburgh, owned by L.K.S. Mackinnon, won at 20 to 1. In 1915 Patrobas saluted. The horse was owned by Mrs Edith Widdis, the first woman to own a Cup winner. Sasanof missed the race record by half a second in 1916. The race was delayed by torrential rain until the Saturday after Cup Day. It must have been some dump of water to postpone the stopping of the nation.
Westcourt broke through after a string of second placings in big races in 1917. Finally in 1918, as the war ground to a halt, the great Night Watch saluted at 12 to 1, carrying ten stone, about sixty-three kilograms. That is a lot of lead.
The years of World War Two did not slow the big race. In 1940, when our troops were fighting overseas, Old Rowley saluted at 100 to 1. Skipton won in 1941. The prize money was now a staggering £7,700. A year later, Colonus won by seven lengths, a record margin. It was a one-horse affair in front of a small crowd that could be counted on one hand. Times were very bad in 1943, but Dark Felt did what his dad, Spearfelt, did when he won the Cup in 1926. In 1944 it was Sirius the favourite who won, from barrier to box. The big punters swooped in the last hour of betting and the horse did not disappoint. In 1945 the South Australian mare Rainbird dashed to the front in the straight; the prize money now stood at £10,200. The horse carried a mere forty-eight kilograms to victory. Average weight for a winner was around 54.5 kilograms. Not even world war could cancel the big event.
The hats, the frocks, the fashions on the field, the over-indulgence, wearing stupid shoes with high heels on grass, getting pissed, riding the wheelie bin and having to be led home – all part of the big occasion. The great day out trackside on Cup Day is made all the more memorable if you can’t remember a thing about it once you wake up the following day around 3 pm.
The hats, the frocks, the fashions on the field, the over-indulgence, wearing stupid shoes with high heels on grass, getting pissed, riding the wheelie bin and having to be led home — all part of the big occasion.
It is hard to pick a standout from the 150-plus Melbourne Cups that have brought the nation to a complete standstill. They are all great. But for the sake of the plot, let’s spin the dial on the clock face of kismet and see where the fickle finger falls. Woah! The digit of doom has lobbed on the year 1965! This was a year of tumultuous change.
The Bart Cummings–trained Light Fingers won the big one, scoring by the barest of margins. The horse was originally called Close Embrace, but this was considered far too racy for conventional Melbourne. The VRC committee said ‘Close Embrace’ was off the charts of acceptability. It was on a slippery slope of smut that would give racing a bad name and attract the wrong crowd. The sort of crew who wore leather jackets, studs for earrings and strolled about wearing brothel creepers in the mounting enclosure. Everyone knew someone in that badass pack! The name had to be changed. No one knows how Light Fingers became an acceptable substitute.
The main form guide race to the Melbourne Cup, the 1965 Caulfield Cup, was won by a Queensland horse, Bore Head, with South Australian Ziema second, Craftsman third and Matloch fourth. Light Fingers was scratched from the race.
Then it was on to Flemington. All the Caulfield Cup place-getters were backing up for another tilt at the treasure. Matloch, Sail Away, Craftsman, Strauss and Ziema were all well in the market. Bore Head was attempting the cups double, a difficult and rarely pulled-off feat.
A young Bruce McAvaney aired the first of his famous phantom calls on radio 3DB on the morning of the race. Bruce’s great role model at the station was the senior race caller, the Accurate One, Bill Collins. As part of his coverage of the race on Cup morning, Bill gave young Bruce the opportunity of a lifetime.
Bruce’s call of the imaginary race was won by The Dip with Zinga Lee second, there was a fall in which Tobin Bronze took out Light Fingers and Ziema at the point of the turn. As Bruce called it, Tobin Bronze came wide and cannoned into the other two horses. All three horses fell. There was an inquiry into the incident. In the Stewards’ Room, after weight was declared, the stewards outed Tobin Bronze’s rider for twenty-seven meetings. That is how Bruce saw it.
