"race after an attempt was made to shoot him and only emerged an hour before the race time of the Cup. Phar Lap also competed in 1929 and 1931, but came 3rd and 8th respectively, despite heavy favouritism in both years. There are a few legends of the first Aboriginal jockey to ride a Melbourne Cup. It was believed to be John Cutts who won the first and second cups in 1861 and 1862 riding Archer. He was reputedly an Aboriginal stockman born in the area where Archer was trained, but was actually John 'Cutts' Dillon, the son of a"
"The first Melbourne Cup was run in 1861. In 1871 the Victoria Racing Club Act was passed, giving the VRC legal control over Flemington Racecourse. The racecourse is shaped not unlike a pear, and boasts a six-furlong (1,200 m) straight known as 'the Straight Six.' The track has a circumference of and a final straight of for race distances over . Races are run in an anti-clockwise direction. The course has a crowd capacity of over 120,000 and contains three grandstands. The biggest ever attendance was on Victoria Derby Day in 2006 when 129,069 people saw Efficient win the Victoria"
"31 October 1873 announced that the following Thursday (Cup Day) be observed as a bank and civil (public) service holiday. The Melbourne Cup was first run on a Tuesday in 1875, the first Tuesday in that month. On 7 November 1876, the three-year-old filly, Briseis, owned and trained by James Wilson Snr., won in a time of 3.36.25. Briseis then went on to create a record that is never likely to be equalled, winning the VRC Derby, the Melbourne Cup and the VRC Oaks in the space of six days. She was ridden in the Melbourne Cup by the tiny"
"Melbourne Cup (greyhounds) The Melbourne Cup is the world's richest and most prestigious greyhound race. In 2016 it was reported that the race had a prize-winning pool of 600,000. The Cup was first run in 1956 and was worth £500 to the winner. The race is the final event of the three-week Superdogs series which carries over $1 million in total prize money. The Cup is run over at Sandown Park in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in November annually, following the Melbourne Cup for thoroughbred horses. Some of Australian greyhound racing's most memorable moments and most significant events have occurred in"
"first awarded in 1919. In that year the Victorian Racing Club had commissioned James Steeth to design a trophy that would be in keeping with the prestige of the race, little realising that it would become the iconic Melbourne Cup still presented today. In the Second World War years (1942, 1943 and 1944) the winning owner received war bonds valued at 200 pounds. A new trophy is struck each year and becomes the property of the winning owner. In the event of a dead heat a second cup is on hand. The present trophy is hand spun from 1.65 kg"
"Melbourne Racing Club The Melbourne Racing Club is one of three metropolitan horse racing clubs in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It began life as the Victoria Amateur Turf Club in 1875 with Mr. E.C. Moore as the Club's first Secretary. The Dowling Forest Racecourse in Ballarat was the location for the first VATC race meeting on Friday, 24 March 1876. Within six months the VATC were granted use of Crown land at Caulfield as a permanent home in Melbourne. In 1879, the club staged the first running of the Caulfield Cup, and two years later, introduced the Caulfield Guineas and the"
"originated in Melbourne: The Melbourne Cup has been a Melbourne tradition since 1861 and then became a national tradition, subsequently referred to as ""the race that stops the nation""; Carols by Candlelight, first held in 1938, is a Christmas Eve tradition; the Myer Christmas windows are a very popular annual attraction; and the AFL Grand Final attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators, both live and via broadcast media, every year. There are a number of cultural festivals that celebrate foreign cultures from within the context of the city's culture. Major festivals for Melbourne's large ethnic communities include: Melbourne's original plan,"
"the 2006 Commonwealth Games, and is home to several major annual international events, including the Australian Open, the first of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. First held in 1861 and declared a public holiday for all Melburnians in 1873, the Melbourne Cup is the world's richest handicap horse race and is known as ""the race that stops a nation"". The Formula One Australian Grand Prix has been held at Albert Park's Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit since 1996. Cricket is one of the longest established sports in Melbourne with the Melbourne Cricket Club forming within three years of settlement. The"
