The Age (Australia)
November 4, 2007
Celebration of diversity in black and white
By John Mangan
IT'S only compared with last year's bumper 130,000 crowd that you'd describe yesterday's attendance at Derby Day as light-on, but whether it was the Victoria Racing Club's insistence on pre-booking tickets, the fear of a late outbreak of equine influenza, or the memories of being packed in last year like sardines, Flemington was all the more elegant for it.
It was an elegance interrupted by a streaker who, the crowd surmised, must have been from Sydney, because he galloped up the home straight the wrong way.
While blue and gold dominated on the track as David Hayes' Kibbutz won the main event — the sun emerged briefly to celebrate the victory — in the crowd Derby Day's traditional black and white ruled, with a bit of fake tan thrown in. Model Rachel Hunter went monochrome, as did Megan Gale, Jennifer Hawkins and Michael Klim, smart in a white jacket.
The public lawns, newly elevated as part of Flemington's $30 million makeover, were suitably chaotic, while in the Birdcage, convention went out the window as Channel Nine's Eddie McGuire was interviewed by Channel Seven.
TV and radio presenter Hamish Blake confessed he was "about three cents up" at the time The Sunday Age spoke to him, while Red Symons admitted he loved the races "because of all that expensive flesh in the one place".
Last year, just before the state election, rumour had it that Steve Bracks had instructed his ministers to steer clear of the races for fear of creating any unwanted headlines. John Howard and Kevin Rudd may have been reading from the same script, as pollies were in distinctly short supply, outnumbered by stars of the new crocodile horror flick Rogue, with Melbourne-bred Radha Mitchell having jetted in from Bulgaria, where she's in the middle of a shoot, to promote the film and catch up with friends at the races.
US co-star Michael Vartan, perhaps best known for his role in the TV series Alias, was taking in his third spring carnival.
"I just love Australia," he enthused. "The climate, the geography, it's so amazingly diverse."
Diversity is a key to Derby Day, from the mini-pyramids of squashed beer cans and discarded high heels on the public lawns to the temporary palaces erected in the corporate areas.
Macquarie Bank's millionaires' factory had spent some of its loose change on the course's biggest scaffolding, while the Emirates edifice even had a restaurant on the top floor.
In the Moet et Chandon Chapiteau Merveilleux (French for "splendid marquee"), Sydney visitor Astrid Edlinger was enjoying the atmosphere after the cancellation of the harbour city's spring racing carnival.
"That was devastating," she said. "But this is great, I've even worn black and white."
© 2007 The Age Company Ltd.
 Back To Exclusively Michael 2007
|
