The Melbourne Cup and #1?🏆🏇🐴⾺

Gold Trip leaves Melbourne Cup
experts and pundits red-faced

I got up yesterday morning and tore the October 31st from my Chinese wall calendar to see a horse pictured as the main Chinese zodiac animal for the 1st of November, thinking how funny that was because the first Tuesday in November is always the day Australia runs its biggest horse race, The Melbourne Cup.

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I usually only have one $50 win bet on The Cup and had already made up my mind that the form horse was #4 Montefilia, but looking at my Chinese wall calendar that morning I remembered that number 4 is meant to be bad luck in Chinese culture, much like number 13 is meant to be bad luck in western culture.

Plus, my gut feeling was that the form horse wasn't going to run to form, so I asked the universe for an omen to throw another $10 dollars on as a back-up bet to my main bet.

I saw that there was a horse called Young Werther, and as I was reading about Goethe's book that morning, I thought maybe this was my sign and placed a $10 win bet on it later in the day.

Lana Del Rey Down-Under

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Melbourne Cup 2022: Field, horses,
form guide and finishing order

But the universe had already cryptically given me the winner if I had have put 2 and 2 together and seen the answer was the #1 horse in the race ... Gold Trip.

Melbourne Cup 2022: Field, horses,
form guide and finishing order

To make matters worse, I cheered the wrong horse home all the way up the straight as I was watching the race, because I had heard the name Young Werther being called as making its way to the front and saw the checked sleeves and cap of the jockey and what I thought was an 11 with the jockey's boot covering up one of the 1s.

But after giving a cheer as the horse crossed the line first I heard the race caller say Gold Trip had won?!

Doh!!!

Silly old me went from feeling like a winner to a confused loser in the space of a few seconds:-)

And my two horses had yet to still cross the finish line:-( 

Oh, well ... there's always next year ... right?

Ah, the sorrows of Young Werther:-(

The Year of the Horse

And watching Colin on the TV screen sing 'Down-Under' before the big race made me realize it's been 10 years since I saw him play live at Woodford ... back in the days when I was "happily married" ... or so I thought -

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Co(l)incidences?