The present record holder is the 1990 winner Kingston Rule with a time of 3:16.3.
The best winners
Makybe Diva has won the Melbourne Cup on three occasions with other notable Melbourne Cup winners being Archer who won the first two editions of the race and arguably Australia's most well known horse Phar Lap who won the race in 1930.
Jockeys are entitled to 5% of the prize money earned and will usually also receive a small amount for booking the ride. While the race horse owners are entitled to keep the Melbourne Cup trophy, jockeys are presented with a miniature cup which is worth $10,000.
To answer that, a clarifying question is needed- over what distance? Ok, let's day Melbourne Cup distance- two miles. The race record for the Melbourne Cup is held by Kingston Rule (a horse) at 3min 16.3sec run in 1993. This equates to an average pace of 58.7km/h, or quite fast.
During the record-breaking race held in Pennsylvania, Winning Brew ran 70.76 km/h (43.97 mph) over two furlongs. This essentially means she ran 1/4th of a mile in just over 20 seconds. This happened on May 14th, 2008. To put things into perspective, most thoroughbred horses do best when running long distances.
Phar Lap became so successful that other horse trainers pulled out of the race when they heard he was competing. Phar Lap's greatest win was by 20 lengths in March 1930 at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. During his short life Phar Lap won 37 races out of the 51 he was entered in.
The initial entry fee is $600 per horse. Around 300 to 400 horses are nominated each year, but the final field is limited to 24 starters. Following the allocation of weights, the owner of each horse must on the four occasions before the race in November declare the horse as an acceptor and pay a fee.
The Everest is billed as the “world's richest race on turf” with twelve of the fastest horses competing over a distance of 1200 metres at Randwick Racecourse for prizemoney of $15,000,000. The Everest will be held on Saturday 14th October 2023 and won in 2022 by Giga Kick.
Melbourne Cup Barrier Statistics
However, no horse has won from barrier 18 in the 84 years that they've been in use.
Melbourne Cup statistics show that bay horses have won 73 of the 161 races to date, make it far and away the most successful colour in the event's history.
The $2.3m paid for Gold Trip was the most Bourne or Australian Bloodstock had been involved in.
In 1913, Donerail set a record that still stands today. Owned by Thomas P. Hayes, the thoroughbred entered the Kentucky Derby at 91-1 odds. In fact, Hayes was not convinced that he should enter the horse at all.
Winning age
Four and five-year-old horses have won the Cup 90 times.
The first-place winner in the 2023 race will get $1.86 million, with $186,000 going to the jockey. The runner-up will earn $600,000, with $30,000 going to the rider; third place will capture $300,000, with the jockey pocketing $15,000.
The Melbourne Cup is one of the world's richest horse races. Currently, the total prize money is over 6 million dollars, and this is distributed to the connections of each horse in the ratio of 85 percent to the owner, 10 percent to the trainer and 5 percent to the jockey.
Six horses have died in the Melbourne Cup, and seven in total on Cup Day, over the past decade. Here is the list of fatalities. Verema was a five-year-old French mare, owned by the Aga Khan. She suffered a broken leg during the 2013 Melbourne Cup and was put down on track.
Phar Lap was called "The Wonder Horse," "The Red Terror," and "Big Red" (the latter nickname was also given to two of the greatest United States racehorses, Man o' War and Secretariat). He was affectionately known as "Bobby" to his strapper Tommy Woodcock He was also sometimes referred to as "Australia's Wonder Horse."
The real money for jockeys comes from prize money, if they can ride a horse to finish first, second or third in a race and earn part of the purse. The percentages a jockey receives for a Thoroughbred race range from 5% for a second- or third-place finish to 10% for first place.
Clayton rode Azra to the winners circle at the Kentucky Derby in 1892, making him, at age fifteen, the youngest jockey to ever win the noted race.
Sadly, Phar Lap died on April 5, 1932 at only five years old. Woodcock found the horse in severe pain and running a high temperature. Within a few hours, Phar Lap died in Woodcock's arms. An autopsy was performed and it was revealed that the gelding's stomach and intestines were inflamed.
ON THE MORNING of Tuesday, 5 April 1932, Phar Lap, the racehorse legend, mysteriously collapsed at a farm outside San Francisco 16 days after he won the Agua Caliente handicap in Tijuana, Mexico. He died in the arms of Tommy Woodcock, his dedicated strapper and mate.
He won 14 races in 1931 alone, and won the 1930 Melbourne Cup while carrying an astonishing 62.6 kilogram handicap. His strength and endurance was so impressive people would talk about having 'a heart as big as Phar Lap'.