The Melbourne Cup

[Makybe]

Greetings folks,

*** Attn Andy (and/or Admin) - proposal at the bottom, perhaps this thread could be dupicated in general for a few days to attract attention rather than be buried here - if you condone the idea of a sweep ... see the bottom of this thread ***

Australia's greatest sporting event The Melbourne Cup is to be run on Tuesday at 3.00pm EST. The first Melbourne Cup was run in 1861.

American writer Mark Twain said of a visit to the Melbourne Cup in 1895:

Nowhere in the world have I encountered a festival of people that has such a magnificent appeal to the whole nation. The Cup astonishes me.

My nickname, Makybe Diva, is the only horse to win the race 3 times. She was basically a hero to our nation by the time she finished. You can see her exploits on Youtube if you are interested.

Our nation basically stops for a horse race. Victoria, the state where its held, has a public holiday for the event. Offices and workplaces all over the nation have chicken and champagne style lunches, every workplace in the country holds a sweep and very little productivity occurs after about noon nation-wide. On top of which, at Flemington racecourse where the event is held, there are generally in the region of 120,000 people. Its crazy. But as a punter and lover of the horses, I simply love the event. So, I thought I'd spread the word here.

A bit of a summary of the event can be found at this government site ... http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov..../melbournecup/. And wikipedia has loads of info about it here ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Cup

The Melbourne Cup is a 3200m Handicap race and attracts entrants from all over the world. Notable performances by horses you guys may have heard of over there include these in recent years:

2007 Purple Moon finished 2nd
2006 Delta Blues and Pop Rock quinella'd the race ... both were from Japan
2004 Vinnie Roe from Ireland and trained by Dermot Weld ran second to, you guessed it, Makybe Diva
2003 Jardine's Lookout ran 3rd
2002 Media Puzzle, trained by Dermot Weld won
2001 Local horse Ethereal beat Godolphin's Give the Slip and 3rd was Persian Punch
1999 Central Park ran 2nd (Godolphin)
1998 Persian Punch ran 3rd
1995 Vintage Crop, Dermot Weld ran 3rd
1993 Vintage Crop won and probably put the event on the world stage

This year it is worth a total of $AU5.5million (£3million) ... with 1st recieving $AU3.3million +$50k trophy.

The field was only finalised a matter of 2-3 hours ago and can be seen as follows.

Horse # .... Current odds .... Horse name .... Barrier .... Trainer .... Jockey .... Weight

2009 MELBOURNE CUP
1 6.5 VIEWED 9 Bart Cummings Brad Rawiller 58.0
2 21 C'EST LA GUERRE (NZ) 7 John Sadler Nick Hall 55.5
3 61 FIUMICINO (NZ) 24 M, W & J Hawkes Steven King 55.5
4 14 MASTER O'REILLY (NZ) 16 Danny O'Brien Vlad Duric 55.0
5 17 MOURILYAN (IRE) 14 Herman Brown Glyn Schofield 54.5
6 8 ROMAN EMPEROR (NZ) 15 Bart Cummings Hugh Bowman 54.0
7 101 ISTA KAREEM (NZ) 23 Colin Little Luke Nolen 53.5
8 41 CRIME SCENE (IRE) 11 Saeed Bin Suroor Kerrin McEvoy 53.0
9 34 MUNSEF (GB) 5 Ian Williams Zac Purton 53.0
10 61 ZAVITE (NZ) 3 Anthony Cummings Mark Zahra 53.0
11 5.5 ALCOPOP 12 Jake Stephens Dom Tourneur 52.5
12 151 HARRIS TWEED (NZ) 20 M & B Baker Craig Newitt 52.5
13 71 KIBBUTZ (NZ) 8 Jarrod McLean Chris Symons 52.5
14 41 NEWPORT 18 Paul Perry Peter Wells 52.5
15 21 WARRINGAH (GB) 17 Chris Waller Damien Oliver 52.5
16 151 GALLIONS REACH (NZ) 6 Richard Yuill Dwayne Dunn 52.0
17 201 SPIN AROUND 10 Steven Cooper Mark Du Plessis 52.0
18 31 BASALTICO (IRE) 10 Luca Cumani Danny Nikolic 51.5
19 101 CAPECOVER (NZ) 19 Alexander Fields Noel Harris 51.5
20 16 DAFFODIL (NZ) 21 Kevin Gray Chris Munce 51.5
21 11 SHOCKING 22 Mark Kavanagh Corey Brown 51.0
22 21 ALLEZ WONDER 13 Bart Cummings Michelle Payne 50.5
23 18 CHANGINGOFTHEGUARD (IRE) 1 David Hayes Glen Boss 50.5
24 21 LEICA DING 2 Darren Weir Craig Williams 50.5

Now you guys over there in GB are about 9 or 10 hours behind us, so the race will be run at 6am in the morning or so your time. So not sure there will be much interest here, but will suggest it anyway. After all, a sweep was held for the GN if I recall correctly.

