The Melbourne Cup; has anyone else really heard of it?

[Aval Penworth]

Tomorrow is Melbourne Cup Day, known locally as 'The Race That Stops The Nation'. A horse race for which we have a public holiday, and the pinacle of our supposedley world famous spring racing carnival. A swag of international celebrities turn up every year, and national productivity drops to it's second lowest level for the year. (After Xmas)

Many people take a 4 or 5 day weekend to mark the occaision. Today the normally clogged highways were empty in anticipation.

So my question is, have any of you regular folk ever heard of it? Or is it a massive beat up? Do any of you have a holiday for a sporting event? Or are we in Melbourne so obsessed with this sport that we have lost all perspective?

Thoughts?

[tilt]

never head of it - sorry
and nope, we don't have time of for any sporting event in Denmark, although some football (not american) fans take a day of from work if the national team is playing - but that goes from their holidays so its pretty much up to them how to spend them

[ravells]

Heard of it and I knew it was a big deal, but that's about all.

[Aval Penworth]

never head of it - sorry
and nope, we don't have time of for any sporting event in Denmark, although some football (not american) fans take a day of from work if the national team is playing - but that goes from their holidays so its pretty much up to them how to spend them

How ironic, as Crown Prince Frederick Of Denmark was one of the recent notable attendees.

[Crayons]

I've heard of it but I wasn't aware of the importance it seems to have.
We don't have any national holidays associated with sporting events in the UK. We do have "The Grand National" though, which attracts people to bet who would normally never take an interest in horse racing at any other time.
On a vaguely unrelated issue.
We are leading up to another "celebration" in the UK though. I think all nations have a day particularly for setting off fireworks - for most it is New Years Day/Eve. Here it is November 5th - "Guy Fawkes Night". This is a wonderfully un-PC event accompanied by the burning - in effigy - of the Roman Catholic (I suppose today he would be labelled) "terrorist". Children are/were encouraged to make an effigy of him to burn at the stake on the 5th.
Does anyone have any old and wonderfully un-"PC" celebrations like this?

[ravells]

I'm sure if we ever won the football world cup a national holiday would be considered, probably because there's not much danger of that ever happening!

[tilt]

@ aval *lol*... yeah... Frederik and I sort of lost touch
@ crayons yeah, we got Sankt Hans (midsummer) in Denmark, where we light a bonfire and stuff a witch on top of if. And i Sweden we have midsummer where we have the maypole and dancing. And both events are of course accompanied by lots of food and drink

[Aval Penworth]

@ Crayons One other place they do Guy Fawkes day is New Zealand. Normally illegal fireworks are available on every street corner for one week. I've never seen it sold as 'burn a terrorist day' tho.

[NeonKnight]

I'll be honest and thought...Was some sort of Yacht Racing event or something.

[geamon]

Heard of the name only. Canadians don't have a holiday either. I think there is more of a turn out of people to watch an olympic finals match then compared to a NHL finals for hockey. Other sports have a strong following here as well but nothing really to write home about.