It’s billed as the race that stops the nation. But I’m not entirely sure it’s the horses that bring the spectators to their knees on Melbourne Cup day.

Every year, the flashy advertising suggests Flemington is the place to go for high end fashion, the rubbing of rich and famous shoulders and the prospect of a millinery-led recovery.

And it all starts out well enough. Everyone dressed in their fascinators and finery, each person upright, with shoes on their feet and able to string two words together.

It’s just that some forget the Melbourne Cup is a race for the stayers. Instead they leap out of the gates like Black Caviar, just without the classy finish.

So Flemington inevitably descends into this: a chick flashing her knickers trying to limbo under two blokes’ ties.

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Or a game of drunk musical chairs. Where no one actually finds a chair.

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And seriously, what’s a girl gotta do to win Fashions on the Field?

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This girl learned the hard way never to trust the media, especially when they’re daring you to push a policeman. She got arrested. They got some ripper footage. Pick the winner.

But there was one classy performance on the day, from winning jockey Michelle Payne, who rode rank outsider Prince of Penzance to glory, then outed some of its owners for trying to kick her off the ride.

She is woman, hear her roar.

And I dips my Melbourne Cup hat to Gosford Anglican Church, which found an unlikely way to link the nation’s biggest horse race to Australia’s refugee policy. No bookie was offering odds on that.

One filly who was out of the gates early was Serena Williams after a bloke stole her phone in a restaurant.

Recollecting the story on her Facebook page, the tennis ace said:

“Not thinking I reacted. I jumped up, weaved my way in and out of the cozy restaurant (leaping over a chair or two) and chased him down. He began to run but I was too fast. I was upon him in a flash! In the most menacing yet calm no nonsense voice I could muster I kindly asked him if he ‘accidentally’ took the wrong phone.”

Then she modestly posted this photo.

Back to the bogans, Shane Warne has landed in the US, where he’s busy selling cricket to Americans. He’s been educating them on the finer points of the game, like the fact the players don’t actually drink tea in the tea break.

This weekend, he takes to the field to show them how it’s done. He stresses it’s not the kind of cricket that can be played for five days without a result. No, it’s the T20 kind. Or as Warnie calls it, ‘rock’n’roll cricket’.

“It’s like WWE meets baseball,” he explained. So, basically a ball game played by deranged people  in their underpants. In Warnie’s case, that sounds about right.

At any rate, the Aussies had the visiting Kiwi cricketers in a leg trap camel clutch on the first day of the Gabba Test. See what I did there?

At the end of play we had about 3,000 runs for the loss of two wickets. Yeah, what rugby?

One Aussie doing it tough though was sports reporter Erin Molan, who copped a spray from the sprinklers during her live cross before play. Ever the pro, Molan turned the episode into a quite the comedy skit.

Before I sign off, can I implore you to sign this petition. It’s got nothing to do with sport but the future welfare of the planet does depend on it.

Finally, curling. It’s a harmless sport, right? Basically lawn bowls on ice. What’s the worst that can happen?

Come on, mate, you’re not at Flemington.

Have a good weekend, everyone. Say no to crap music.