The Melbourne Cup legend may be wearing thin, but don’t tell anyone who was at Flemington on Tuesday.
Whether the Melbourne Cup is the race that stops the nation any more, it is still the race that stops Melbourne, the nation’s sporting capital. That makes Flemington on Cup Day not so much a microcosm as a bubble. But it’s a happy bubble, a festive bubble, an ebullient bubble.
Co-trainer Sheila Laxon achieved lasting fame in 2001 when she became the first woman to saddle up a Melbourne Cup winner, Ethereal . Laxon then was something of a national heroine, and notionally is again now, nearly a quarter of a century later. You can choose your own theory about the decline of the Melbourne Cup in the nation’s imagination, if that’s what it is. The change in the nation’s demographics, maybe?
Racing is only ever a mass-appeal sport at this time of year anyway. Else times, it’s an insiders’ pursuit. Rich, often famous, insiders, yes, who have their own fascination in our culture, but insiders nonetheless.
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