Oh, and by the way, it’s Cup time
Is it just me, or has the Melbourne Cup lost some of its lustre this year?
Normally, it’s the ‘race that stops the nation’ on the first Tuesday in November.
But this year’s lead-up to next Tuesday’s race seems to have lacked something. I put it down to the equine influenza outbreak.
For a start, EI has robbed the Cup of many of the top hopes. A prime example is our very own Links Avenue lollipop man Vic Gwynne.
Vic has a share in Empires Choice, which would have been a chance in the Cup. But the Bart Cummings-trained four-year-old who is a grandson of 1988 Cup winner Empire Rose is in lockdown at Randwick in Sydney after contracting the flu.
Secondly, all the racing news since August has been about the equine flu. Normally, the media build-up to the Cup starts about early October, and by November, the sports pages and TV and radio bulletins are all about the Cup and the team of overseas horses coming to raid our big event.
Thankfully, the drama surrounding EI is easing, and come next week, expect a barrage of interest as it dawns on us: It’s Cup time.
And Cup time means sweeps — at work, at the pub, and at Cup-day gatherings.
For those who don’t know what a sweep is, it’s fairly simple. You buy a ‘ticket’ for a couple of dollars (all the money is pooled for prizemoney) to go into a draw, and if you’re lucky enough, you draw one of the horses running in the Cup.
If you’re doubly lucky, you might draw the Cup winner, which means you win the majority of the sweep’s prizemoney.
Now, with horse racing, there’s always a hint of a scandal here and there — for example, there was the incident with the mighty Phar Lap (pictured) back in the 1930s when someone tried to shoot the Cup favourite.
Then, in the 1960s, there was the late scratching of the favourite Big Philou, which, in racing parlance, had been nobbled (that is, heavily drugged).
And, as always with racing, there’s for ever a new trick to be pulled.
One of my favourites surrounds a bookie, a milkman and one of the least-famous Melbourne Cup winners, a neddy by the name of Old Rowley.
Former top jockey Roy Higgins recounted the yarn in his book, The Jockey Who Laughed. But the man who first wrote the story was the famous racing journalist, Bert Lillye.
It was 1940 and wartime. No doubt times were tight and money was hard to come by.
So this SP bookie in Sydney, who thought Old Rowley was some sort of a chance, hit upon a very smart plan.
“I went into partnership with the local milkman, telling him to run Cup sweeps for his customers,” the bookie, Jack Foley, told Bert.
“There were 20 runners in the Cup and the milko got enough entries, 500 in fact, to run 25 sweeps.
“Then we told everyone that they had drawn Old Rowley and that there would only be one prize; for the winner, with nothing for second and third.
“We now had a nice bank for the Cup. I sent it to the course and bet the lot on Old Rowley at 100-1.
“When Old Rowley won the Cup, we paid every person who had entered the sweep 24-1 for their money. We pocketed the rest.
“It’s not every day that you can get 76-1 about a winner and have it all going to nothing.
“But it’s a funny thing; every one of the milko’s customers was tickled pink to have won the sweep!”
The beauty of this little plan: The bookie couldn’t lose. He bet with other people’s money. If Old Rowley didn’t win, the bookie wasn’t out of pocket.
And because every sweep entrant ‘drew’ Old Rowley, they all won. And had Old Rowley not won, the bookie wouldn ‘t have had to pay them.
Sheer genius!
PS: I usually watch the final lead-up races on Saturday (the MacKinnon Stakes is a good example) before deciding on my once-a-year-wager for the Cup. But this year I’m going on the Caulfield Cup form — my five bucks each-way will be going on Tawqeet.
