In his book, Great Sporting Sites, GLEN HUMPHRIES showcases a collection of Australia’s most iconic venues. And in this edited extract we go trackside to two of the nation’s most famous racecourses…
Flemington Racecourse
448 Epsom Road, Flemington, Melbourne, Victoria
Date opened: 1840 Capacity: 120,000
Run on the first Tuesday in November each year, the Melbourne Cup is well known as the race that stops a nation. That surprised no lesser man than famed American novelist Mark Twain, who visited Flemington Racecourse as part of a world tour and observed in 1895: ‘Nowhere in my travels have I encountered a festival of the people that had such a magnetic appeal to the whole nation. The Cup astonishes me.’
For more than 160 years Flemington Racecourse, on the banks of the Maribyrnong River, has become a mecca for sports-mad punters, seasoned fashionistas and the world thoroughbred community. Flemington and its signature race predate Australian Federation by a good 50 years, so is it any wonder both have become an important part of the Australian sporting psyche?
In the 1850s Victoria was experiencing the gold rush that had seen the city’s population explode to 500,000. Interstate rivalry was still in its infancy when Melbourne racing interests proposed a championship of the colonial turf. Three-mile (4,800m) slugfests were the norm, but Victorians settled on a two-mile (3,200m) handicap that would attract the best thoroughbreds from the separate colonies and even across the Tasman. The Cup was born!
Described at the time as the perfect race for Australia, the Melbourne Cup was inaugurated in 1861 as the showcase event for a three-day racing carnival at Melbourne Racecourse, later renamed Flemington.
The Victoria Turf Club (later Victoria Racing Club) promoted the race with prize money made up of 20 sovereigns per nomination, with 10 sovereigns forfeited if a horse was a non-runner. The inaugural running of the race, which did not offer its now distinctive three-handled cup as a prize but a winner take all sweepstake of £710, attracted just 57 entries, with five late entries allowed.
Many believe that the running of the Cup at Flemington is perhaps a reflection of the true nature of Australian society. A gruelling race where the pace is on all the way, the handicap conditions ensure that the best horses are weighted to their true ability, meaning every horse, owner and punter gets their chance. It is now part of popular history that the Sydney galloper Archer not only won the first Melbourne Cup but also backed up the following year for another win.
With Flemington easily accessed by road, river or rail, the Cup quickly became an important part of Melbourne’s social calendar. In 1888 more than 100,000 people watched Grand Flaneur win the Melbourne Cup at a time when the city’s population was just 280,000. Over the years Flemington Racecourse was continually modernised to cater for the huge crowds: grandstands were built, a large fountain erected on the public lawn and even a Temperance pagoda, now long gone, were featured there.
The centre of the racecourse, known as The Flat, became a very popular vantage point among the working class because they could go to the Cup and join in the festivities. Attracting crowds of 20,000, The Flat was closed in 1963 and redeveloped as a car park but it made a stunning comeback in the 1980s with the development of corporate spaces. The establishment of the Birdcage hub in the members’ car park has only enhanced the experience.
Today, thousands of people from around the country and internationally come to Flemington Racecourse for Cup week in the first week of November, starting with Derby Day on Saturday, Cup Day on Tuesday, Oaks Day on Thursday and Champions Stakes Day on Saturday.
In 2023, following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, a combined 262,000 people attended carnival week. As well, conservative figures indicate that more than half of Australia’s population tune in to the Cup. The race adds half a billion dollars to the Victorian economy, and in 2020 a record $221 million was wagered on the race. More money is bet on the Cup than on any other race around the world.
Ever since English model Jean Shrimpton turned heads in 1965 when she attended Cup Day in a short white dress, bare legs and no gloves or hat, fashion has played a big part of going to Flemington. Thousands take part in Australia’s biggest party, dressing up in the corporates or milling with regular punters on the flat. Flemington is the place to be and be seen during Cup Week despite that great unpredictable: the fickle Melbourne weather.
The first race in Australia to be worth $1 million – in 1985, when the Cup was sponsored by brewers Fosters – the Cup prize money now totals $8.4 million, which isn’t even the richest race in the country. The $10 million The Everest, run at Randwick, holds that distinction. However, the Flemington course supplies that added magic as a place where millionaire owners and international trainers can mix with small country trainers and syndicates of battlers.
Flemington has witnessed many champions over the years including Carbine, whose 1890 Cup success was seen as the pinnacle of the race until the great Phar Lap came along in the 1930s. The new century was dominated by the incredible mare Makybe Diva, who became the first and only thoroughbred to win three Cups. However, racing comes around all year long and the race track hosts many other classics that get the heart pumping, such as the Lightning Stakes (1,000m), Newmarket Handicap (1,200m) and Australian Cup (2,000m) in autumn, a competitive winter carnival and the time-honoured Bagot (2,500m) and Standish (1,200m) handicaps early in the new year. For many Australians, attending Flemington Racecourse during Cup Week has become a rite of passage. To be trackside when history is made remains an undeniable lure.
