Melbourne Cup is the most famous horse race on the Australian or New Zealand racing calendar. It is a handicap event run over 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne on the first Tuesday in November. The race is broadcast on radio and television. People in Melbourne have a public holiday for the race.
The race was first run in 1861. The race horse Archer won the cup in 1861 and 1862. Makybe Diva became the first mare to win two consecutive Melbourne Cup races in 2003 and 2004. The horse also won a record third straight race in 2005. Other outstanding winners were Carbine in 1890 and Phar Lap in 1930. Famous jockeys include the Australians Bobby Lewis and Harry White. Both rode four cup winners. In 2015, Michelle Payne became the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, riding Prince of Penzance.
The Australian horse trainer Bart Cummings trained a record number of winning horses. These horses include Light Fingers (1965), Galilee (1966), Red Handed (1967), Think Big (1974 and 1975), Gold and Black (1977), Hyperno (1979), Let’s Elope (1991), Saintly (1996), Rogan Josh (1999), and Viewed (2008).
Eleven horses have won the Melbourne spring doubles—both the Melbourne Cup and the Caulfield Cup races—in the same year. The last to do so was Ethereal in 2001. In 2005, the mare Makybe Diva became the first horse to win the Melbourne Cup three times.
The race has continued through World War I (1914-1918), World War II (1939-1945), and the depressions of the 1890’s and 1930’s. It has survived gangsters who tried to shoot a favorite. In 1930, two men in a car fired two shots at Phar Lap, the horse that had been backed for a fortune in cup doubles. Both shots missed the horse. Four Melbourne Cup winners—The Pearl (1871), Wotan (1936), Old Rowley (1940), and Prince of Penzance (2015)—have started at odds of 100 to 1. Horses with even higher odds have gained second or third place.
See also Caulfield Cup; Horse racing; Phar Lap.
