thy cup runeth over

This is called “eat crow time”. Yesterday on my website, before I went to the Melbourne Cup,  I wrote  the following:

“There is an adage in journalism: If you are right they never remember, if you are wrong they never forget. I remember an old salt who used to work for me when I was editor of the Sydney Sun. His name was Lou d’Alpuget. Father of Blanche who married the Silver Bodgie. She and I worked together as young reporters on The Sun. And she was breathtakingly beautiful way back then.

Lou’s nickname was “the seagoing ox” and he was ferocious on the water. Speaking of being wrong, he claimed in print in the 1960s that the American boat Ondine didn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning the Sydney-Hobart. It did. In record time.

So, as I said yesterday, by the time you read this I will either have been cleverly prescient. Or stunningly wrong. As I predicted on 3AW on Monday  Makybe Diva will not win the Melbourne Cup for a record third time. Even though racing officials have fallen for Lee Freedman’s blackmail and shamelessly watered the track to help her and Vinnie Roe.

Makybe Diva might pull a place. She is not in my reckless top three. They are:  six, seven and eight. Eye Popper, Railings and the New Zealand champ Xcellent. Although the artificial softness of the track will make Xcellent’s chances less than excellent.

Time will tell on that day that stops Australia.”

How wrong was I?  She came from nowhere and did it. A seven-year old mare. A three-time Melbourne Cup winner. The first ever I still, stubbornly, won’t admit that she is better than Phar Lap  -- the horse of all time.  But a helluva horse.

It was a stunning day at Flemington. A hot day. A people crushing day. And a lot of people drank too much too early.Young women in party dresses and hats, passed out with legs akimbo, is not a good look.

And for thousands of people it was almost ruined by officialdom. It took my partner and I more than an hour to walk from The Birdcage to the Winning Post marquees. You have to expect that when more than 130,000 people are jammed into a racecourse. But the VRC didn’t help. At one stage they had several thousand people crowded together in the heat with gates closed where the horses entered and left the track.  The horses had long gone. The Chubb security people – lacking in people skills – kept the gates closed. Some women were close to fainting.

It wasn’t until I challenged them that they said the gates would remain locked until after the Cup which was still almost two hours away. It was madness. It wasn’t the guards’ fault. Like Eichmann, they were only following orders. But several thousand people were treated like sheep. Absolute sheep.

We left and ultimately found a way through and then around the main grandstand. Literally stepping over bodies. Comatose drunks. It was bizarre. Well, it is the day that “stops the nation”. It certainly stopped a lot of them. I managed to salvage a bit of money with a place bet on Xcellent. But took a bath otherwise.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005