REMEMBER WHEN I won the Melbourne Cup sweep
WHEN I was a child I had little interest in horse racing. In fact, the seemingly endless drone of race calls on a race day, wafting from radios in homes all along our street, used to annoy me.
Sometimes when I stayed at my grandparents’ place, my Pop would be glued to the “wireless”, form guide in hand, egging on some nag or other on which he would, more often than not, lose his money.
I think he could sense my irritation and, occasionally, he would let me pick a horse and then put a tiny bet on it for me.
I recall one time, in about 1972, picking out the name Sparkling Red, long before I knew that was a kind of wine, because I just liked the sound of the name.
It got up, as they say, and Pop gave me some money, which I quickly squandered on lollies, some toy that soon broke, or maybe on a sparkling red raspberry soft drink.
After that my mum often encouraged me to pick horses with red in their name, but that wouldn’t have helped with my first “big” win on the gee gees.
In 1974, I was entered into a neighbourhood Melbourne Cup sweep and got the horse Think Big, which netted me $2. It seemed a large sum of money at the time and I spent it wisely on a huge bag of plastic soldiers (with tanks and jeeps) and a set of ink stamps.
Although I no longer have the stamp set or the plastic army men (many of which are probably buried in the backyard of my childhood home or in landfill somewhere) I still have the memory of that win.
That was the only time I have ever had the winner of the Cup either in a sweep or as a bet. Even if I had followed mum’s advice and picked a horse with red in its name it wouldn’t have done me much good in the Cup. The only horse named red ever to win the Cup was Red Handed in 1967.
However, I might have done OK if I had Red Nose (each way rather than on the nose) in 1979, which ran third, or Red Cadeaux which ran second three times in 2011, 2013 and 2014.
But otherwise I have had an almost uncanny ability to pick horses — either based on the form or by going in a sweep — that fail to run either first, second or third.
Tell us your story: Write to the History Editor, 2 Holt St, Surry Hills, NSW 2010