Melbourne Cup

Well one of the main reason that Halloween is not very popular in Australia is because of the Melbourne Cup which is always on November 1st.  The Melbourne Cup is a horse race that takes place in Melbourne which basically everyone is involved in someway, either making bets, sweeps, or just watching it.  They call it "the race that stops the nation" and lots of people dress up for it especially girls in their pretty dresses and huge hats with flowers on it.   Anyways theres a bar/gambling place a 2min walk from college so a few of us walked over and made some bets on the horses.  At first I made two bets, I put $5 on Dunaden for the win and $5 on Niwot for the win.  You could either bet for the horse to win or for the horse to place (top 3) but the payout was much lower so i just stuck with betting on the win.  I enjoyed betting on the first two and the anticipation and nervousness of hundreds of people placing bets that I decided I really wanted to win and that in order to win i needed to bet on more horses so in the end I ended up betting $5 on eight different horses all betting for them to win.  Now I just had to keep myself away from the betting table before i spent all my money.  Finally it was 3pm and the race was off. (3200m race or 2 miles)  One lap around the track.  At first the horse Illo which was one of my 8 was way out in front so i was cheering him on but he died 3/4 into the race and then the final 400m was neck and neck between a few horses and as it came down to the wire Dunaden and Red Cadeaux were a photo finish.  Nobody knew who won and it took what seemed like forever for them to decide.  Even in the photo finish still pictures that slow it down to like the millisecond it was hard to tell which horse won.  It seemed like forever because Dunaden was one of the horses I bet on but Red Cadeaux wasnt.  Eventually they awarded the win to Dunaden which meant I had won $45.50.  $5 times his odds which was 1 : 9.1   So in the end I bet $40 and won $45.50 so I made $5.50 and had a lot of fun watching the race.  I cant wait until next year.  Oh and theres 24 horses in the race so I had bets on 1/3 of them, I couldnt loose with those odds.