WHY CAN’T WE WIN OUR OWN RACE?
AUSSIE, Aussie, Aussie, oi. oi... er no.
It’s the race that stops a nation, workers down tools, people who never bet queue up in TABs and there are sweeps in every office from Bronte to Broome.
It’s the quintessential Australian race, only we Aussies just can’t seem to win it any more.
Consider this; only one Australian-bred horse has won the Melbourne Cup in the past 10 years. Shocking. Terrible, I agree, but we have to go all the way back to 2009 to find the last Aussie-born Cup winner, Corey Brown on Shocking.
It doesn’t get much better going back another 10 years. If it wasn’t for the Cups King, aka Bart Cummings, and Viewed (2008) and Rogan Josh (1999), we would have put up the red, white and blue flag by now, surely.
Why can’t we win our own race?
Two words – foreign raiders.
In 1993, a canny Irishman named Dermot Weld brought down a part-time hurdler named Vintage Crop and changed the face of the Melbourne Cup forever.
From that time on, there have been another 162 raiders land here from far and wide.
Look at the nationalities of the winners; GB, USA, IRE, JPN and several more who were raised on the Kentucky bluegrass.
‘Imports’, as they are known in the racing, have won the Cup eight times, from Vintage Crop in 1993 up until last year’s winner, Sheikh Mohammed’s Cross Counter.
The overseas contingent has supplied a ‘runner-up’ every year since 2011, with a grand total of 15 ‘silvers’ and 11 ‘bronze’.
Here are two other Cups facts enough to make any dinky-di Aussie choke on their Vegemite – the champion who became a legend, Makybe Diva, is a POM, and the fastest of all Cups since Archer in 1861 was run by Kingston Rule, an American.
So which is the raider most likely? We take a closer look at the facts and figures of each one and hopefully find the winner.