All you need to know about Melbourne Cup

What makes the Melbourne Cup special

The Melbourne Cup is run on the first Tuesday in November at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Australia. First run in 1861, it is billed as a race that stops a nation because almost every Australian stops whatever he or she is doing to watch the race.

The total prize fund for the race is more than A$7.3 million (Dh19.3 million), with prize money being paid out to the first 10 finishers. The winner banks a cool A$4 million. The Melbourne Cup is one of the longest races in the world, contested over 3,200 metres. It takes an average time of just over three minutes for the race. The race attracts the best longdistance horses from around the world. However, for horses based in England it represents the most gruelling task of having to travel over 16,898km to Melbourne.

You need a horse with peak fitness, who can produce the ultimate effort in order to win the race, which invariably becomes a cavalry charge in the final stages.

While the task of getting Cross Counter to one of the world’s most gruelling races in peak fitness was performed to perfection, it was the horse who produced the ultimate winning effort.

Godolphin in the Melbourne Cup

Cross Counter, a horse trained in England by Charlie Appleby, becomes the first Godolphin winner of the Cup. He was the horse with the least experience in the field of 24 runners. Cross Counter’s win came 30 years after His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, began his Melbourne Cup quest with Authaal, who carried his maroon and white colours in 1988 and 20 years after Faithful Son became Godolphin’s first runner in 1998.

Trainer Charlie Appleby, who has stables in Newmarket, England and Marmoum, in Dubai, has become the first English trainer to win the Melbourne Cup. Godolphin, the Dubai-owned stable was launched in 1992, It has its headquarters in the centre of Dubai.