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
Women's horse racing in Australia century. By the late 1920s, there were efforts to ban horse racing in Australia because the sport was seen to have a corrupting influence on Australian women. In 1934, the first female owned horse was entered in the Melbourne Cup. Women were involved in horse racing around the country by the 1930s. They were among the attendees at a 1939 race in Yass, New South Wales. By the 1950s, women were dominant in the horse racing industry, with several wealthy women such as Elizabeth Arden being well known owners and Elizabeth Dangerfield, Elsie Morris and Judy Johnson being well known