Geoff

LATEST - The rear pictorial wall is now comlpete and the statue looks great. At left a small part of the 200 present. The photo at right shows many of the descendants of the owner families except for me (3rd from left). Photo by Peter Flight

We already have a sort of Malua Club and it can loosely continue as things of common interest occur. 

THE MALUA STORY  ...  (CLICK)
 

If we can raise more we can DO more towards our goal of completing the memorial and continuing to make more people aware of the Malua story.
I have an official Tax Deductible Receipt Book and can send you your RECEIPT BY RETURN MAIL if you send me your donation to - Malua Memorial Committee,
4 East Barrack St, Deloraine, Tas 7304.
Love to hear from you.
- Geoff Woods
 
 

No more artist impressions   -    the real Malua Wall as at 12/4/2010.     The pictures done in tiles look great.
  We need to work out some money raising ideas. 

Meander Valley Council has contributed around $25,000 to the project but it is a real attraction to their Visitor Centre and over many years they will receive much benefit from what we have done.

 - Geoff
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WALK OF FAME 
On Sunday 3rd October 2009 at Flemington Racecourse, the Walk of Fame, featuring previous Melbourne Cup winners (Malua 1884) was opened. Peter Flight (Inglis family) and Marion Staughton (Field family) represented our Malua Committee. The two families clubbed together and put in $3000 to sponsor our Malua plaque. 
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GREATEST RACE NEVER RUN - MALUA IN FIELD
FORGET the race that stops the nation - around 1.30pm next Tuesday (2/11/10) we'll see the race that will start a million arguments. Would Vintage Crop have whipped Think Big? Would Might and Power have sunk Poseidon? Could Archer hold a string to Makybe Diva? Or would Phar Lap have trashed them all?

Somewhere between race five and six, the Greatest Cup Never Run will pit 24 of the winners of the 149 Melbourne Cups run so far in a digitally animated race.

And bringing these horses back to life has been a massive task. According to Ralph Simpson, Boags brand director at brewer Lion Nathan, whose largesse is responsible for bringing the project to life (they paid for the film and have bought the eight minutes of air time on Channel Seven during which it will run), it all began with a book written to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Cup.

Advertisement: Story continues below ''At the same time, and quite independently, we were looking at the idea of the greatest race ever,'' Simpson says. ''And in talking to the Victoria Racing Club, they said, 'Well, actually, our chief handicapper has done the work on that already.' ''

VRC's chief handicapper, Greg Carpenter, said he was asked to write a chapter for the book explaining the process he undertakes each year and, from there, go through the 149 races and selected the 24 best winners. ''It was an extraordinarily difficult task,'' says Carpenter. With his field of 24 selected, the next step was to think through how an actual race between them might have played out.

First, Carpenter ranked them in order, and assigned each horse a handicap based on its race record, just as he has done at every Melbourne Cup for the past six years (the chief handicapper post is, he says, tightly held; in 150 years, there have been just nine people in the job).

Next, the VRC conducted a barrier draw based on those assigned handicaps.

Finally, the VRC selected a panel of 20 racing experts, including Carpenter, to look at the field, the weights and the barriers, predict who would finish first and then put them in order all the way to 24. (Punters will be glad to know there was neither rain nor scratchings in this race.)

There was no communication between the experts; Carpenter says he doesn't even know who the others were.

Their predictions were tabulated, and the number-crunching produced a finishing order that formed the basis of the race that was created by Sydney digital effects company Post Modern. ''The VRC effectively wrote us a script,'' says creative director Richard Swan. ''At every 200-metre mark, they determined where the horses were in the pack, whether they were hugging the rails, moving on the outside or whatever. Then we had to build the in-between scenes.''

Digital animation is a time-consuming process, but Swan and his team had only two months to create eight minutes of footage, including mounting yards, crowd scenes and the winning enclosure as well as the race itself. ''That would normally be long enough to create a one-minute commercial,'' he says.

The result of this race is a tightly guarded secret, in part because of all the spinoff competitions the sponsor is running. But there's one certainty: once it is run, the arguments will continue. ''There's no mathematical formula we've used here,'' says Carpenter. ''Handicapping remains what I call an imprecise science. Ultimately, one of the overriding factors is personal judgment.''

