Top 10 Melbourne Cup legends

If there is a modern-day Melbourne Cup Phar Lap it has to be three-times winner Makybe Diva. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The editor said: "Write something on the 10 best ways to make money on the Melbourne Cup."

Well, the absolute best way is to run the VB stalls at Flemington on Cup Day on Tuesday - guaranteed wealth.

Outside of that perhaps be the host club, the Victoria Racing Club, which makes so much money over the four days of the Melbourne Cup carnival it doesn't much care how many show up on the other racedays through the year.

It's A$75 ($93) to get through the Flemington gate and for tomorrow's Derby Day and Cup Day on Tuesday there will be 100,000-plus on course.

Do the math.

And that's only the start of the day. Add in the food and beverage receipts - 100,000 Aussies can drank and awful lot of alcohol - and the monumental corporate marquee sales over the four days and you start to paint a picture.

Or if you really wanted to set your sights high you could try owning the Cup winner - the winner's slice of the A$5.5 million would keep you in Krug champagne for as long as your health held out.

There are a couple of things you should and shouldn't do if you attend a Melbourne Cup and, unless you have a fear or great dislike of large crowds, it's something everyone should do at least once.

DO

* Do get a good night's sleep on Monday. Melbourne Cup days are not for sissies.

* Do stand alongside one of the rails bookmakers for humour.

* Even if one or two of them are not as colourful as icons of the past, plenty of them still are. There is nothing more humorous than an Australian bookmaker. They spend their lives never more than one bet from going broke and gallows humour is their way through that.

* If you are in Auckland go to the Ellerslie races even if it's only to watch the Melbourne Cup after work. That might be virtual, but watching it on a racecourse gives you at least some of the atmosphere that is the Melbourne Cup.

DON'T

* Don't wear a dress made of flattened VB cans - someone tries it every year and they never get to Race Three without looking horribly uncomfortable.

* Don't get the 8.15pm racecourse train from Flemington back to town. The trains from 7pm become x-rated and rail staff must lock the room on Wednesday morning to watch security footage of the late Flemington trains. They probably sell tickets to the viewings.

So what makes the Melbourne Cup the race everyone talks about?

Yes, it's a horse race and it's the world's biggest outdoor party, but it's much more than that.

Take the Melbourne Cup home with you and it's not a cup you're carrying, you're taking away part of Australia's heritage - a trophy that was developed to portray more than anything else, Australia's colonial pride.

Which is why some of the world greats are desperate to try and win it.

Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, after a decade and a half of trying, is back again trying to win his first Melbourne Cup with Kirklees and Crime Scene, and Chechen President and dictator Ramzan Kadyrov and his South African trainer Herman Brown have two horses at the carnival and one, Mourilyan, will run in the Cup.

1 Phar Lap

There will only ever be one Phar Lap. It's been said the New Zealand-bred, Australian-trained giant had his reputation blown a bit further because Great Depression Australia needed a hero in 1930. Rubbish. Phar Lap holds the 20th century cup weight-carrying record of 9 stone 12lb and he won the race in a canter. It prompted rider Jim Pike to later famously say: "The only way they can beat this horse is to breed one with wings and get Kingsford Smith to ride it." Phar Lap then won the world's richest race at the time, the Agua Caliente in New Mexico, only days before his mysterious poisoning death.

2 Jezabeel

New Zealand has a marvellous record in the Melbourne Cup. Brian Jenkins, the now Australian-based New Zealand trainer was little known across the Tasman when he took Jezabeel to Melbourne in 1998. Australians got to know him a lot better when the high-class mare edged out another Kiwi mare Champagne in one of the great Melbourne Cup finishes. But that wasn't the only cup publicity spike. Kerry Packer was almost certainly the mystery punter who plunged one of the biggest punts of modern times on Jezabeel in the half-hour before the cup. Something rumoured to be close to A$10 million was removed from bookies' bags.

3 Makybe Diva

There is practically no one alive who can remember Phar Lap in the flesh. If there is a modern-day Melbourne Cup Phar Lap it has to be three-times winner Makybe Diva and we all remember her. Horses simply can't win three Melbourne Cups these days because weight will get them before they can achieve the feat. Makybe Diva was so good she overcame even that. When she won her second cup, Makybe Diva carried 55.5kg and broke the previous weight-carrying record for a mare of 52.5kg, held by Empire Rose. When she lined up for the third year running in 2005 most said the 58kg was impossible for a mare. Not only was it not impossible, the great mare won the cup with almost as much ease as Phar Lap had carrying his mammoth weight 75 years earlier. No one really knows what the crowd reception was when Phar Lap won, but you imagine it must have been huge. If it was louder than the one that greeted Makybe Diva at Flemington you would have ended up with a hearing impediment.

