Paul Seagar’s Post

The Melbourne Cup is the horse race that stops a nation. Or if you’re from NZ, you know it’s actually the horse race that stops two nations!   I know very little about horse racing, but I love playing with data. So this morning, I dived in to the details of historic Melbourne Cup winners to see what I could learn and built an interactive dashboard with it all.    What did I learn? Well in the last 35 years:    🐎 There’s only been 1 repeat winner (Makybe Diva). 🐎 Of the 33 unique winners, 15 of them were Geldings. 🐎 The track conditions have been rated as good about 50% of the time (and they’re good today too). 🐎 Barrier draws 6 and 15 have never won whereas barriers 11, 14 and 21 have won four times. 🐎 The favourite has only won 8 times. 🐎 The weight of recent winning Jockeys has been heavier by 3 – 5kg’s compared to the 35-year average. 🐎 Australian horses have won when the track is good on only 10 of the 18 occasions. Their other 11 winners occurred when the track conditions differed.   Feel free to dive in to the dashboard and have a look around yourself. It’s completely interactive.    I’m off to look for an Australian Gelding that isn’t the favourite, has a jockey weighing 53.6kgs and has drawn barrier 3 or 9. I’ll take an Irish one as well. Three of their four victories came on good tracks. 👇 Dashboard link here 👇 https://lnkd.in/em8K2XWk