GREATEST CUP NEVER RUN - field
1. PHAR LAP - Harry Telford - Jim Pike - 21 - 60kg
1930 Equine freak. Won with 62.5kg. Only odds-on winner

2. CARBINE Walter Hickenbotham - Bob Ramage - 16 - 59kg
1890 19th century champ who carried 65.5kg, a weight carrying record

3. MAKYBE DIVA - Lee Freedman -  Glen Boss - 14 - 58kg
2003-05 Only Cup threepeat winner. Viewed as modern-day equivalent of Phar Lap

4. PETER PAN -  Frank McGrath -  Darby Munro - 13 - 58kg
1932 & 1934 Dual winner in Phar Lap era

5. GALILEE -  Bart Cummings - John Miller - 1 - 57.5kg
1966 Won Toorak Hcp, Caulfield-Melbourne Cup and Fisher Plate in spring of '66

6. POSEIDON - Ike Earnshaw -  Tom Clayton - 3 - 57.5kg
1906 Won Caulfield Cup, Melbourne Cup, VRC and AJC Derby as a 3YO

7. RISING FAST -  Ivan Tucker - Jack Purtell - 11 - 57kg
1954 Capped a stunning spring when he won Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup - the only horse to win the triple crown.

8. RAIN LOVER - Mick Robins - Jim Johnson - 7 - 56kg
1968 Eight-length winner of the Cup then carried 60.5kg to win successive Cups

 9. COMIC COURT - Jim Cummings - Pat Glennon - 24 - 55.5kg
1950 Trained by Bart's dad, just one of five original top weights to win Cup in 1950

10. GRAND FLANEUR - Tom Brown -  Tom Hales - 4 - 55.5kg
1880 Only Cup winner never to be beaten. Won nine from nine.

 11. MIGHT AND POWER -  Jack Denham - Jim Cassidy -  12 - 55kg
1997 Modern-day champ who defied 3.5kg penalty from Caulfield Cup win to win the big one

 12. ARCHER -  Etienne De Mestre - Johnny Cutts - 22 - 54kg
1861-62 Started it all. Won first Cup by six lengths and the second by eight

13. VINTAGE CROP -  Dermot Weld - Michael Kinane - 10 - 54kg
1993 First European-trained Cup winner and introduced DK Weld to Cup folklore

14. DELTA -  Maurice McCarten - Neville Selwood - 9 - 53.5kg
1951 Won 11 of his 14 starts as a 5YO including '51 Cup with 59.5kg

15. MALUA -  Isaac Foulsham - Alick Robertson -  17 - 53.5kg
1884 Carried 61kg to win Cup one year after winning Oakleigh Plate/Newmarketnts and four years before won Grand National Hurdle

16. NIGHTMARCH - Alex McAulay - Roy Reed - 5 - 53.5kg
1929 First horse to win Cox Plate/Melbourne Cup double defeating Phar Lap in 1929

17. POITREL -  Harry Robinson - Ken Bracken - 20 - 53.5kg
1920 Sydney-centric stayer who won with 63kg

18. SAINTLY - Bart Cummings - Darren Beadman - 2 - 53kg
1996 Maybe Bart's best Cup winner. One of only five to win Cox Plate/Cup double in same year

19. THE BARB -  John Tait - William Davis - 18 - 53kg
1886 Phenomenal 19th-Century stayer who won as 3YO and given highest ever handicap - 73kg as a 6YO

20. DALRAY - Clarrie McCarthy -  Bill Williamson - 19 - 52.5kg
1952 New Zealand champ. Only Phar Lap carried more weight to win as 4YO

21. HALL MARK -  Jack Holt - Jack O'Sullivan - 23 -  52.5kg
1933 Another champ from the Phar Lap era. Won as 3Y0

22. LIGHT FINGERS -  Bart Cummings - Roy Higgins - 15 - 52.5kg
1965 Introduced Bart Cummings to the great race he would make his own

23. DORIEMUS -  Lee Freedman - Damien Oliver - 6 - 52kg
1995 Completed Caulfield/Melbourne Cup double then gave weight to Might And Power when beaten a pimple in '97

24. THINK BIG -  Bart Cummings - Harry White - 8 - 52kg
1974-75 Another of Bart's Cup winners. Dual winner, latter with 58.5kg

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