"the Melbourne Cup heats, as do the winners of a Melbourne Cup Prelude. Melbourne Cup Preludes were first conducted in 1995. Melbourne Cup Preludes are conducted every two weeks, with the final Prelude series conducted on the same night as the Shootout. Remaining places in the Melbourne Cup heats are awarded to the best performed greyhounds that have competed in at least one Melbourne Cup Prelude series. There is no entry fee to nominate for the Melbourne Cup series. Melbourne Cup Prize money has grown considerably since the first running of the Cup in 1956: The Melbourne Cup winner also"
"Victoria Racing Club The Victoria Racing Club was founded in 1864. It was formed following the disbanding of the Victoria Turf Club and the Victoria Jockey Club. A legacy passed from the Victoria Turf Club was the annual ""race that stops a nation"", the Melbourne Cup, which was first contested in 1861. From its foundation in 1864 until 2001 the Victoria Racing Club was the responsible authority for the conduct of thoroughbred racing in the State of Victoria, Australia. Since 2001 this role has been managed by Racing Victoria Limited. The VRC is managed by an unpaid committee, elected by"
"was officially formed in May 1859 when Wills and three other members codified ""The Rules of the Melbourne Football Club""—the basis of Australian rules football. The club was a dominant force in the earliest Australian rules football competition, the Challenge Cup, and was also a foundation member of the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1877 and the Victorian Football League (VFL) in 1896, which later became the national Australian Football League. Melbourne has won 12 VFL/AFL premierships, the latest in 1964. The club celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2008 by naming ""150 Heroes"" as well as creating a birthday logo"
"2018 Melbourne Cup The 2018 Melbourne Cup (known commercially as 2018 Lexus Melbourne Cup) was the 158th running of the Melbourne Cup, a prestigious Australian Thoroughbred horse race. The race was run over on 6 November 2018 at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. Lexus commenced a five year naming rights sponsorship deal, taking over from Emirates. It was the last Melbourne Cup broadcast by the Seven Network before Network Ten takes over in 2019. The race was won by Cross Counter, ridden by Kerrin McEvoy and trained by Charlie Appleby. Irish colt The CliffsofMoher was euthanised after he suffered a fractured"
"these legends, however, can definitely be disproved, and history had to wait nearly another 100 years. The first jockey of Indigenous heritage to ride a Melbourne Cup winner was Frank Reys in 1973 on Gala Supreme, who had a Filipino father and a half-Aboriginal mother. The race has undergone several alterations in recent years, the most visible being the entry of many foreign-trained horses. Most have failed to cope with the conditions; the three successful ""foreign raids"" include two by Irish trainer Dermot K. Weld successful in 1993 and 2002, and one in 2006 by Katsumi Yoshida of Japan's renowned"
"Australian Cup was held on the 31st of March 1958 and was won by champion greyhound, Rookie Rebel. The Last Race meeting held at the North Melbourne Track was on April 16th 1962. The MGRA had recently converted the second oval at Olympic Park to a greyhound Track. In 1994, The Domain Tunnel project was proposed to go through the back straight of the Olympic Park track. The MGRA ended up receiving compensation from Citilink to relocate the track to the Broadmeadows site where it is now. The Meadows Track is a circle track and has three distances that greyhounds"
"was not determined but the Prices Justification Tribunal reported that metrication was not used to justify price increases. An early change was the metrication of horse racing. This was facilitated because the furlong (one eighth of a mile) is close to 200 m. Therefore, the Melbourne Cup was changed from to , a reduction of or about 0.58%. The first metric Melbourne Cup was raced in November 1972. When the Australian Bureau of Meteorology was enlisted to introduce the metric system for weather reporting and forecasts, its public relations officer, Godfrey Wiseman, coined a series of jingles to educate the"
"Melbourne for public servants and bank officials. Various businesses also closed at lunchtime. It took some years before the purpose of the declared holiday was acknowledged in the Victoria Government Gazette. The Gazette of 31 October 1873 announced that the following Thursday (Cup Day) be observed as a bank and civil (public) service holiday. The event is one of the most popular spectator events in Australia, with sometimes over 110,000 people, some dressed in traditional formal raceday wear and others in all manner of exotic and amusing costumes, attending the race. The record crowd was 122,736 in 2003. The 1926"
"Melbourne on 17 May by Wills, William Hammersley, J. B. Thompson and Thomas Smith (some sources erroneously include H. C. A. Harrison). The 1859 rules, drawn up three days after the Melbourne club was officially founded did not include some elements that soon became important to the game, such as the requirement to bounce the ball while running. Melbourne's game was not immediately adopted by neighbouring clubs before each match the rules had to be agreed by the two teams involved. By 1866 however several other clubs had agreed to play by an updated version of Melbourne rules. The original"
