Melbourne Cup 2017: Everest push ruffles feathers in the south

The Princess of the Cup rode in to save Victoria’s Spring Racing Carnival yesterday from Racing NSW.

Michelle Payne at the Melbourne Cup. Picture: Getty Images

Melbourne Cup royalty Michelle Payne joined Victoria’s political and media elite in defending the Spring Racing Carnival yesterday as it faces a serious challenge from Racing NSW’s big-money race The Everest.

Sydney’s horse racing chief told The Australian thatVictorians were “still spitting out their cornflakes” after Victorian ministers and Melbourne shockjocks reacted angrily to his full-page ad for Royal Randwick’s Everest race in The Australian yesterday.

But the Melbourne Cup’s first champion female jockey said “nothing could ever replace the Melbourne Cup”.

Yesterday’s Melbourne Cup was worth $6 million but the Racing NSW advert states its standout race next year will be worth $13m, with the winner receiving more than the entire Melbourne Cup field.

“Obviously The Everest is a spectacle and it’s going to be fantastic for racing in Australia, but the Melbourne Cup is so unique,” Payne said.

“It’s a two-mile (3200m) race, the best race we have for so many years in Australia. (The Everest) couldn’t take over.”

Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys, who was at ­Flemington yesterday, said he put the advertisement in The Australian, brandishing The Everest’s title of “world’s richest turf race”, ­deliberately on Melbourne Cup Day and got exactly the reaction he expected.

“We’ve given the Victorians a bit of shock, they’re still spitting out their cornflakes after seeing the ad, but it’s generated a lot of interest — we’re very happy,” Mr V’landys said. “Competition is good, it wards off mediocrity and apathy.”

Sydney and Melbourne’s age-old rivalry dominated events at Flemington from early yesterday after 3AW Mornings host Tony Jones (not the ABC journalist), filling in for Neil Mitchell, called Racing NSW’s full-page advert “appalling”.

“We’re very focused on making The Everest an event for the under-30s and Tony Jones isn’t ­really in that demographic,” Mr V’landys told The Australian.

Jones told 3AW listeners, “the Melbourne Cup stops the nation, The Everest doesn’t stop so much as a bloody suburb”.

“No one outside of Sydney gives a tinker’s cuss about that race ... Sydney, when will you learn that money does not buy you class?” he said.

Victorian Racing Club interim chief executive Neil Wilson told 3AW it would have preferred for Racing NSW not to have run the ad on Cup day and wanted to “work together” to promote racing, rather than brawling.

“Any measure that you look at, crowds, the race itself, 157 years, there’s a fair gap to go,” he said.

Victorian Racing Minister ­Martin Pakula also took a swipe at The Everest and said he found the two cities’ long-running rivalry “boring”.

“We don’t take out full-page ads (for the Melbourne Cup) ­because we don’t have to.”