First Melbourne Cup Horse Race

Over 100,000 fans frock up annually for Cup Day alone, where the days racing evolves around the A$8 million dollar Melbourne Cup. Fans, horses and trainers come from around the world for the tense 3-minute, 3200m race, where careers are made and lost. The Melbourne Cup was first created by the Victoria Turf Club, a group which would eventually transform into the Victoria Racing Club. Frederick Standish, a police commissioner, is credited with having the idea for a race on the site that would become Flemington Racecourse. 710 gold sovereigns were designated as the purse for the original race on November 7, 1861.

History of the Melbourne Cup

When the Melbourne Cup was first run in 1861, there were two organising committees controlling horse racing in Victoria, the Victorian Turf Club (1852) and the Victorian Jockeys Club (1857).

Melbourne Cup Horses 2020

The Melbourne Cup was introduced in 1861 by the Victorian Turf Club to trump the success of Victorian Jockey Club races such as the Two Thousand Guineas.

First Melbourne Cup Horse Race

As a handicap race, the Melbourne Cup introduced a level of speculation that the club hoped would attract more entries, and therefore higher prize money. The two competing organisations disbanded in 1864, before merging to form the Victorian Racing Club, which has controlled racing in Victoria and the Melbourne Cup ever since.

Although the Melbourne Cup today is well-known in Australia for being run on the first Tuesday in November, this hasn’t always been the case. The 1866 Melbourne Cup race was run on a Thursday, and in 1867 the Cup was run in October. It wasn’t until 1875 that the race was run on the first Tuesday of November.

Although the three-handled loving cup is widely recognised as the traditional cup design, this has only been the case since 1919. Before then the cups came in a variety of styles, with each year having a completely original design. Some years no trophy was presented at all. In fact, for the first few decades of the race, it was more common for no trophy to be awarded.

Melbourne Cup Horses

In 1861, at the first running of the Melbourne Cup, the race club committee could hardly have envisaged the Cup lasting a century and a half and growing to become a significant part of our social and sporting culture. In front of an estimated crowd of 4000 people, Archer became the first winner of.