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 They believed the work of Melbournian, William Edwards, to be superior in both design and workmanship to the English made trophy. No trophy was awarded to the Melbourne Cup winner for the next eight years. In 1876 Edward Fischer, an immigrant from Austria, produced the first Australian-made trophy. It was an Etruscan shape with two handles. One side depicted a horse race with the grandstand and hill of Flemington in the background. The opposite side had the words "Melbourne Cup, 1876" and the name of the winning horse. A silver-plated base sporting three silver horses was added in 1888, but