Royal Randwick
Alison Road, Randwick, Sydney, New South Wales
Date opened: 1833 Capacity: 50,000
Thoroughbred racing is known around the world as the sport of kings, but in Australia it’s very much an egalitarian pursuit in which the humble punter can enter any racecourse like a pauper and leave as a prince. Randwick Racecourse is not only one of the country’s oldest race tracks, but its elevation to ‘Royal’ Randwick status in 1992 to honour a visit by Queen Elizabeth II added to its prestige as a supreme sporting destination.
Designated as a racecourse by New South Wales governor Richard Bourke in 1833, it wasn’t until 1860 with the formation of the Australian Jockey Club (AJC) that the Sandy Course at Randwick became a formal racing venue for Sydney punters. Over the next 100 years races such as the AJC Derby (1½ miles), Sydney Cup (2 miles), Doncaster Handicap (1 mile), Epsom Handicap (1 mile) and The Metropolitan (1¾ miles) became important fixtures on the Australian racing calendar.
Randwick quickly became known as racing headquarters in New South Wales, with premier trainers Frank McGrath, Tommy Smith and, later, Bart Cummings, setting up base there. From their stables such champions as Phar Lap, Tulloch, Kingston Town and Saintly forged their names in racing history. There have been far too many memorable racing moments at Randwick to mention here, although the deeds of the great Kingstown Town, who won the AJC Derby–Sydney Cup double in consecutive weeks in 1980, the unbeaten sprinter Black Caviar and the immortal Winx, who both won their final races there, readily come to mind.
Situated in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs close to trams (back in the day) and today’s light rail, Randwick has always been a popular destination for sporting fans. In the 1920s and 1930s, considered to be the golden age of racing, almost 500 trams transferred 90,000 race-goers to the venue from Sydney’s Central Station. In April 1948 a record 98,000 people revelling in Australia’s post-war boom swarmed through the racecourse’s signature black gates on Doncaster Day to see the great George Moore get the money on The Diver. Although modern-day crowds are only half that size, Royal Randwick continues to reinvent itself under the stewardship of the Australian Turf Club (ATC).
There was a time when Randwick had just one grandstand: the members-only Official Stand, built in 1886, with its predominantly white façade and stylish steel railings that remain today. Hundreds of licensed bookmakers catered for punters spilling over into the far St Leger paddock. The New Ladies (1910) and St Leger (1911) stands handled the increasing crowds, while the 1969 construction of the all-purpose Queen Elizabeth II Stand was a sign of the times, although it was considered architecturally out of step with the olde-worlde décor of the existing buildings.
Interestingly, the QEII Stand and the hastily built Paddock Stand in 1992 did not survive the test of time: both were torn down or gutted in 2013 when the course underwent a major facelift.
The venue wasn’t just used for racing. In the 1970s it hosted such rock royalty as Creedence Clearwater Revival (1972), Slade and the Rolling Stones (both 1973) and even Elton John (1974). On the other side of the cultural spectrum, Pope Paul VI celebrated mass there in 1970, Pope John Paul II beatified Mary Mackillop on course in 1995 and an estimated 400,000 Catholics attended World Youth Day on site in 2008. While these events may have expanded the racecourse’s cultural footprint, thoroughbred veterans were not impressed with interruptions to their core business – the festival of the horse – although a $40 million government compensation package certainly helped.
Today, Royal Randwick attracts a broader demographic than just the hardened punter or racing enthusiast. Come carnival time, Randwick has become the destination for well-healed Millennials, who are just as happy to glam up and party with friends as they are to chase the best odds about a particular horse they fancy. Most bet on their phones, which were banned on racecourses for a time in the early 1990s, with a drink in hand, and are just as likely to hang around after the last race for the band to start.
This is the great paradox of modern racing: cashed up with millions of dollars in revenue from corporate bookmakers, the ATC are able to fund new races such as The Everest – a $10 million race, the second highest prize money in the world – and spend money willy nilly on facilities and self-promotion to bring the crowds flooding back to Randwick. While racing purists derided the ATC’s decision to relocate the pre-race parade of racehorses behind the grandstand in the ostentatiously named Theatre of the Horse, for example, it was largely the younger generation – even those too young to bet – who flocked to the course to cheer on Black Caviar and Winx and bought the caps and flags and other merchandise. No wonder the club named their new grandstand after Winx in 2020.
In April 2019 a modern-day record 43,000 fans packed Randwick to watch the once in a lifetime champion mare Winx run in her last race, aptly the $4 million Queen Elizabeth II Stakes (2,000m). The scene of many of Winx’s greatest victories – 19 of the mare’s record 33 consecutive wins were at Randwick, including 13 at Group I level – success in her final race seemed a foregone conclusion with the mare starting at the unbackable short odds of $1.06, so why did so many people go there? ‘To have so many people out here to see her,’ the mare’s trainer Chris Waller said after Winx won her final race. ‘[They] are just happy to be a part of this.’ That’s the point: visit Royal Randwick and you feel like a royal.
This is an edited extract from GREAT SPORTING SITES by Glen Humphries (Gelding Street Press, $39.99) now available at Dymocks, QBD and all good bookstores
By Alan Whiticker