That afternoon during the Cup, as anticipated in Bruce’s early morning phantom call, Bore Head, Matloch and River Seine all collided and tumbled out of the race. In the straight, Ziema pulled away and was headed for a win. But ‘The Professor of the Persuader’, Roy Higgins, got very busy on Light Fingers at the Clocktower. The horse responded to The Prof’s vigour and in a beautifully judged ride, Fingers saluted by the barest of margins. Ziema missed the big prize by a bob of the head.
Seventy-five thousand, five hundred and eighty-one racegoers witnessed this race of high drama. Trainer Bart Cummings quinellaed the event. This sensational win was the start of Bart’s incredible run of success – a winning streak that earned him the title ‘The Cups King’.
Oddly enough, Light Fingers was the companion horse to Ziema, who was a bit of a ratbag and needed a familiar equine friend to settle the race-day nerves.
As for The Professor, he became a champion jockey. Higgins rode 2312 winners, snaring the Victorian Jockeys’ Premiership eleven times. In doing so he collected two Cox Plates, five VRC Oaks, four Victoria Derbys, two Sydney Cups and the Golden Slipper twice. He battled weight his entire career and when he finished was happy ‘just to be a little fat man’.
Light Fingers was sired by French import Le Filou, who went on to sire the 1969 Cup favourite Big Philou. This was another conveyance that carried the Bart polish. Sadly for Philou freaks, the horse was nobbled with laxatives before the big race. It would have been a tragedy for the image of the Cup if the horse had run leaving a lumpy brown trail for 3200 metres around Flemington. In the wash-up, The Prof claimed the horse was a certainty. The 1969 Cup was won by Rain Lover, who had saluted the previous year. Rain Lover was the first horse to win the race in successive years since the original champ Archer.
Back in 1965, as Light Fingers was winning, many fashionable Melbourne racegoers were looking elsewhere.
They were looking out for the supermodel of the era, Jean Shrimpton. On Derby Day, two days before the big race, Jean arrived in the bird cage with no gloves, no hat, no stockings and a ‘What are you looking at?’ grin. With a single appearance Jean changed Melbourne’s fashion trajectory. The mini skirt had arrived. It was ‘now’ time! It was a pivotal moment in race day attire.
It was easy to outrage the Melbourne fashion establishment. The Shrimp knocked them sideways into the rose bushes along the running rail. The skirt was a ‘scandal’, the Flemington fashion arbiters bellowed. It is hard to imagine today but the supermodel was given a couple of days to get her act together. All eyes were on the Cup Day Shrimpton ensemble. Under pressure from her sponsors, she turned up in the conventional clothes, accepted by the fashion police. She wore a grey three-piece suit, carrying a brown handbag to lug home the winnings.
The VRC committee got their money’s worth as at least 50,000 outraged fashion experts turned up on Cup Day prepared to be insulted by Jean’s choice of frock. After all this time, in the context of Flemington fashions, the 1965 Shrimpton look still seems startling and weirdly modern. She stunned her critics with her departing words, ‘I feel Melbourne isn’t ready for me yet. It seems years behind London.’
For decades, there has been a Melbourne carnival vibe for the whole of Cup week. Kicking off with Derby Day, there is a parade of past Cup winners and stars on the Monday. A holiday on Tuesday for the big one. Wednesday is a breather, and everyone gets out of town for the Kyneton Cup. Thursday, it’s all back to Flemington for Oaks Day, and the carnival winds down with a Family Day on the Saturday. It is a week-long extravaganza generated by the madness of the horse.
The Cup carnival has often needed promotional help. They started to use big names in the build-up in 1907 when opera singer Dame Nellie Melba turned up between her comebacks to let fly with an aria
or two before the jump. Since the Melba success, the VRC organising committee has worked flat out to attract the stars.
These stars give the big day international cachet. It is an easy gig for them. They do not have to do much. It is not as though the celebs have to throw a leg over a conveyance and kick it clear at the top of the straight to score with the grandstand on their back. They would never be asked to do any heavy lifting, like being part of a celebrity shooter programme. They would be well away from the action if the worst happened on the turn out of the straight onto the river side and a horse went down and the stewards called for the screens.
