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.
On Tuesday, it was also a roomy bubble. Unlike previous years, wherever you wanted to go on the course, an inviting gap generally opened up the way it did for Knight’s Choice in the big race. Whether that was because of falling interest or a cap is moot.
This was a day for the converted and their guests. Melbourne Cup winner Knight’s Choice soaks in the adulation at Flemington. Credit: Joe Armao The charm this day was an archetypal, old-fashioned sort of winner.
Knight’s Choice was a 100-1 outsider who ran fifth in the Bendigo Cup last week. Jockey Robbie Dolan is an Irishman who was once a contestant on The Voice and who had not previously ridden in the race. Banjo Paterson would have made a rhyme out of all that.
Co-trainer Sheila Laxon achieved lasting fame in 2001 when she became the first woman to saddle up a Melbourne Cup winner, Ethereal (with the Caulfield Cup to boot). Laxon then was something of a national heroine, and notionally is again now, nearly a quarter of a century later. But just as the place of the Melbourne cup in Australia’s sporting affections is receding, so is our traditional fondness for the underdog diminishing.
It’s stars that take our gaze now, and there were f.