Melbourne Cup lucky numbers: Rostropovich favoured to win based on history

YUCATAN is the favourite to win the Melbourne Cup but we’ve discovered one very important reason you shouldn’t back it. We have crunched the historic numbers, looked at winning barriers, age of horse and even their names and found the winner.

Melbourne Cup winning jockey Corey Brown on a horse in the Flemington archways. Brown, who was on board Rekindling to win last year's Cup, will be a new Lexus ambassador. PictureTony Gough

THE TAB has crunched the numbers and historical data points to Rostropovich winning the Melbourne Cup.

Rostropovich and Yucatan share several traits needed to win the Melbourne Cup.

Both are stallions — and they’ve won the most Cups with 67.

They are also bays, which has been the most successful colour, having won it 68 times.

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Four and five-year-olds have both won the Melbourne Cup on 44 occasions — Rostropovich is a four-year-old and Yucatan a five-year-old.

Horses with one word in their names have also been the most successful, having won 89 times.

Rostropovich gets the nod after taking into account the starting letters of winners — horses whose names start with the letter R have won on 11 occasions.

But the big point of note — no horse with a name starting with Y has won the race.

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Melbourne Cup winning jockey Corey Brown on a horse in the Flemington archways

MELBOURNE CUP BY THE NUMBERS

THE SEX

67 stallions; 53 geldings; 21 colts; 13 mares; 3 fillies.

COLOUR

68 bay; 39 brown; 34 chestnut; 6 grey; 5 bay/brown; 3 black; 2 brown/black.

AGE OF WINNERS

44: 4 & 5 Three four-year-olds have won since Efficient won in 2007, while Protectionist and Viewed were five-year-olds winning in the past 10 years.

33: 6 The last was Prince Of Penzance in 2015.

23: 3 Skipton is the last three-year-old to win, way back in 1941.

11: 7 Almandin was a seven-year-old when he saluted in 2016.

2: 8 We haven’t had one since Catalogue won in 1938.

WINNERS STARTING WITH EACH LETTER

T: 16 wins (Tawrrific, trained by Lee Freedman and ridden by Shane Dye, was the latest in 1989)

P: 14 (In 2015, Prince Of Penzance wrote Michelle Payne into racing folklore as the first female jockey to win the Cup)

M & S: 12 (Triple winner Makybe Diva and 2009 victor Shocking fit the bill here)

B & R: 11 (Rogan Josh in 1999 followed by Brew in 2000)

WEIGHT

53kg — 9 times

52.5, 54.5 — 8 times

47, 48, 51, 52, 56: — 7 times

WINNERS WITH NUMBER OF WORDS IN NAME

1: 89 wins — Rekindling last year, Almandin the year before, Protectionist in 2014, Fiorente in 2013 and the list goes on.

2: 62 Lloyd Williams won his fourth Cup with Green Moon in 2012.

3: 6 Prince Of Penzance (2015) and Might And Power (1997) were the most recent.

THE WINNER IS

No.24 Rostropovich, a four-year-old Irish raider, carrying 51kg, starting from barrier 21.