Flemington Racecourse The first Melbourne Cup was run in 1861. In 1871 the Victoria Racing Club Act was passed, giving the VRC legal control over Flemington Racecourse. The racecourse is shaped not unlike a pear, and boasts a six-furlong (1,200 m) straight known as 'the Straight Six.' The track has a circumference of and a final straight of for race distances over . Races are run in an anti-clockwise direction. The course has a crowd capacity of over 120,000 and contains three grandstands. The biggest ever attendance was on Victoria Derby Day in 2006 when 129,069 people saw Efficient win the Victoria
Saratoga Race Course been "twilight racing", where the first race post time is at 2:30 pm on some days, previously 2:45 PM. The following are Graded stakes races run at Saratoga: Buried at Clare Court Jogging Track are Fourstardave, Mourjane (IRE) and A Phenomenon. Champion filly Go For Wand, who suffered a fatal injury during the stretch run of the 1990 Breeders Cup Distaff, is buried in the Saratoga Race Course infield. The Race Course is the setting of a scene early on in the Ian Fleming James Bond novel "Diamonds Are Forever". It also is the setting of Sherwood Anderson's short story