CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
With only one sleep until the Melbourne Cup, Racing Victoria have today come out strong in its efforts to unite the nation around the race that stops it.
This comes after the racing industry reported a 7.5 per cent decline in Spring Carnival betting, a noted dip from the record-high numbers that were recorded this time last year.
Speaking of fast horses, Listen below to hear our exclusive interview with Olympic gold medalist, Mack ‘The Brighton Stallion’ Horton
Sydney’s $40 million Everest has taken the biggest blow, with 24 percent slump in betting after a scandalous 18 months that saw the Opera House desecrated as a billboard for the event and Racing NSW at the centre of a Four Corners report that implicated them in the unethical slaughter of thousands of slow ponies.
On the same day as Everest, a Japanese horse controversially took out the $5 million Caulfield Cup for the second time in six years, with Mer De Glace winning the opening raceday that marked the commencent of the 2019 Spring Carnival.
While prominent racehorse owners who guise as conservative talkback radio announcers criticise the state of Australia racing for not including more horses that they own, an even louder voice is also condemning the national past time from the other side of the political spectrum.
The 2019 Melbourne Cup will mark the 13th-year of Newton and Brunswick’s growing anti-horse racing campaign, which has surprisingly only existed as long as Twitter has.
Much like the anti-beef vegan farm invaders, the #NupToTheCup movement’s demands for politicians to immediately shut down a multibillion-dollar and historic Australian industry has yet to achieve anything other than convince everyday voters that that everything they hold dear is under attack from a militant left-wing PC brigade who can only be stopped by the firm hand of a Pentecostal teetotaller from Cronulla who doesn’t believe in science.
However, in an effort to show corporate leadership on this issue, Racing Victoria appears to have neutralised the debate this year, by using a Rainbow Flag to hide the on-track euthanisation of injured racehorses -instead of the usual gun-metal grey tarp.
The innovative new plan was debuted at Derby Day at Flemington over the weekend, and has so far worked wonders to diffuse the protestors online.
One prominent anti-horse Racing protestor, Banjo Clementè (42, Graphic Designer, Enmore) says as a straight white man, he’s not sure if he has the right to criticise Racing Victorian anymore.
“I’m not sure… It kind of changes the whole way I view this industry….”
Banjo says that Racing Victoria’s outspoken support for his LGBTQI brothers and sisters is something that definitely sets them apart from other, less queer-friendly institutions, like the government.
“I haven’t spoken to my gay friends about it, but I would hate to say anything that upsets them. I didn’t know racing was so big in the gay community”
He says the new rainbow tarp reminds him a lot of the time that Nike used civil rights activist and NFL player Colin Kaepernick as the face of their Spring Summer catalogue, which caused him to forgot about the Bangaledeshi sweatshops overnight.
“I just guess it’s hard to argue against something that isn’t strictly targeted to bogans like the ones I went to high school with in the suburbs…”
“This rainbow flag has really thrown me”
