The hot takes on Melbourne Cup Day can be exhausting. You have the hot takes about why horse racing is brutal and bad, then the counter-hot takes about how it’s actually fine, then the counter-counter-hot takes about how the people who said it’s actually fine are idiots.
Whatever angle you take – and honestly, if you’re going in hard defending the race itself, you don’t have much ammo – you can kick back and chill out with a legendary, universally hilarious Melbourne Cup take from back in 2012.
Written by Paul Sheehan – who you may remember as the disgraced Fairfax columnist who lost his job thanks to a poorly-researched, racist hackjob of an article – it is unquestionably one of the thirstiest columns ever published under the masthead of the Sydney Morning Herald. The man who was once the paper’s resident conservative spent a column, which he was presumably paid quite a lot for, waxing lyrical about commentator and former jockey Francesca Cumani.
Behold:
The trigger was Channel Seven’s coverage of cup week. It was anchored by three roughies and a thoroughbred. The thoroughbred was the only woman on the anchor panel, an English import, Francesca Cumani, who floated elegantly above the fray, intimately involved and yet apart.
Woof. What an opener.
Cumani may have a dark side – I’ve never met her and almost certainly never will – but on camera she betrays no self-absorption and no vacuity. At 29, she has left no trail of scandal, controversy, conflict or fodder for the prurient.On race day, with so much bogan chic on parade, Cumani opted for simple elegance.Beauty is commonplace but beauty plus intelligence, lucidity, courage and loyalty is an altogether more rarefied combination. It is a combination that can be found in men but its highest expression is in women.
Okay, Paul. Why are you writing this? What value –
Courage. Cumani is an excellent rider and a former jockey. It takes courage to take a race horse to full gallop. She said in an interview last year: “A lot to do with racing is your nerve, and holding it. The moment you lose your nerve or get scared, the horse can really sense it.” I still vividly recall the few times I’ve been on a horse at full gallop and they were only pluggers. I can only imagine the force of being on a frothing stallion with its ears back.
Let me repeat that last sentence to you, and tell me that Sheehan’s intentions in writing this column about a married woman he has never met are in any way pure:
I still vividly recall the few times I’ve been on a horse at full gallop and they were only pluggers. I can only imagine the force of being on a frothing stallion with its ears back.
Allow me to reiterate: HE. HAD. NEVER. MET. HER.
Read the full column HERE, if you dare.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Getty Images.
