KEY POINTS:
A horse's breath instantly turns to white, evidence of a chilly Melbourne dawn. The rider does up the top of his jacket as he takes the thoroughbred for yet another Flemington early-morning workout.
Nearby a veterinarian leans on the side of a tie-up stall in deep discussion with
a horse trainer, and someone whispers "Wow" as they look at their stopwatch.
Training at the Southern Hemisphere's largest racetrack continues as it has done every day for more than 100 years. Or so it looks.
The reality is that there is a silent enemy at the door waiting for a chance to scuttle one of world sport's most spectacular occasions.
It was confirmed midweek that equine influenza is right at the state of Victoria's northern border.
The Melbourne Cup has been run mid-afternoon on every first Tuesday in November since 1861, but if the horse flu continues its relentless march south and crosses the border from New South Wales, the chances of there being a 2007 A$5 million Melbourne Cup in 17 days' time will become a lot slimmer.
That's almost unthinkable, but such is the destructive force of the virus that has halted racing through most of New South Wales and Queensland. The flu is threatening the livelihoods of horse trainers in those two states as they struggle valiantly - and in some cases unsuccessfully - to retain their stable staff and horse owners with no opportunity to create income. Associated services such as horse transport drivers are out of work.
Victorians hold a collective breath that a racing carnival, as important to the financial health of their state as to the racing industry, is not devastated.
It's remarkable that something so microscopic can bring to its knees a multibillion-dollar horse industry and threaten an uninterrupted 146 years of remarkable racing history.
But, as with all catastrophes, there are winners alongside the losers.
One of the winners so far has been the New Zealand TAB.
Australians have been starved of what we might call races and what betting agencies like the TAB call product. Across the Tasman there is so little of the high-profile product that would normally generate 80 per cent of the betting that the Aussies are punting on bush horses running around on red dust tracks 500km inland for a sack of carrots and a free beer.
Or on New Zealand racing.
Under an agreement between the NZ Racing Board and Australia's TABcorp and Sky Channel, New Zealand's industry gets a slice of the Australian wagering on our races.
Equine influenza has seen that slice increase by more than 300 per cent on budget, with more than $135 million already bet and the prospect of that figure increasing as more and more races are fed into Australia.
The slight negative has been a reduction of betting the other way as New Zealanders shy away from investing on the Johnny no-names running around the Australian red dust circuits rather than the traditional, extremely rich spring races in metropolitan Sydney.
But, of course, all that has been gained, and much more, will be lost if the flu hits New Zealand.
We are the world's only major racing country that has never been infected with the virus. But no one is offering long odds that we will remain that way.
It will take only one irresponsible person to pat an Australian horse and fly home to New Zealand and do the same soon after arrival to set the wheels in motion.
The speed with which the flu travels as it infects a horse population is staggering.
Unlike the Australians, who had the virus among them before they were aware, we have had the opportunity to inoculate all our horses before it reaches this country.
New Zealand racing officials are contracting to buy a stockpile of equine influenza vaccine.
But Equine Health Association chairman Bruce Graham said it was not the beginning of vaccination in NZ. And the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and a group of independent veterinarians have advised against vaccination, suggesting instead stringent border control, then containment and eradication if the flu gets here.
Not everyone is as convinced as MAF in the wisdom of that protocol.
Australians having to deal with the effects of the flu say to a man that we have no idea of the depth of the human and financial devastation.
It will be no different here.
Our racing will essentially stop for between four and six months and the financial downturn for the racing industry and for the overall economy will take a long time to recover from. Some elements will never recover.
The local racing industry is not the quaint little tea party some might imagine. In 2004 its worth to the nation was officially recognised as $1.47 billion a year.
Increasing that with the annual inflation index puts the figure at something like $1.67 billion a year.
That's the same size as our fishing industry.
Racing's bosses calculate that a closure of our racing for four to five months would see $330 million lost to the horse industry. That's a tea party no one wants to attend.
