Is it just me, or has the shine of the Melbourne Cup well and truly dulled this year?
Maybe it’s the pandemic forcing everyone to stay home (and therefore robbing us of watching pissed berks at the races this year). Maybe it’s the U.S. election tomorrow and the feeling that all this – whatever ‘this’ is – will finally be over.
Of course, it could be that anti-horse racing advocates have managed, through years of tireless campaigning, to make the race that stops a nation a non-event. These days, it feels like purely the domain of dickheads in cheap suits and ‘racing identities’ in expensive ones. See: Tom Waterhouse.
Even the people I know this year who are dutifully stopping work in the afternoon and having a champers on the company dime are only doing it out of expectation and a free drink. There’s no huge YES MELBOURNE CUP! vibe. It’s just happening, I guess.
The Kath and Kim Melbourne Cup episode was a cultural highpoint. It’s all been downhill from there.
That was just a really long rant to introduce this Honest Government Ad for the Melbourne Cup, which might just convince you not to go ahead and put on that sneaky multi.
If you’re not familiar with Honest Government Ads, they’re a product of Juice Media, which describes itself as “98.9% genuine satire”. They’re bloody spot on takes about hot button issues, and are crack for your mate who loves to share a Facebook video.
This one takes a laser-focused view of the Melbourne Cup, which they’ve rebranded the Melbourne FuCup. (Say it out loud.)
“Hear that sound?” says a very official Victorien* Government spokesperson.
“It’s coming. No, that’s not race horses. That’s the sound of Tarocash-wearing, Moscato-skolling fuckers heading to the Flemington Racecourse, where they’ll get maggot and cheer as these sentient creatures are forced to run at lung-breaking speed, before leaving the joint looking like this.”
It’s pretty brutal. Here’s another sneak peak:
“The day when Melbourne regresses by two millennia to the age of the Colosseum, as horses are whipped, have their tongues tied, bleed from their nostrils – and in the lungs – snap their fucking legs, and get euthanised on the track, all for the amusement of semi-evolved primates.”
The Melbourne Cup ad was actually made last year, which is why it makes no mention of the pandemic closing Flemington Racecourse (and everything else) down.
But it’s been doing the rounds again this year, and is absolutely worth a watch.
A total 116 race horses were killed on track in Australia in the 12 months up to July 31, 2020, according to the latest Deathwatch report. That equates to about one horse every three days. Most were euthanised due to “catastrophic front limb injury”. At the Melbourne Cup alone, there have been six horse deaths since 2013.
It can be pretty easy to be morally against horse racing and yet go along with your workplace celebrations / chuck on a sneaky bet just to not miss out. Maybe this will be the final straw that has you going, actually, nah, Nup to the Cup.
