£1000 of BOOKIES FREE BETS
Melbourne Cup Betting
The Melbourne Cup is Australia's most prestigious and popular horse race. It is run on the first Tuesday of November. Small fortunes are wagered in the Melbourne Cup betting. The
best place to back the winner is with online bookmaker
Bet365 & £200 Free for New Clients.
All about The Melbourne Cup betting
Melbourne Cup betting takes hold of all Australians on the first Tuesday of November. There is a national holiday for the 'race that stops a nation' and if you are an Aussie and have not had a bet, well you must be feeling very poorly.
The Melbourne Cup is the culmination of a four day racing carnival that takes place at Flemington racecourse. The race is organised by the Victoria Racing Club and is run on turf over 3200 metres and is contested by three year olds and older horses of either sex. It is the world’s richest two mile handicap. The prize fund for the winner is over £2m with serious money down to tenth place.
There is also a large cash bonus on offer for any horse that wins both the Melbourne Cup and the Irish St Leger at the Curragh in the same year.
The first running of the Melbourne Cup was in 1861, over a distance of exactly two miles. The prize was 710 gold sovereigns and a hand crafted gold watch to the winner with no consolation prizes for placed horses. It was an action packed race with one runner bolting off before the start and three of the seventeen runners hitting the deck during the race, two of them with fatal consequences. Four thousand people came to watch the spectacle.
The race was ultimately won by an outsider, a stallion called Archer who travelled from Sydney by steamboat, who beat the locally based favourite, Mormon, by some six lengths. Archer must have survived the carnage with relative ease. The very next day the stallion ran in another two mile race, the Melbourne Plate, and triumphed again. Archer’s success not only dismayed favourite backers in the inaugural Melbourne Cup betting odds but caused increased rivalry between the Australian states, serendipitously adding to the interest in future runnings of the Melbourne Cup.
In 1862 Archer made the trip to Melbourne on the steamboat from Sydney for a second time for the Melbourne Cup. Carrying ten stone two pounds this time, he defied his greater weight and triumphed once again in a race contested by twenty runners, beating Mormon by an extraordinary eight lengths. He took home 810 gold sovereigns and another gold watch for his now owner and longer term trainer, Etienne de Mestre. His previous exploits meant that he was not, on this occasion, totally ignored by the bookmakers in the Melbourne Cup betting odds. A crowd of approximately seven thousand were there to witness his second victory and profit from his repeat performance in the Melbourne Cup betting.
Either the handicapper made some fundamental mistakes or Archer was a truly remarkable horse. His margin of victory was not equalled until over one hundred years later. It was seventy years before another horse managed two wins in the Melbourne Cup. Peter Pan won the race in both 1932 and 1934. It was over a century after Archer’s exploits that another horse achieved back to back wins. Rain Lover won in both 1968 and immediately again in the following year.
In 1863 Archer boarded the steamboat yet again and would have taken his chances in the Melbourne Cup once more but, due to a public holiday in the state of Victoria, de Mestre’s entry acceptance form arrived late and he was barred from the contest on an administrative technicality. The situation caused an uproar that resulted in a major boycott of the 1863 running of the Melbourne Cup. Many of de Mestre’s owners as well as others withdrew their horses in protest. Ultimately, only seven horses started. It was one of the smallest Melbourne Cup fields ever.
Today, with such generous prize money up for grabs and air transport of horses an everyday occurrence, foreign raiders are increasingly targeting the Melbourne Cup, fuelling interest and volume in Melbourne Cup betting worldwide. The rigorous Australian quarantine regulations are the subject of hot dispute but, in 2009, Saeed Bin Suroor sent Crime Scene to Australia for the Melbourne Cup and was not unrewarded. He started the race a 40-1 shot in blinkers, for the first time, and finished second to Shocking, a locally trained 9-1 shot in the Melbourne Cup. The prize money for second was over four hundred thousand pounds. Luca Cumani met with less good fortune as Basaltico finished in eighteenth place under Danny Nikolic.
The Irish trainer, Dermot Weld, has been the most successful foreign ‘raider’, twice scooping the spoils in the Melbourne Cup. His first victory was with Vintage Crop ridden by Mick Kinane in 1993. His bid to retain the title next year was unsuccessful but Vintage Crop did manage a creditable third place in his swansong run as an eight year old in 1995. He finished behind the five year old Doriemus and the three year old Nothin’ Leica Dane. He was carrying over nine stone and giving ten pounds to the winner and nearly two stone to the second horse.
Another foreign raider in 1995 had a wasted trip. Mark Johnston’s Double Trigger, owned by Ron Huggins, started the 7/2 favourite in the Melbourne Cup betting odds but finished last.
In 2002 Weld sent Vinnie Roe and Media Puzzle to the Melbourne Cup. Vinnie Roe started the 9-2 favourite while Media Puzzle went off the second favourite at 11-2 in the Melbourne Cup betting. The punters weren’t far wrong but they weren’t quite right either. Media Puzzle beat local 40-1 shot, Mr Prudent, by two lengths to win the race. Vinnie Roe finished fourth. This time Mick Kinane partnered Sir Michael Stoute’s 30-1 shot, Daliapour, which finished back in sixteenth place of the twenty three runner field. Two years later Vinnie Roe started at 5-1 in the 2004 Melbourne Cup and finished second to the 13-5 favourite in the betting, Makybe Diva. The locally trained mare, Makybe Diva, was the heroine of the Melbourne Cup. She won the Cup three years in a row from 2003 to 2005 for trainer Glen Boss.
It is not just the Irish who have robbed the Australians of their most prestigious prize. In 2006 the English and Irish contingents were well beaten by Japanese trainer, Katsuhiko Sumii. The talents of Sumii’s two runners didn’t go unnoticed by the locals in the Melbourne Cup betting. Pop Rock started joint favourite at 5-1 while Delta Blues went off at 17-1. Delta Blues, ridden by Yasunari Iwata, beat Pop Rock, ridden by Damien Oliver, by a short head.
If it had not been for the Japanese horses, English trainer, Jamie Poulton’s 200-1 shot, Land’n Stars, would have been third rather than fifth. Aidan O’Brien’s horse, Yeats, finished two places behind him in seventh at 11-2. Luca Cumani’s Glistening (80-1) finished tenth with Jamie Osborne’s Geordieland (15-1) back in eighteenth, having broken a blood vessel.
The 2010 Melbourne Cup, run in rain-softened ground, went the way of Europe for only the third time. It was a first win for France when trainer Alain De Royer-Dupre won with his Americain, who had also won the Geelong Cup as a prep race. Their was an Australian connection via the two owners. Americain was 12/1 in the betting. The local favourite was So You Think who was stepping up in trip to two miles for the first time and looked a likely winner at 2/1 a furlong out. However he got run down and finished a creditable third for legendary Aussie trainer Bart Cummings, who was seeking an amazing thirteenth win in the race.
The Melbourne Cup is now attracting the attention of the top trainers across the world adding a new dimension for likely punters. You obviously don’t have to be local to win it and overseas entrants are being positively encouraged. If you are a fan of a foreign contender, an online bookmaker could help you to profit from the Melbourne Cup betting.
£1000 of BOOKIES FREE BETS