The Melbourne Cup

Melbourne Cup Day is Australia's most famous Tuesday. In this day, all australians stop whatever they're doing to listen or to watch the race. Many try their luck on this race, even those who don't usually bet.

The Cup is among the most popular public events in Australia, more than 110,000 race fans attend the race, some dressed in traditional formal raceday wear and others in all manner of exotic and amusing costumes, a total of 383,784 visitors attended the Melbourne Cup Carnival in 2005.

For the Spring Racing Carnival of Melbourne, Cup Day is the peak, when canapés and champagne, race track fashions and huge hats sometimes steal spotlight to horse racing.

The Melbourne Cup is one of the richest horse races (total prize money for 2005 - $AU5.1 million), and picking a winner is not easy.

Also is one of the world's most challenging horse races, is run over 3200 metres and is a handicapped race. This means that the better the horse is, the more weight it has to carry in the race.

The Melbourne Cup is run as a handicap, in which the weight of the jockey, and riding gear is adjusted with ballast to a certain number. Weightings are adjusted according to the horse's previous results and younger horses are given less weight than older ones.

In recent years the rules have been adjusted to that of a "quality handicap" where superior horses are given less severe weight penalties than would be the case under pure handicap rules. In the past, weightings were in theory established to equal all horses chances of winning the cup.