I would be more than happy to organise a sweep if we can find 24 people that are interested. Perhaps £5 or £10 per horse. Everybody gets a horse until they are all gone. 60, 30, 15% for 1st, 2nd and 3rd and 5% for last seems about right. Either the cash can be transferred to my Moneybookers account and i'll redistribute after the race, or Andy can collect the cash if that would seem a safer place to hide it. Will do the draw as soon as we have 24 paid up punters, and if after that your horse is scratched (dies, steps in a hole, has a heart attack, bites its riders ear, eats a bad carrot) ... your money will be refunded.

Please express your interest below in a £10 sweep on the 2009 Melbourne Cup. Just copy and paste my post below and add your name.

Comments, thoughts, Andy is that all good ?

Cheers,
Makybe

[Makybe]

Count me in for a Melbourne Cup Sweep !

Makybe

[Makybe]

Also, feel free to post any tips you may have for our Spring Carnival.

Today was day 1 of 4 days at Flemington over the next week. Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Its sorta like the Cheltenham festival - Australian style.

For the record, in the Melbourne Cup I'm pretty keen on Newport, who ran a great luckless race today at massive odds and he is currently at around the 30-1 mark for Tuesdays big race.

I generally play the multiples, and will be including Mourilyan, who is an English horse who I have seen video's of and looks suited by the Australian style of racing and is reportedly going very well in his preparation ... currently 20-1.

And Viewed, last years winner, trained by an 82 guy who has won our great race 12 times over a period of almost 50 years. He is going better than last year, but is carrying 5kg's more and is currently about 5 or 6-1 in betting.

Best of luck if your on the Punt

Newport, Mourilyan and Viewed for me.

Cheers
Makybe

[munk]

Sounds great, I'd be up for it Makybe.

[Makybe]

Count me in for a Melbourne Cup Sweep @ the cost of a tenner !

Makybe
munk

[Andy]

Yes I will play, leave this thread here it is clearly a Aus event but I will make a post linking to it in the UK Sportsbetting forum so it gets some more views.

It would be better for me if you hold the £s please everyone sends it to you (It is £10 right not $10Aus?) but for everyone else IF Makybe just went AWOL with the money (he wont) then I would stand the £s you should have had.

I am not sure we will get the required amount by Tuesday, are we waiting until that is confirmed before sending the £s to you? The GrandNational (UK equivalent) was 40 people and oversubscribed but we did have more notice and it was going to be watched by everyone so we shall see.

[Dutchy]

Hi all, Im in if you get it going....

Ive never been to the Cup but went to Derby Day in 2000, was great fun

I have a bit of an interest as the jockey riding the favourite "Alcopop" is Domenic Tournour who has ridden my horse quite a few times over the last 18 months, he is a nice guy and lives in the same suburb as me...

Ill put some tips up here tomorrow once I go thru the form and some videos of lead up races

Last year I got 1st, 3rd 4th 5th in my trifecta/Pick 4, left out Bauer. the pick 4 paid half a mil!

[srh1984]

Im happy to join in and pay a tenner just let me know when/where I need to send it

[Makybe]

ok, thanks to those that have responded

we are running out of time and thats a total of 5 that have shown interest

Makybe
munk
Andy
srh1984
Dutchy

i'll be going to sleep in an hour or a bit more, so unless I wake up and we get a flood of interest ... and people cough up really fast

hard to see this going ahead ... but we have a look in 10 or 12 hours

Cheers

[Andy]

I think it might be best to let it go this year but next year with a bit more notice and promoting it a bit more I am sure it would be a big hit. We will definitely be having one for the UK equivalent of the GrandNational I will make sure you have a place in that it will probably be oversubscribed.