The Melbourne
Cup, a horse race, is Australia's greatest sporting event and literally
stops the nation on the first Tuesday in November. In Victoria,
a public holiday exists for Cup Day, while in other states people
usually get an afternoon off work or else stop work to watch the
running of the Cup. A great many schools stop classes so children
can watch the race, such is the great history of the race.
In recent
years, more and more international horses have come to Australia
in the hope of winning the cup, but those victories have been few
and far between.
The greatest horse to win the Cup was Phar Lap,
who was a freak racehorse that raced in the 1930's and which eventually
died in tragic circumstances in the United States.
Australia's greatest
trainer of Melbourne Cup winners is Bart Cummings, who has trained
11 cup winners over a 37-year period. Both the names "Pharlap"
and "Bart Cummings" are deeply embedded within Australian
culture and history and along with cricketing great Don Bradman
are arguably among the three best known names to both older and
younger Australians.
