The Race that stopped the nation....

7 Nov 2006, Tuesday - Melbourne Cup Day.

A day where all Melbournians get a day off work, a day where all punters are glued to their TV boxes, a day where gambling is accommodated and even encouraged, a day where lots of women have headaches because they do not have the "perfect" dress / hat to go to the race course.











An annual affair, this horse race stops the nation in the sense that most people, even though they are at work, will be tuning in to the race on the TV / radio / internet and praying hard that they will get to shout "YES!" at the end of the race.

After weeks of preparation and training, the race that decides the fate of millions of punters ended in less than 5 minutes.

There was a "SWEEPS" going on in the office and I invested $3. "The One Up There" gave me Ice Chariot and Maybe Better.

5 of us decided not to join the crowd and the bar downstairs, so we headed off to the conference room with our lunches and turned the TV on. Once the horses were in position and the gun fired, we stopped eating and was soon on the edge of our seats, each urging our horses to make it first to the finish line.















Delta Blues from Japan, right, ridden by Japanese jockey Yasunari Iwata wins the Melbourne Cup horse race narrowly defeating stablemate Pop Rock, front, ridden by Australian jockey Damien Oliver at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Australia, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006.














It was a very close race. Delta Blues won literrally, by a nose.















My horse, Maybe Better, came in third! And I won $4! haha... We were joking that they should rename the horse "Certainly Better" next year as it had won the third placing this year. And when it clinches the second place next year, the name should be "Definitely Better", and lastly when it won the prestigeous Melbourne Cup (with the prize money of AU$5mio), its name would be "The Best".















All in all, the race was exciting, interesting and certainly captivating. Fortunately it's an annual affair. Otherwise, the Aussies would be gambling all their assets away on the horses back!