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Red Cadeaux, pictured in the 2013 Melbourne Cup, two years before she died in the 2015 race. (IMAGE: Henry Ruuskanen, Flickr)

The Best Odds You’ll Get All Day: 3 to 1 Chance A Horse Will Die Before Nightfall

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By on Civil Society

UPDATE: A horse died during the running of the Melbourne Cup – see details below.

If you’re looking for good odds on the Melbourne Cup racing carnival today, then find yourself a bookie who’s prepared to lay out some cash on the odds a racehorse will die some time today, during the Melbourne Cup carnival.

According to website horseracingkills.com a racehorse dies on an Australian track, on average, every three days.

From August 1 last year (the ‘Horses Birthday’) until July 31st this year, 119 horses died on tracks around the country. NSW led the slaughter, with 52, followed by Queensland and Victoria, both with 24.

That equates to around a 33 percent chance of it occurring today, which should roughly translate to odds with a bookie of around 2-1.

In terms of the Melbourne Cup carnival itself, the 2014 carnival bucked the national trend with a higher than average death rate – two horses were killed, Admire Rakti (died in his stall after the race), and Araldo, who broke his right hind leg and had to be euthanased.

In 2015, Red Cadeaux also shattered her leg during the race and was also later put down.

And that’s just the statistics horses who ‘make it’. The ones who don’t – about 40 per cent of Australia’s racing stock – are sent to the abattoir. We use them primarily for fertiliser and dog food.

If you’re after a really safe bet, you might convince a bookie to stump up some cash that pays out if the horse you back in the Melbourne Cup gets whipped.

The odds on that occurring are basically 100 per cent, so you’ll probably only get even money.

Happy Punting.

UPDATE: If you found a bookie to back the 3 to 1 chance a racehorse would die in the Melbourne Cup Carnival, then you would have doubled your money. A short time ago, the RSPCA confirmed the death of the sixth horse in the last five years of the carnival.

And here’s a tweet with an image of the horse injured on the ground, covered by a large barrier… so that none of us actually have to see what it is we endorse.

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Chris Graham is the publisher and editor of New Matilda. He is the former founding managing editor of the National Indigenous Times and Tracker magazine. In more than three decades of journalism he's had his home and office raided by the Australian Federal Police; he's been arrested and briefly jailed in Israel; he's reported from a swag in Outback Australia on and off for years. Chris has worked across multiple mediums including print, radio and film. His proudest achievement is serving as an Associate producer on John Pilger's 2013 film Utopia. He's also won a few journalism awards along the way in both the US and Australia, including a Walkley Award, a Walkley High Commendation and two Human Rights Awards. Since late 2021, Chris has been battling various serious heart and lung conditions. He's begun the process of quietly planning a "gentle exit" after "tying up a few loose ends" in 2024 and 2025. So watch this space.

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