Billed as ‘the race that stops a nation’ – which, since 2006, has been a registered trademark of Victoria Racing Club, under whose auspices it is run – the Melbourne Cup is the most valuable long-distance handicap in the world. Worth A$8 million in total prize money, of which A$4.4 million goes to winning connections, the race is run over 3,200 metres, or fractionally short of two miles, on turf at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne on the first Tuesday in November each year.
Established in 1861, the Melboune Cup has been run without interruption ever since. The first horse trained in the Northern Hemisphere to win the race was the six-year-old Vintage Crop, who did so on November 2, 1993, in the first year that European horses were invited to participate. Owned by Dr. Michael Smurfit, trained by Dermot Weld on The Curragh, Co. Kildare and ridden by Michael ‘Mick’ Kinane, arrived in Australia fresh from victory in the Irish St. Leger – which, unlike the English equivalent, is open to older horses – but was, nonetheless, sent off at 14/1 at Flemington. Settled in mid-division in the early stages of the race, Vintage Crop made headway from off the pace turning into the straight, tackled the leader, Te Aku Nick, inside the final furlong and surged clear close home to win, going away, by three lengths.
Vintage Crop would run in the Melbourne Cup twice more, finishing seventh, when favourite, in 1994 and a never-nearer third in 1995. He died, at the age of 27, at the Irish National Stud, where he spent his retirement, in July 2014 and his death made headline news in Australia.