Moonee Valley barred women in early years

Press, 25 October 1985, Page 12

Moonee Valley barred women in early years

By

J. J. BOYLE

Other days; other ways. For many years women were refused admittance to the Moonee Valley racecourse in Melbourne, but the Moonee Valley Racing Club has long since changed that stance, and has earned a reputation as one of the more innovative of the main racing clubs in Australia. On Saturday the Moonee Valley club will stage the $500,000 Cox Plate, the richest weight-for-age race in Australia.

A race won twice by the champion Phar Lap and a record three times by Kingston Town, it was first run in 1922 in honour of the club’s founder, William Samuel Cox. Old Sam Cox was in the cattle, sheep, and pig stock trade in Scotland before he went to Australia in search of gold. In 1874 he took up land at Kensington in the Melbourne district and turned it into a racecourse which he named Kensington Park. Sam Cox raced at Kensington Park for eight years then turned his attention to a farm in Moonee Valley, negotiating a seven-year lease with right of purchase. Today this is still the site of the Moonee Valley Racing Club and the club owns every blade of grass of the freehold, a rare situation for a racing club anywhere. For many years part of the track formed a figure eight, twisting across and in and out of the course proper, and the straight was only about 100 metres long. When Sam Cox died in 1895 his estate ran Moonee Valley as a proprietary club, but a son-in-law saw there was no future in Melbourne for proprietary racing clubs, and decided that Moonee Valley should become a fully fledged club. The Moonee Valley Racing Club was formed in 1917 and the course was leased to it with the right of purchase, an option taken up in 1929. The club made its last payment to the W. S. Cox estate in 1935, the year W. S. (Bill) Cox, a grandson of the founder, became president. The elder of Bill Cox’s two sons, Mr Murray Cox,

was an official at Moonee Valley for some years, and now secretary of the Victoria Racing Club, which stages the Melbourne Cup. The chief executive and racing secretary at Moonee Valley is the Wellingtonborn Mr lan McEwen, who started his working life as a journalist, and was snapped up for the Australian post after fashioning a success story as secretary to the Bay of Plenty Racing Club.

Mr McEwen’s promotional flair has contributed much to the success and popularity of the Cox Plate.

Thirty, years ago the Cox Plate prize was only onethird the value of the Moonee Valley Cup, run on the same programme.

In 1954 when the brilliant New Zealand gelding Rising Fast became the only horse to win the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup in one year, the Moonee Valley club lifted the value of the plate to the same value as the cup. This year the Moonee Valley Cup, while worth $65,000, is overshadowed by the Cox Plate. The Christchurch-owned, Riccarton-trained, Nightmarch, won the Cox Plate in 1929, 10 days before he * triumphed in the Melbourne Cup. Another Riccarton-trained winner was Ray Ribbon, which was prepared by the ;. late Gordon Barr, and beat the favourite, Rising Fast, in 1956.