Donna Demaio: Australia Correspondent ahead of the Melbourne Cup

Get out your fascinators and place your bets: it's Melbourne Cup Day. 

The 164th running of the Melbourne Cup begins about 5pm. 

Donna Demaio is Newstalk ZB's Melbourne Cup correspondent at Flemington. 

She told Ryan Bridge there are 24 horses in the final field for this year's big race. 

They include three trained in New Zealand: 'Trusting You', 'Positivity' and 'Sharp and Smart'. 

In addition, she said, this year there are also four women jockeys for the second time ever. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Donald Jamayo is our Australia correspondent, Dona the Melbourne Cup.
Who should we well, who do we want in now?
Sweepsteak at the office here?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh, such a good question. I did my research. There's
three New Zealand horses. One of them has my lucky
number twenty four. So there's trusting you. There's positivity and
sharp and smart if you want to back a New
Zealand horse. But as you know, do you know how
much the price money is for if you win the
Melbourne Cup?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I don't. What is that?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's nearly five million dollars, So that's that's not that's
a pretty penny right. It's going to be run for
the one hundred and sixty fourth time this year. There
are four women trying to join Michelle Payne, who nine
years ago became the first female jockey to ever win
the Melbourne Cup. So we have Jamie Carr, we have

(00:47):
Rachel King, Wenona Coston and Holly Doyle. So you could
possibly want to back a female jockey for a change,
a quirky reason to you know, find a backer there,
back there, and then we've got a little bit of
celebrity at the track today. We have Liz Hurley coming
to Flemington to check out the races. We also have

(01:09):
Nicki Hilton and Sir Bob Geldoff is a late addition.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
And they couldn't get Paris Hilton. They just stuck with
Nicky instead of the B team, isn't it. But I
tell you what, Liz Hurley always looks great, doesn't she.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Oh look, everyone's going to be looking at what everyone's wearing,
but particularly Liz Hurley. I do agree. And the person
that's singing the national anthem, I thought this was a
lovely touch. The granddaughter of Sir Donald Bradman will be
singing the Australian national anthem at Flemington just before the
big race, which I thought was a lovely touch.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Hey, very quickly. The leading football umpire that's been forced
to apologize for wearing a controversial fancy dress costume. What
was the costume?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh gosh? The theme for this end of season gathering
was characters from the two thousands. How many people could
he have chosen from? What does he do dressed up
as a sam I've bin laden? Oh my goodness me.
The costume has been deemed inappropriate, offensive and im poor
taste and the afl Umpire has been forced with well.

(02:12):
He has apologized. He says it was an error of
judgment and never intended to offend. He has been subsequently
suspended for a short period.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
When will they learn? Thank you so much for that,
Donna Donald to Moto Australia correspondent.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Listen live to news Talks it'd be from five am weekdays,
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