All they have to do is look good, have a tip and talk about the brilliance of the on-field fashion. Glib generalised comments for the media about being excited to be in Melbourne and a vague, tenuous connection to the world of the horse (as in seeing National Velvet on TV as a child) would be welcome. Most importantly, if the international star could plug for Melbourne in spring, that would be a bonus.
All they have to do is look good, have a tip and talk about the brilliance of the on-field fashion.
These overseas stars value-add on the nightly news, providing that all-important international perspective for the race. In a heaving race crowd of 100,000-plus trying to get a bet on and a beer before the jump, who would know if the big names were there or not?
No international artiste in their right mind, who understood the racing gambol, would turn up to a handicap for all comers like the Melbourne Cup; nevertheless, the committee has done extremely well over the decades. The roll call of the who’s who of international entertainment is impressive, even if it left many punters scratching their heads and asking, ‘Who? No really, who?’
Spring carnival stars are often big names on the wane or with a product to promote. Their most important asset is their availability on the day and their ability to organise their schedule to be in Melbourne on the first Tuesday in November.
Here are a few highlights from the long list who added their glamour to the Cup. When Princess Diana and Prince Charles rocked up in 1985, they had a lively hour or two before the Cup with Fosters supremo John Elliott in the VRC committee rooms.
The loveable, horse-mad, handbag-making sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton lobbed in 2003 – one dressed for the beach, the other dressed for bed. It was startling point of difference. Paris made a beeline for Australian Idol star Rob ‘Millsy’ Mills and the rest is back seat history. In 2005 Heather Graham was here to promote her latest movie The Guru. She was overwhelmed by the experience and Australian race-day hospitality. How The Guru promotion went at the box office is anyone’s guess.
The unusual pairing of Snoop Dog and Jennifer Hawkins graced the mounting enclosure in 2008. The A-list duo thrilled frock lovers and rappers. That’s a hard demographic to work on the same day.
Mötley Crüe man Tommy Lee arrived in 2009. He did not disappoint. He got on the turps as soon as he saw the bar. After the first he did not stop. He broke every VRC fashion rule, wearing a jumper made of dog hair. In 2010 the spin twins Liz Hurley and Shane Warne thrilled the marquee stretch.
The O.C. star Mischa Barton was trackside in 2012. Mischa had been going to the races since she was a kid. She was determined to have a good day and promised to bet on an Irish horse. Not sure how she went on the punt. That year, eighteen of the field of twenty-four were bred outside Australia and New Zealand. Mischa may have been paralysed by choice. But if stuck, in a strange place surrounded by strangers, it is probably as good a system as any. Horse Spice, Geri Halliwell, was back in 2013 casting a practised eye over the field in the saddling enclosure.
In 2014, Victoria’s Secret supermodel Gigi Hadid had a lot of fun wearing a hat that was a working scale model of the Malabar sewage treatment works.
This cavalcade of celebrities came to a shuddering halt in 2019 when chart-topping superstar and Grammy-winner Taylor Swift created a big hullabaloo. When Taylor looked at her diary and said, ‘Yes! Count me in!’, it was cheers all round in the committee room. The Moët was cracked and poured. Job done! But then Taylor fiddled with the phone moments later and saw massive social media blow-back on the decision. It was only then that Swifty found out what the Melbourne Cup involved: horses and whips. The singer soon backed out of the barriers and took shelter in the nearest Chris Waller horse float, declaring herself a scratching from the event.
Taylor learnt that many of her supporters around the planet loved horses, hated horse racing and, suddenly, because of her temporary public pro-racing stance, were thinking twice about buying her tunes in the future. Many moved Taylor from the ‘like’ into the ‘hate’ column on their feeds.
BY THE TIME FASHION, hats, shoes, champagne, canapés for lunch and star-spotting are ticked off the agenda, stabbing a winner in any spring carnival race, let alone the big one, is almost tangential to a great day out for the 100,000 who lob trackside. Most people would consider stabbing a winner a fluke, snagging the Cup quinella to be one of those miracles Scott Morrison is always banging on about and jagging a nation-stopping trifecta a reward for dishonesty.