4 Empire Rose

Empire Rose was a darling. She was trained for a time in Sydney by Bart Cummings, but had to be sent back to New Zealand because she was so big she wouldn't fit lengthwise into the Sydney barrier stalls. Laurie Laxon helped chill the mare out and she improved so steadily she appeared a Melbourne Cup prospect. If you think her nose defeat of Sydney stayer Natski in the 1988 Melbourne Cup was popular only on this side of the Tasman, you're wrong. Leading Australian bookmakers fielded such big bets on Natski that many would have been out of business if he'd won. And his rider Mick Dittman thought he had, because Natski's backside was well past Empire Rose's rear end when they hit the finish. But Empire Rose was so long her head was still in front.

5 Ethereal

Prominent owner Peter Vela was happy to admit he nearly made one of the worst mistakes of his life just before Ethereal won the 2001 Melbourne Cup. A few days after Ethereal won the Caulfield Cup by a lip, Vela made the decision not to send Ethereal on to the natural next step, the Melbourne Cup, but to the Hong Kong International Cup, a race her dam Romanee Conti won. Luckily, Vela changed his mind. "I can't believe I nearly passed this up," said a stunned Vela during the celebrations. It sealed the greatness that surrounds the memory of Ethereal.

6 Dermot Weld

Dermot Weld might not sleep with a sock in his mouth to prevent him from talking in his sleep, but he is canny in every other way. The former Irish veterinarian and former champion amateur jockey knows a thing or two about training stayers. With Vintage Crop in 1993 he became the first overseas trainer to produce a winner of the Melbourne Cup when the race first became internationalised. Weld got Vintage Crop under the guard of the Melbourne handicapper by winning a hurdle race with the horse just before the Cup weights were released several months out. At 55.5kg Vintage Crop and Irish rider Mick Kinane were simply too classy and one of the biggest Cup punts was landed. Weld did it again in 2002 with Media Puzzle.

7 Kiwi

What a name for a Melbourne Cup winner. That alone would have made the grand stayer stand out in Melbourne Cup folklore, but the last-to-first way Kiwi won the 1983 Cup will forever stay in the minds of those who witnessed it. Even if the 1983 opposition was not quite up to the class of horse going to the post in recent Cups, the finishing burst was truly astonishing - horses are simply not meant to sprint that fast at the end of 3200m. The late Snow Lupton, a wonderful horseman with a stock background, did a huge job in the face of the full-time professionals in Australia. Lupton was breathalysed as he drove Kiwi off Flemington late in the day. "The horse has probably had more champagne than I have," he told the copper.

8 Bart Cummings

What can you say - 12 Melbourne Cups and still going strong, perhaps even stronger. It should actually be 13. Big Philou was the one that got away in 1969. The magnificent New Zealand-bred stayer was a class above the opposition that year and was a raging hot favourite until 40 minutes before the race when the announcement was made that Big Philou was a shock scratching - he'd been nobbled. At the time it was a racing scandal to beat all scandals. It was only recently that former stable hand Les Lewis came forward and on his deathbed confessed that he'd been the one who nobbled Big Philou. Lewis had been a suspect at the time, but he emphatically denied involvement.

9 Bart Cummings (again)

The great trainer is entitled to two of the 10 spots - he's earned that right. At 81, Bart Cummings has outlived most of those who remember his first Melbourne Cup victory with Light Fingers in 1965 and he's still going strong. He has three cup runners for Tuesday; Viewed, who won last year, Roman Emperor and Allez Wonder. Viewed beat Roman Emperor in the Caulfield Cup and you got the impression Cummings would have preferred the reverse result - the 1kg rehandicap Viewed received will make his job just that much more difficult on Tuesday, but he's in the race right up to his ears. What a feat if Bart Cummings can complete a Caulfield Cup-Cox Plate-Melbourne Cup treble. That would truly be something.

10 Trifecta

If you're having just one bet, try for the Melbourne Cup trifecta result 1-2-3 in the right order. Australians are budgeting for a A$1.67 billion ($2.08 billion) betting splurge over the four-day Flemington carnival and the TAB trifecta pool on the Melbourne Cup will be something like A$40 million. We now bet into that pool with commingling on our TAB and if you get the numbers right, Christmas will come early. Efficient is the best Australasian horse in the field, so you have to have him, then Viewed is a must-include and so is stablemate Roman Emperor. The best of the New Zealanders may be Harris Tweed, particularly if they get rain around Tuesday. The internationals are confusing this year, but the latest shortener in the market and one that could be the surprise is Changingoftheguard.