Melbourne Cup

The Melbourne Cup was born following the quest of the Victoria Turf club to put on a 'good handicap' which would rival its counterpart. the Victoria jockey club.

The Melbourne Cup has long been landed as the race that stops a nation and the race which has become ingrained in the Australian culture. It's a race buit on dreams, on hard luck and triumph. It's a race which is also survived by tragedy. But while the Cup continues to evolve it will remain the greatest 3200 metre horse race any where in the world and by the nature of the conditions, arguably the most challenging to win.

The race created considerable interest from its inception in 1861. The Cup is run at Flemington and was a recognised venue for race-meetings conducted by the Victoria Turf Club.

By 1880,100,000 people made the journey to Flemington to witness Grand Flaneur secure Austrelia's greatest race prize. With a Melbourne population of only 290,000, this attendance was quite phenomenal 1950 marked a new dawn in Melbourne Cup histiry of the Adelaide trainer Jim Cummings would win the Cup with Comic Court.

If there was ever a tuming point in the history of the Melbourne Cup then no doubt it was 1993. For the first time in the history of the race, the winner was trained off a European preparation.

It was at this time that the Melbourne Cup carnival reached new heights. Attendances continued to climb, overseas media interest grew and by 2000, the Cup attendance would reach the highest in its history with 121,015 recorder on the day.