"Melbourne Day Melbourne Day is an annual celebration to mark the founding of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, on 30 August 1835. Melbourne was settled on 30 August 1835 by a party of free settlers from Van Diemen's Land. The party was led by John Lancey aboard the schooner ""Enterprize"", and was funded by the businessman John Pascoe Fawkner. The settlement followed a treaty with the indigenous Aboriginal group, the Wurundjeri of the Kulin nation alliance, which was negotiated by John Batman on behalf of the Port Phillip Association. Melbourne differs from Australia's other early colonial cities, in that it was"
"injury. 2015 Melbourne Cup The 2015 Emirates Melbourne Cup was the 155th running of the Melbourne Cup, a prestigious Australian Thoroughbred horse race. The race, run over , was held on 3 November 2015 at Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse. The date is a public holiday in the state of Victoria. The final field for the race was declared on 31 October. The total prize money for the race was A$6.2 million, the same as the previous year. The winner was Prince of Penzance, ridden by Michelle Payne, who became the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup. Max Dynamite ran"
"most famous horse race in Australia, the cold hard facts of history do not allow this notion. The spot in racing history for the first (and only) Aboriginal jockey to win the Melbourne Cup belongs to Frank Reys on Gala Supreme in 1973. Instead of having any Aboriginal blood, Cutts was born of English stock. He had been born John Dillon in Sydney in about 1829, the son of Thomas Dillon, a clerk, and his wife Ann Butler. A family photo of him and his wife Mary has survived, published in Keith W. Paterson's book, that confirms that John does"
"2014 Melbourne Cup The 2014 Emirates Melbourne Cup was the 154th running of the Melbourne Cup, Australia's most prestigious Thoroughbred horse race. The race, run over 3,200 metres, was held on 4 November 2014, at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. Protectionist, ridden by Ryan Moore and trained by German Andreas Wöhler, won the race by four lengths, becoming the first German-trained winner of the Melbourne Cup. Red Cadeaux placed second and Who Shot Thebarman third, with Red Cadeaux the first horse to place second on three occasions. The total prize money for the race was A$6.2 million, with the winner receiving"
"2015 Melbourne Cup The 2015 Emirates Melbourne Cup was the 155th running of the Melbourne Cup, a prestigious Australian Thoroughbred horse race. The race, run over , was held on 3 November 2015 at Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse. The date is a public holiday in the state of Victoria. The final field for the race was declared on 31 October. The total prize money for the race was A$6.2 million, the same as the previous year. The winner was Prince of Penzance, ridden by Michelle Payne, who became the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup. Max Dynamite ran second"
"this first Melbourne Cup race was a 16.3 hand bay stallion by the name of Archer in a time of 3.52.00, ridden by John Cutts, trained by Etienne de Mestre, and leased (and consequently raced in his own name) by de Mestre. As a lessee de Mestre ""owned"" and was fully responsible for Archer during the lease. Archer was leased from the ""Exeter Farm"" of Jembaicumbene near Braidwood, New South Wales. His owners were Thomas John ""Tom"" Roberts (a good school-friend of de Mestre's), Rowland H. Hassall (Roberts' brother-in-law), and Edmund Molyneux Royds and William Edward Royds (Roberts' nephews). The"
"2007 Melbourne Cup The 2007 Melbourne Cup, the 147th running of Australia's most prestigious thoroughbred horse race, was run on Tuesday, 6 November 2007, going at 3:00 pm local time (0400 UTC). The race was sponsored by Emirates Airline. The winner of the race was Efficient, by a half a length, followed by Purple Moon and Mahler in third. Due to the 2007 Australian Equine influenza outbreak, believed to have been started by a horse brought into Australia from Japan, neither 2006 Melbourne Cup winner Delta Blues nor runner-up Pop Rock participated in the 2007 Melbourne Cup. These were the"
"conducted at the Sandown track during the winter months, the blue ribbon events being the Australian Steeple and the Australian Hurdle. Melbourne Racing Club The Melbourne Racing Club is one of three metropolitan horse racing clubs in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It began life as the Victoria Amateur Turf Club in 1875 with Mr. E.C. Moore as the Club's first Secretary. The Dowling Forest Racecourse in Ballarat was the location for the first VATC race meeting on Friday, 24 March 1876. Within six months the VATC were granted use of Crown land at Caulfield as a permanent home in Melbourne. In"
