lucky day

Was anyone else super lucky at cup day??
I won $50 in our work sweeps, and finished with 1st, 2nd and last at home!
For anyone who doesn't live in Australia (or who lives under a rock in Australia!!) the Melbourne cup is the biggest horse racing event in the southern hemisphere.
At offices all across the country work stopped at 3pm today. In Melbourne the whole day is a public holiday.

I remember watching the cup when I was at school, as young as 5 or 6 years old (yep, we start the gambling early!). During the day the sweep would be run, and you'd spend every second til the race started trying to memorise your horse's name and number, and jockey's colours. Then we'd cram into one class room, huddle around the tv and cheer them through the 3200m.

Later, at ages 15 through 17 - when I was in years 10, 11 and 12 - I was home on 'study' break through cup week. I have to admit, quite a bit of the study I did was of the form guide. Dad and I used to pick horses for each race on each of the major days of the spring racing carnival - Caufield Cup day, Cox Plate day, Victoria Derby Day, Cup Day, Crown Oaks day and Emirates Stakes day - and keep a tally of our mock bets.

After I left home I would bet for real on the major races of the big race days. One year I went with uni friends to All Bar Nun in O'Connor. We bought a bottle of champagne, then slipped into the supermarket next door to buy strawberries to make our own champagne cocktails - we didn't have a knife so had to bite the berries into smaller bits to drop into our (own) drinks!!!

It think my record for picking winners has been pretty good - I certainly can't remember being disappointed about not winning.
I don't usually get around to reading the form guide these days, but I find picking a horse that I 'have a feeling about' can work pretty well, and I'm a big believer that the horse's name is important when picking your winner - totally worked for me the year Brew ran!

This year it was all about the name.
J-mo's 'co-tenant' is a big racing fan - he even keeps spread sheets on the horses' recent performance!
He had tipped us off that there is always a connection between the horse that won 100 years ago and the horse that wins now.

100 years ago Poseidon won (and no, Poseidon was not just a crap movie hehe).
Poseidon was a god of Greek mythology - most famously the Greek god of the sea (he was also the god of horses!). So all we had to do was find the horse who carried the message of the greek ocean. "Dolphin Jo" - Dolphins are associated with Poseidon. One of the other horses was sired by a stallion with a greek name. It even got as far out as this: "Land and Stars" - Poseidon could cause earthquakes, so there's the Land, and Poseidon's Roman counterpart Neptune has a planet named after him, and planets are nearly stars, right?


Some how he managed to miss the one I thought was most obvious. We were making fun of this method, and so put in an anonymous trackside tip to the co-tenant - "Put everything on Delta Blues. Delta is a greek letter, blue like the ocean" - then hung up.
And I think we know who came in first!!!!

I wonder if it is too early to start research on next years winner yet....can someone google APOLOGUE....? please?

hope your luck was good!

besos =)