The Cup runs over for insular Aussies

He said: "I think it's something to do with our heritage. There's an element of the chancer in our blood and we just say to ourselves 'I'll show you'. I'm not quite sure what it is that we want to show anyone, but we just really want to show 'em."

At this point he dissolved into incoherent ramblings about what his wife would say when he got home, but I had grasped his meaning. It is one of the many endearing qualities of Australians that they just love to perform and as they have limited chances to do so in film, theatre or television, they choose to do so on the sports field.

Consequently, the respect from those who do not achieve sporting superstardom for those who do is unparalleled. Cathy Freeman is now making headlines for walking down the road unaided, while Mark Viduka was still all over the news some 36 hours after he had scored all four goals for Leeds at the weekend.

You would have thought he had saved a child from drowning the way they rushed to canonise him.

Horses receive their fair share of adulation and Brew is the new 'toast of the town' (the Herald Sun's pun, not mine) after he won this week's Foster's-sponsored Melbourne Cup.

If only we had worked out the hidden message there, we would all be richer now.

The US presidential election struggled for front-page space as the Melbourne Cup took centre stage. Further proof, if proof were needed, that nothing is as important to Australians as their beloved sport. It's not surprising they're so damn good at it given that they spend their whole time either doing it or talking about it.

Major news events are covered as if they are a match or a game with the result the most important thing. In terms of the Stateside struggle between Messrs Gore and Bush, this has been easy to sustain and Channel 10 News could not resist the temptation, raiding the clich? cupboard as the presenter read the headlines:

"The race for the White House has entered the home straight. George W Bush has pulled the whip after the revelations about his drink-driving past as both candidates gallop towards the polls on Melbourne Cup Day."

I am sure that both Gore and Bush would have been thrilled to be compared to old staying handicappers, most of whom are geldings. That is if they had had the faintest clue that their public were casting their votes on Melbourne Cup Day.

Herein lies the main problem with the Melbourne Cup - nobody outside Australia and New Zealand knows anything about it unless they are hard-core racing nuts. Here though, it is absolutely huge, with every school in the country either on holiday for the day or taking half an hour out of class to watch the race. The state of Victoria takes the day off while the rest of the country place their bets to the collective tune of £38million and bunk off work to watch the race unfold.

The Melbourne Cup is part of the Spring Carnival, which lasts for the whole week with racing on Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to allow people to recover in between bouts of drinking. Two Olympians were chosen to help promote the Carnival and perhaps, unsurprisingly, the marketing experts did not go for the clean-cut Ian Thorpe or the country bumpkin image of Cathy Freeman.

Instead, they chose the smoking, drinking party animal, Jumpin' Jai Taurima who took the long jump silver medal in Sydney.

He sky-dived on to the racecourse as part of the big race build-up. Meanwhile, the new pin-up girl, pole-vaulter Tatiana Grigorieva, strutted her stuff for the benefit of the fashion police, looking sensational,

"I am proud to be Australian," she said, through her interpreter.

A record crowd of 121,000 piled into Flemington Racecourse in all manner of outfits and costumes - some of them garish, some of them loud and most of them outrageous.

I saw men dressed as Roman centurions, women (and men) in nurse's, nun's and gorilla outfits, a host of 70s flares and nose-picker collars and, of course, the obligatory shorts and flip-flops.

It all contributed to an atmosphere that the visiting officials from Epsom Racecourse will have sampled with envy.

They will have seen some sights to inspire them for Derby Day and, by the end of the day, some to terrify them.

The gates open at 7.30 in the morning with the first drink available shortly afterwards. The bars do not close until after the 10th race some 10 hours later. Staying the trip is the theme of the day. Some didn't make it, as the prostrate bodies later in the afternoon bore testament. One man was found the next morning asleep on the roof of a nearby house. He had crawled up there 'for a kip' and hadn't woken up until the next day.

There is no comparison anywhere in the world with the interest and extraordinary affection that is generated by this two-mile handicap. The Grand National comes close for mass awareness, but in Britain it would only push major news stories off the front page every so often - when there is a bomb scare or a false start, for example.

The trouble is that no one else knows the Melbourne Cup is going on. It happens at 4.20am British time, 20 past midnight in New York and 9.20pm in Los Angeles, which means that the rest of the world is sleeping, partying or watching something else.