"the time horse racing became an established sport in the colony. Horse racing was also happening in Melbourne at Batman's Hill in 1838, with the first race meeting in Victoria taking place in 1840. Cricket was also underway with the Melbourne Cricket Club founded in 1838. Sport was being used during the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s as a form of social integration across classes. Victorian rules football (later known as Australian rules) was codified in 1859. Australian football clubs still around in the current Australian Football League were founded by 1858. The Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia's largest sporting arena, opened"
"and was renamed in 1990. Separate competitions for one-day matches (2002–03) and Twenty20 (2005–06) were later established. Inter-club cricket in Melbourne had its beginnings during the 1850s, with matches arranged on an informal basis. The newspapers usually decided the season's best team via the consensus of journalists. In 1870, the Challenge Cup was introduced, beginning an era of more structured competition. For the 1889–90 season, a program of Pennant Matches was devised over eight rounds, which began the era of club competition recognisable today. The original competing teams were Carlton, East Melbourne, Essendon, Fitzroy, Melbourne, North Melbourne, Port Melbourne, Richmond,"
"first regular horse racing was organized in 1841 on Mokotów Fields in Warsaw by Towarzystwo Wyścigów Konnych i Wystawy Zwierząt Gospodarskich w Królestwie Polskim (in English, the Society of Horse Racing in Congress Poland). The main racetrack in Poland is Warsaw's Służewiec Racecourse. The industry was severely limited during the Communist era, when gambling, the major source of funding, was made illegal. Horse racing in Australia was founded during the early years of settlement and the industry has grown to be among the top three leading Thoroughbred racing nations of the world. The world-famous Melbourne Cup, the ""race that stops"
"for careless riding on the undercard at Flemington. 2018 Melbourne Cup The 2018 Melbourne Cup (known commercially as 2018 Lexus Melbourne Cup) was the 158th running of the Melbourne Cup, a prestigious Australian Thoroughbred horse race. The race was run over on 6 November 2018 at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. Lexus commenced a five year naming rights sponsorship deal, taking over from Emirates. It was the last Melbourne Cup broadcast by the Seven Network before Network Ten takes over in 2019. The race was won by Cross Counter, ridden by Kerrin McEvoy and trained by Charlie Appleby. Irish colt The"
"Australian Cup The Australian Cup is a Victoria Racing Club Group 1 Thoroughbred horse race for horses three years old and older, held under Weight for Age conditions, over a distance of 2000 metres, at Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne, Australia in March during the VRC Autumn Racing Carnival. Total prize money for the race is A$1,500,000. The race was once Australia's premier long distance race, raced at a distance of 18 furlongs (3621m) - thus, longer than the Melbourne Cup. In 1943 the race was shortened to 17 furlongs 110 yards to allow the race to be started from the top"
"2013 Melbourne Cup The 2013 Emirates Melbourne Cup was the 153rd running of the Melbourne Cup, Australia's most prestigious Thoroughbred horse race. The race, held on 5 November 2013, at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria, was won by Fiorente. The horse, owned by Andrew Roberts, was bred in Ireland, trained in Australia by Gai Waterhouse, and ridden by jockey Damien Oliver. It was Oliver's third victory in the event, after previous wins in 1995 and 2002, and his first start after a ten-month ban for a betting offence. Waterhouse, the daughter of Tommy J. Smith, who trained winners in 1955"
"Melbourne Cup, the VRC Oaks is on the Thursday following the Cup, and LKS MacKinnon Stakes is on the Saturday following the Oaks. The VRC also hosts race meetings during the Melbourne Autumn Racing Carnival. These meetings include Group 1 races for the Australian Cup, the Newmarket Handicap and the Black Caviar Lightning. Victoria Racing Club The Victoria Racing Club was founded in 1864. It was formed following the disbanding of the Victoria Turf Club and the Victoria Jockey Club. A legacy passed from the Victoria Turf Club was the annual ""race that stops a nation"", the Melbourne Cup, which"
". Riders attended from all over Australia and New Zealand. From 1902 the fastest NSW rider in the Goulburn to Sydney Classic was selected to appear for NSW. In 1927 the Warrnambool to Melbourne was replaced by the Dunlop Grand Prix, a race over four stages. In 1934 the Warrnambool to Melbourne was again replaced by a stage race, the Centenary 1000, a 1,102 miles (1,773 km) race over seven stages. From 1947 to 1949 the title of long distance road champion of Australia was awarded at a sprint point into the Warrnambool to Melbourne Classic. In 1950 the first"