page_title: Melbourne Cup
section_title: Recent years
hierarchical_section_title: Melbourne Cup / History / Recent years
caption_attribution_description: Flemington Race Course, Melbourne, Australia
context_page_description: The Melbourne Cup is Australia's most famous annual Thoroughbred horse race. It is a 3200-metre race for three-year-olds and over, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria as part of the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival. It is the richest "two-mile" handicap in the world and one of the richest turf races. The event starts at 3:00 pm on the first Tuesday of November and is known locally as "the race that stops the nation".
  The Melbourne Cup has a long tradition, with the first race held in 1861. It was originally over two miles but was shortened to 3,200 metres in 1972 when Australia adopted the metric system. This reduced the distance by 18.688 metres, and Rain Lover's 1968 race record of 3:19.1 was accordingly adjusted to 3:17.9. The present record holder is the 1990 winner Kingston Rule with a time of 3:16.3.
context_section_description: The race has undergone several alterations in recent years, the most visible being the entry of many foreign-trained horses. Most have failed to cope with the conditions; the three successful "foreign raids" include two by Irish trainer Dermot K. Weld successful in 1993 and 2002, and one in 2006 by Katsumi Yoshida of Japan's renowned Yoshida racing and breeding family. The attraction for foreigners to compete was, primarily, the low-profile change to the new "quality handicap" weighting system.
  The 1910 Melbourne Cup was won by Comedy King, the first foreign bred horse to do so. Subsequent foreign bred horses to win Cup were Backwood 1924; Phar Lap 1930; Wotan 1936; Beldale Ball 1980; At Talaq 1986; Kingston Rule 1990; Vintage Crop 1993; Jeune 1994; Media Puzzle 2002; Makybe Diva 2003, 2004, 2005; Americain 2010 and Dunaden 2011.
  The 1938 Melbourne Cup was won by trainer Mrs. Allan McDonald, who conditioned Catalogue. Mrs McDonald was a successful trainer in New Zealand, however, at the time women were not allowed to compete as trainers in Australia so her husband's name was officially recorded as the winning trainer. The 2001 edition was won by New Zealand mare Ethereal, trained by Sheila Laxon, the first woman to formally train a Melbourne Cup winner. She also won the Caulfield Cup, a 2,400-metre race also held in Melbourne, and therefore has won the "Cups Double".
  Maree Lyndon became the first female to ride in the Melbourne Cup, when she partnered Argonaut Style in 1987, in which she ran second last in the 21 horse field.
  In 2004, Makybe Diva became the first mare to win two cups, and also the first horse to win with different trainers, after David Hall moved to Hong Kong and transferred her to the Lee Freedman stables.
  The 2005 Melbourne Cup was held before a crowd of 106,479. Makybe Diva made history by becoming the only horse to win the race three times. Trainer Lee Freedman said after the race,  "Go and find the youngest child on the course because that's the only person here who will have a chance of seeing this happen again in their lifetime."
  Due to the 2007 Australian equine influenza outbreak, believed to have been started by a horse brought into Australia from Japan, neither Delta Blues nor Pop Rock participated in the 2007 Melbourne Cup. Both horses had been stabled in Japan. Corowa, NSW trained "Leica Falcon" also was not be permitted to race in Victoria, despite Corowa being close to the Victorian border. Leica Falcon was ordained as the new staying star of Australian racing in 2005 when he ran fourth in both the Caulfield Cup and in Makybe Diva's famous third Melbourne Cup victory. But serious leg injuries saw the horse not race for another 20 months. Efficient, the previous year's VRC Derby winner, won the race.
  In 2013, Damien Oliver returned from an eight-month ban, after betting against his own mount at a previous race meet, to win his 3rd Melbourne cup.
  The 2019 Melbourne Cup was overshadowed by recent news of the ill-treatment of horses in the Australian racing industry, and by the pulling out of notable celebrities including Taylor Swift, Megan Gale, and X-Men actress Lana Condor.
caption: 140-degree panorama of the racecourse
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