For the third year in a row, the Melbourne Cup was run without a fatality. It is a welcome sign Racing Victoria’s more stringent vetting protocols on horse fitness are working after a spate of European-trained horse deaths between 2013-21 tarnished the image of the race that stops a nation.

If the requirements lead to a perceived drop in quality of international horses from overseas but future-proofs Australia’s great race then so be it.

Mark Zahra wins the Melbourne Cup aboard Without A Fight.Credit: Getty Images

The race itself will go down as one of the more memorable editions not involving Makybe Diva or master trainer Bart Cummings.

In a brutally run race, Without A Fight became only the 12th horse to complete the treasured Caulfield-Melbourne Cups double, and the first since Ethereal in 2001. His time of three minutes 18.57 seconds was the eighth fastest in the race’s 163-year history.

The Freedman family won the race for a sixth time, this time under the names of Anthony and his son Sam, whose uncle Lee Freedman is a five-time winner. They still have plenty of work to catch Cummings on 12.

After a decade of decline, TV ratings were up with Channel Ten — in the final year of its broadcast deal before handing over to Nine, publisher of this masthead — boasting a 12 per cent rise in national viewers to 1.68 million from last year’s 1.5 million. There was also a spike in metro viewers, of eight per cent, from 1.02 million to 1.11 million.

But they are still well down on the 2.12 million in 2014, the catch being that general TV audiences have also declined in that period.

QOSHE - Fans flock back to the great race: The good, bad and ugly of the Melbourne Cup - Andrew Wu
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Fans flock back to the great race: The good, bad and ugly of the Melbourne Cup

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08.11.2023

For the third year in a row, the Melbourne Cup was run without a fatality. It is a welcome sign Racing Victoria’s more stringent vetting protocols on horse fitness are working after a spate of European-trained horse deaths between 2013-21 tarnished the image of the race that stops a nation.

If the requirements lead to a perceived drop in quality of international horses from........

© The Sydney Morning Herald


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