Melbourne Cup 2014 - A sad day in Stuff

Today was the Melbourne Cup - ‘The Race That Stops A Nation’ as it’s always been known. Where people stop what they are doing for three minutes to turn on a TV or a radio. Even when I was in school, we’d all be rushed down to the library to either watch the result, or the teacher would have brought a radio in for the day.

I’ve been known to have a bet in the past, mainly since becoming an adult. In fact, it’d pretty much the only day of the year I’ve really gambled and even then no more than around $20. I wouldn’t have a clue about horses, really, or who was even running.

I slept straight through this years event haha, only turning the TV on to catch the final two races of the race day down at Flemington. I don’t even know which race number is the main race. The race I saw, if you guessed the first four places correctly, you’d be $500,000 richer from a $1 bet.

I was shocked however to hear of the fate of the horse that was favourite to win it. I remember hearing about this horse doing well in previous races in the lead-up to the Melbourne Cup.
From what I hear, apparently it was a heart-attack.

It does cross my mind how barbaric this event might actually be. I’m not gonna go into a whole spiel about it. Enough people on Facebook are doing that already. Then I hear another horse also died after the event. Someone posted something like 125 horses have died in Australian horse racing over the past 12 months.
Pretty crazy. You don’t hear about stuff like this though because of the millions of dollars the event is worth. All you hear about is the money, the trophy, the fashion and the thousands of legless girls who’ve had a little too much champers.

Poor horsies.