Trump Takes a Beating, Maher Takes the Cup
It’s been quite a week for watching the results come in.
Over in America, voters have sent Donald J. Trump a message, handing the Democrats control of both houses of Congress. I’m delighted, although I’m far from convinced the intended recipient will understand it.
The sight of him standing in the building site of his ballroom after the Republican drubbing brought Emperor Nero to mind. There’s your party licking its wounds, and you’re showing everyone the plans for your magnificent new room. You have to wonder what it would take to get his attention.
I’d be surprised if the whispering about the party’s future hasn’t already started. That’s speculation on my part, although Republicans are publicly calling for a change of course. Politicians tend to become considerably less devoted to a leader when following him starts costing them their seats.
But enough of American politics. There was another result this week that deserves some attention, and the participants were much better looking.
I’ve always been a huge Melbourne Cup fan. That little girl obsession with horses followed me into adulthood, even though my opportunities to spend time with the actual animals became rather limited.
I rode in my mid-teens, but developed an allergy to animal hair, particularly horses. My lungs don’t operate properly, my eyes and nose run, and the whole experience loses its charm. I still love horses. My respiratory system has other opinions.
I actually attended the Cup at Flemington in 1973, the year Gala Supreme won. That was the last time I went to a race course.
The enthusiasm for the race survived, though. When I was at teacher’s college, I asked our lecturer for a five-minute break so we could all listen to the Melbourne Cup. This was a graduate diploma course, with a small class of older students. Surely our education could accommodate a brief interruption for an event of national importance?
That was 1976, the year it poured with rain and Van der Hum won. The similarity to my surname did not go unnoticed. Cute. A horse with something approaching the right name, winning in weather that would have had me looking for the nearest roof.
This year, 97,112 people attended Flemington, the biggest Cup Day crowd since 2016. They witnessed something that had never happened in the race’s 166 runnings. Ciaron Maher trained all three placegetters: Point of Law, Zahrann and Juja Kibo. Winning one Melbourne Cup would be enough to keep most people smiling for years. Training the first three home must take a bit of absorbing.
Maher started with a handful of horses on his family’s dairy farm near Warrnambool in western Victoria. That’s quite a journey from the farm to a Melbourne Cup trifecta.
There’s even a royal connection. Point of Law was bought from King Charles and Queen Camilla earlier this year.
And now I have a date of my own coming up, although there are no horses involved.
The Admiral and the Pilot arrives on 15 November, with 20% off at my store. There are spaceships, political intrigue, disappearing ships, and a romance neither of the main characters expected. Plenty to keep an admiral and a former Fleet fighter pilot occupied.
You can meet them and read the opening chapter on The Admiral and the Pilot page.
No exposure to horse hair required. 🙂
