Melbourne Cup Melbourne Cup The Melbourne Cup is Australia's most well known annual Thoroughbred horse race. It is a 3,200 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 3pm on the first Tuesday in November and is known locally as "the race that stops a nation". The Melbourne Cup has a long tradition, with the first race held in 1861. It was originally
Melbourne Cup 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. Melbourne Cup day is a public holiday for all working within metropolitan Melbourne and some parts of regional Victoria, but not for some country Victorian cities and towns which hold their own spring carnivals. For federal public servants it is also observed as a holiday in the entire state of Victoria, and from 2007