That is the racing and social landscape into which the richest sprint race in the world, The Everest, charges with all horns blazing and saddle bags groaning. The Randwick event packs a load of disruptive race day baggage. This fifteen-million-dollar sprint appeals to the OMG mob having a punt with their phone betting apps. These punters who swerve around the bricks and mortar TAB shops know all about quaddies, trebles, parlays and all the multis. The search for value on the multiple phone betting sites is admirable and all-consuming. This Everest is targeted at the FOMO crowd, who simply do not want to miss out. They did not! The Everest has quickly jumped to second slot on the national punting numbers chart.
This Everest is targeted at the FOMO crowd, who simply do not want to miss out.
When the political money crew talk about the importance to the economy of the racing industry, it’s the big events that have caught their eye. Millions are tipped into the pot of national turnover via these two big races, the Cup and the E. The jaw drops and the brain refuses to engage with these numbers, such is their bulk.
The Everest is a calculated jab in the Melbourne eye by NSW racing. This desperate attempt to steal the glamour and cash of that great racing institution, the Melbourne Cup Carnival, appears to be working. Never mind the fact that historically Melbourne Cup Day is the best attended day on the Sydney turf calendar. That is one of life’s little trackside ironies.
The Everest: The dream, the drama and the disruption!
The Everest is a race. It looks just the same as other races on the calendar. Horses jump and run. Jockeys do their best. The crowd cheers. Money changes hands. But it is a fright of the fresh, a blast of the now, a shock of the new. The old-and-in-the-way Caulfield Cup, worth five million, is still run on the third Saturday in October. Once the Cup is done and dusted, an hour later a race in Sydney is run worth fifteen million. The race will take approximately one minute and ten seconds. That is disruption! It is a ball-tearing sprint over 1200 metres for all comers. The starters have all paid a price to take their place. It is the biggest cheese on the Australian turf calendar.
This is a tale of two cities, a story as old as European settlement. The money in Melbourne spring racing is anchored around the Cup’s carnival and the card of racing on either side of the Melbourne Cup.
The modern axis of Australian racing is always a Melbourne/Sydney tug of war. The Everest is the biggest piece of ammunition in the Sydney cannon. According to the NSW racing brains trust, the youth of the nation love The Everest. It was designed to get them to go crazy with a fist full of dollars.
The modern axis of Australian racing is always a Melbourne/Sydney tug of war.
The Melbourne mansion of racing was so well built that it appeared dynamite proof. Many racegoers thought it would last forever, even beyond the coming ice age. For years the stumper that occupied the brightest minds of racing administration in NSW was: How can we bl
ow the Victorian edifice up?
How could Sydney put a bomb under the four days of Melbourne’s spring carnival and blow it away completely? This was a war, and the total demolition concept was advanced by desperate individuals. They were not afraid to drag governments and racing organisations kicking and screaming over the line to achieve their goal.
The other big stumper disturbing sleep and occupying the committee’s late-night chinwags was, how can we create a race that had millions in prize money and pay bugger-all for it?
The hard-working Australian Turf Club working group, under the stewardship of Peter V’landys, more recently dubbed the ‘Man of Feathers’ after his achievements with the NRL, agreed the race would have to be a cracker. It would have to be spectacular and pack a skerrick of the stupid.
Prior to the steep climb of The Everest, the big Sydney race on the turf calendar was the Golden Slipper. This race for two-year-olds over 1200 metres was a relative newcomer in the stable of great Australian races. It debuted in 1957 and is now worth a paltry $3.5 million. This prize money figure no longer encourages a horse, let alone an equine tutor to get out of bed.
The new event capitalised on this point of difference between the two cities. The Melbourne spring carnival was crammed with staying events; the new race focused on the Sydney racing long suit: speed.
The stumbling block was funding. How is this race designed to give Melbourne the shits paid for? Funding the race was always going to produce an outcry from concerned woke citizens who do not identify with the bashing of horses down the straight as sport, even if there is an humongous purse dangling from the winning post.
Then came the breakthrough that really mattered. Why not get everyone who is interested in entering the cough-and-spit sprint to pay for it? The Everest generates a slab of the prize money based on buying and trading twelve slots. This was an equine user-pays breakthrough.