One Day, One Race: May The Cup Run Forever

The Age

Tuesday November 4, 2008

The race that stops more than a nation is beyond fillies and fascinators. It is inscribed in Australian folklore and sporting tradition.

OF ALL the commentaries on the Melbourne Cup, let this be one of the most pertinent: "On the great annual day of sacrifice, business is suspended over a stretch of land and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and woman, of high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other duties and come." They did; they still do. This was Mark Twain, who visited Melbourne on Cup Day 1895 (winner: Auraria), when the event, already 34 years old, was the most important festival in the country.

The approach of the first Tuesday in November, wrote Twain, is unrivalled in that it "makes the whole nation glad ... (and) commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal and spontaneous, not perfunctory". Indeed, its more recent official billing, "The race that stops a nation" (registered trademark), can be described as under-exaggerated: the Melbourne Cup, aided and abetted by international involvement and the power of communication, now stops several nations in their tracks, including the land of the long white cloud, the land where the shamrock blooms and the land that is holding an election today. There are vested interests at work, of course, not the least of which is represented by the 15 international horses that will burst forth from the stalls at 3pm, in Race 7 at Flemington. Please spare a thought also for the nine Australian runners, also starting (if not finishing) at the same time.

Contrary to popular opinion, some people at the course will be watching this race instead of each other. One could be forgiven, however, for thinking the multitude regard the thrubbing of hooves as secondary to the softness of the chicken sandwiches and the pearling of the sparkling wine. For them, the polished brogues and feathery fascinators and the use of the word "birdcage" in a non-avian sense are the dominating factors in a day at the races.

That several million dollars worth of livestock is circumnavigating the course somewhere over there, past the serried ranks of duco and the pointy folds of tent city, is but a distant threat of thunder on an otherwise cloudless day. For these celebrants, recession means the time between getting into the car park, opening the boot and cracking open the first bottle of the day.

While Flemington has its various social entry and exclusion zones, clearly defined with herbaceous and wire borders and security at the turnstiles, it also achieves demographic equilibrium: there may be corporate and membership divisions, but the course as a whole is open to all, as it has been since 1861. What is more, this mixture of people and personalities, labels and lifestyles, has always given the spring racing carnival the justification in using exactly that word: it is a carnival, with all the hugger-mugger and hurly-burly atmosphere it conveys. This ecumenical approach, not always synonymous with the starry events of international horse-racing, has enabled the Cup to live on in popular thought and word and deed.

It is also a very rich carnival, and not just for owners, trainers, bookies and betters. The income from these few days handsomely subsidises Flemington's activities for the rest of the year and, indeed, provides the state with a good deal of its tourist revenue. Restaurants, rental cars and milliners don't do too badly, either. In fact, the Melbourne Cup was the first, and is still the most significant, Victorian major event, whose gestation and consolidation preceded the term itself by 130 years. Without the Cup and the events that surround it, Melbourne life would be ransacked of its most enduring and abiding tradition.

Mark Twain's prescient encomium on this day also celebrated Australian history, which, he wrote, "does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies". The beautiful truth about the Melbourne Cup and its part in our history is that its very form and function, prescribed by a few minutes determining the hours, days and years of achievement and destiny, embodies the very myths and legends of post-settlement Australia. As with Twain's notion of our history - "full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened" - the same qualities apply to what we call without the slightest sense of jingoism the greatest, most celebrated horse race of all. May the Melbourne Cup run forever!

© 2008 The Age

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