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Saturday, October 30, 2010

CARE: Recycled Blog




It's that time of the year again and I was so pleased with the Blog I wrote about this subject last year - which barely flickered on any reader's Blog-Interest-O-Meter that I am running it again.

One of the best things about being in Vienna is NOT being in Australia for the Melbourne Cup.

For those of you who may not be aware of the Melbourne Cup – it is a horse race. 

Horse racing is an Australian media-driven obsession – to the extent that some years ago a horse trainer won an Australian “Sportsman of the Year” Award. 

The Melbourne Cup is a horse race which the media has turned into a ghastly, frothing, dribbling extravaganza of gruesome schlock which starts weeks before the event and culminates in an orgy of gambling, alcohol and offensive displays which on a normal day would merit public floggings or prison sentences.

On race day there are live broadcasts ALL DAY by TV and Radio from the racecourse. 

There are Melbourne Cup lunches at which people get dressed up like drug crazed pimps and where they drink alcohol until they fall unconscious head first into their Pavlovas.

Women at the race get dressed up in funny clothes and hats. Poor tortured tarts with gigantic heels, grotesque hats and tits everywhere totter around the grounds and the bars displaying hats that look like they were designed by Edvard Munch on his second bottle of Absinthe. 

People get blind staggering drunk all over Australia and especially at the racecourse and make complete asses of themselves on TV. People queue for hours to bet on horses. There are obligatory office sweeps where you choose a horse out of a hat.

At race time the nation stops and EVERYONE has to watch this gruesome spectacle – which lasts for about three minutes.

And in the end – a brown horse wins the race. The trainer is a hero and gets a prize, the jockey is a hero and gets a prize, the strapper is a hero and gets a bonus. The owner is a hero and gets a prize.

The horse….well the horse gets nothing except perhaps an extra helping of oats – which is much better than if it falls over an breaks a leg – because then they shoot it.

I would change the rules. If the horse falls over and breaks a leg they put the horse in traction and shoot both the jockey and the owner. This would encourage greater horse care. 

Horses wearing Ugg boots would be walked gingerly around the tracks by the jockeys. No one would mind that - the added bonus would be that the races would go for much longer – probably 30 minutes. More time for alcohol, stripping naked and vomiting on the grass.

For me it was the single worst day of the year – every year. It is singly and uniquely the most fruitless, pointless, shudderingly grisly awful waste of time and energy in the entire history of humanity.

But then I am just a curmudgeon so don’t listen to me.

PS: I have nothing against horses. It's what they do to them that I dislike. 

8 comments:

  1. Derby Day photo - Dame Edna looking very glam, not like the stick models and other women with half a yard of material sort of wrapped around them...
    http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/sport/horseracing/derby-day-crowds/20101030-177ym.html?selectedImage=17

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  2. Well then, I'll just always bet on the brown horse!

    Hmmm...but you like the Super Bowl, right? I don't think there are any sporting events I could get excited about. Except for luge.

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  3. Who'd have thunk that there is a Kentucky Derby Day Down Under! ;-)

    I wonder if they would let me wear my dirndl?

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  4. You know, after reading that, I have to agree with you totally!! Well said you!!! ;o)))
    Now I know why I've never enjoyed the day.

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  5. So you don't like the Melbourne Cup much?

    (couldn't care less about it personally)

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  6. Off Topic:
    I know it's Halloween and supposed to be a bit spooky tonight, but encountering "your" ALL YOU CAN EAT Coupon "In Wien" on a blog in the California Bay Area is a bit much even on a night like this, don't you agree? *hoohoo*

    Happy Halloween!
    I had little ghosts and witches at my door, miracle! :-)

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  7. shooting the jokey could just work - perhaps they should hold one up and shoot it before the race as a warning to the others. Never trusted jockeys - skinny little people in silk - wrong

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  8. Annie: I sometimes worry about Barry Humphries.

    Wanderlust: You and your luge fetish. Wrapped in an Oz flag no doubt.

    Merisi: Aussies would love Dirndls.

    Pam: There are not many of us.

    Merisi: There is no escaping that one (It cannot find me when I use my Latvian vpn)



    white rabbit: Dislike? not really - I just don't understand it.

    Glen: Excellent idea. I will bounce if off the Australian Jockey Club.

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