Melbourne Cup 2019: Seventh heaven for Tim Worner’s Cup hope Constantinople

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

The Melbourne Cup-fancied horse part-owned by former Seven West Media boss Tim Worner will start the 3200m race from barrier seven. The universe is up to something.

Surely the numerical alignment is a good omen for the three-year-old David Hayes-trained Irish colt Constantinople, the ownership of which the former Seven West Media boss Worner shares with, among others, a crocodile farmer from Darwin and an Australian kung fu pioneer.

The wealthy ownership syndicate paid nearly $1.6m for the fancied horse back in September, about a month after Worner was relieved from his television duties by Seven billionaire Kerry Stokes and given a $2.6m golden goodbye.

When we last checked, Constantinople was being backed in as second favourite. A post race live cross to Worner on Ten — which has wrestled the broadcast rights off Seven — remains on the cards.

READ MORE: 2019 Melbourne Cup field, form guide, tips, office sweep and start time

Meanwhile, Worner’s fellow horse-flesh-mad mate and sometime ownership syndicate fellow Gill McLachlan has his own interest in this year’s cup via five-year-old race roughie Neufbosc, which is also trained by the great Hayes.

The AFL boss is said be quite excited about having a share (albeit a small one) in a cup runner, although the French-born pony has drawn barrier 23. Sacre bleu.

Albo’s early exit

Also expected to set foot on Flemington’s manicured turf for the event is local Member for Maribyrnong Bill Shorten and wife Chloe.

Former opposition leader Bill Shorten with his wife Chloe. Picture: Alex Coppel.

The pair were among the gaggle of politicians — 30 all up, if we counted correctly — along at Monday’s long lunch hosted by the politically formidable Australian Hotels Association in Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens.

Shorten’s successor as Labor leader Anthony Albanese also joined AHA boss Stephen Ferguson in a rainproof marquee for the five-hour lunch, along with Albo’s deputy leader Richard Marles, the Nationals duo Michael McCormack and Bridget McKenzie, the People’s Jacqui Lambie, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, NSW Tourism Minister Stuart Ayres and Foreign Minister Marise Payne, fellow Morrison ministers Dan Tehan and Alan Tudge, and more pollies and senior staff than we have space to mention.

Clearly many have taken the excellent advice of Labor’s Member for Oxley Milton Dick: the annual day in the park with the booze lobby is not to be missed.

Most of the AHA guest list will back up at Flemington for Cup Day but there will be one notable exception.

While he will spend the morning opening an electorate office in Frankston, by race time Albo will be back in Sydney.

The Labor leader is booked to later on Tuesday open the restored heritage Balmain Rowing Club, a commendable use of time — and, suspicious minds might think, a handy way to avoid an awkward encounter with Flemington’s local MP.

Betting big

Meanwhile, lunching in Melbourne’s Rockpool on Monday: horse-mad radio broadcaster Alan Jones and Crown Casino’s founder Lloyd Williams. No prizes for guessing what dominated their Cup eve conversation.

Over in the nearby Crown Palladium, the ghost of Kerry Packer was alive and well at the annual “Call Of The Card luncheon”, which for many years has provided some of the biggest bets taken on the Melbourne Cup.

Packer was once a regular at the lunch and would regularly punt $1m on a long-shot thoroughbred.

On Monday, it was bookmaker Tom Waterhouse who stole the show with a $1.5m plunge on Melbourne Cup outsider The Chosen One (which was then scaled back to a mere $1m bet by the onstage bookmakers).

Even whale gambler John McGrath would be impressed by that conviction.

Bigger fish to fry

If the market needs a gauge for where the Paul Anderson-led Ten Network ranks in the world order of its US media giant parent CBS, look no further than the No 3 local broadcaster’s marquee in Flemington’s Birdcage.

Ten CEO Paul Anderson. Picture: Aaron Francis

CBS last year inked a $100m deal with Amanda Elliott’s Victoria Racing Club for Ten to exclusively broadcast the Melbourne Cup carnival over five years, with the network pulling out all the stops over the four-day carnival, including a lavish trackside marquee.

Margin Call hears that Ten has accredited about 550 staff to work at Flemington, but sadly not one representative from the $US14bn ($20.3bn) American conglomerate has managed to journey Down Under for Ten’s inaugural cup broadcast.

CBS’s investment in Ten is within the bailiwick of group exec Armando Nunez, who in the past week or so has had much bigger fish fry as CBS finalises its (re) merger with Viacom to form the $US30bn media behemoth ViacomCBS.

The deal is set to close early next month.

That corporate union follows the pair’s separation in 2006 and compares with Ten’s market value before it was placed into administration and then receivership of a mere $58m.

While the top ranks of the combined entity had been locked in — major shareholder Shari Redstone (the daughter of 96-year-old media mogul Sumner Redstone) will be chair and Viacom boss Bob Bakish will be combined CEO — recent days have seen the next level of management finalised.

And that’s seen happenings at Ten pale into insignificance amid internal manoeuvrings for plum gigs in their parent company.

Nunez has just emerged as a big winner from the recombination, taking the lofty title of chairman, global distribution and chief content licensing officer at the new group, from running CBS’s international interests before.

That’s left Anderson and his team, including head programmer Beverley McGarvey and sales boss Rod Prosser, to host Ten’s talent-studded marquee and import Lindsay Lohan to provide the international interest.

There’s always next year — and the three after that.