Cox Plate in horse racing
Since ancient times, horse racing has been a popular entertainment among aristocrats and the rich. Four-wheeled chariot competitions were the basis of the ancient Greek Olympic Games. In ancient times, equestrian sports were a great success and occupied a special place in the life of society.
The winners of equestrian competitions received fame and recognition worthy of true heroes. The discipline became even more popular thanks to the great emperors’ participation: Nero, Caligula, and Domitian.
Horse racing became a prestigious occupation at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. To participate in the competition, the stallion’s owner could sit in the saddle or put a friend or stable employee in his place.
In those days, the color of the winner’s stable was recorded in a special book. Such a tradition is still adhered to during the races of thoroughbred riding breeds. However, at other races, the colors of the jockeys are fixed, not the stables.
The scale of money turnover here is sometimes simply unique: the same applies to entry fees for participation in some competitions and the prize fund. Today many well-known competitions attract fans worldwide. One of them is Cox Plate. Let’s discuss it in detail!
What is Cox Plate?
Racing competitions are very diverse. They differ in the length of the distance, and the coverage of the hippodrome. They can be smooth or barriers when obstacles up to 1 meter high are installed on the track.
But the most difficult is the «steeple chase», where the length of the circular distance can be up to 4 km. In addition, stallions must overcome various obstacles in the form of stone walls, hedges, etc.
The W.S. Cox Plate is a flat horse race that takes place at the end of October at the Moonee Valley Racecourse in the suburbs of Melbourne.
It is the most important race in Australia with the Melbourne Cup, more famous but less raised.
Special features
Nicknamed the «Australian Arc», in reference to the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the Cox Plate is considered the most crucial Australian race not contested under the formula of handicap. It is a group 1 race, open to horses three years and older, contested over 2,040 meters, rope on the left.
The allocation (Australia’s third after the Melbourne Cup and the Queen Elizabeth Stakes) is AU$3,000,000. The first edition of the competition, named in honor of William Samuel Cox, founder of the Moonee Valley Racing Club in 1883, took place in 1922.
Champions
Several stallions have achieved the double in the event, including the legendary Phar Lap (1930-1931) and So You Think (2009-2010); Kingston Town scored a hat-trick (1980, 1981, 1982), and the phenomenal Winx a quadruple (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018).
Few European horses have ventured into this event. Still, in recent years several have traveled to the antipodes, including the Irishman Adelaïde, who in 2014 became the first horse trained in the northern hemisphere to win in this course.
Latest tournaments
The latest tournaments of Cox Plate were spectacular and unforgettable. 4 years in a row (2015-2018), the winner was the same horse — Winx. In 2019-2021 winning stallions were unexpected but really astonishing.
Let’s look at the champions of the last five years!
| Year | Favorite | Finish |
| 2021 | Anamoe
Verry Elleegant |
2
3 |
| 2020 | Russian Camelot | 3 |
| 2019 | Lys Gracieux | 1 |
| 2018 | Winx | 1 |
| 2017 | Winx | 1 |
The Cox Plate 2022 will be held soon! It’s interesting who will be the leader this year.
Schedule (fixtures) for 2022-2023
The prestigious Group I race will be held in Moonee Valley on October 22nd, 2022. The 8 top players have the highest odds. Real World, who were last runners-up to Baaeed in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, could travel to Australia this year and take part in the Cox Plate.
The Godolphin galloper trained by Saeed bin Suroor is not the only European scheduled for the 2040 meter test. The defending champion State Of Rest, trained by Joseph O’Brien, is also expected to compete. The Starspangledbanner son was last successful in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot.
Top jockeys in the season
Many factors influence the results of the tournaments: weather, surface, experience, the weight of the horse, the height of the barriers, and jockey expertise. A jockey is a professional rider who drives a stallion at contests.
In addition, the jockey is often a full-time employee of the hippodrome, so his duties may include feeding, caring for, maintaining, and shoeing horses.
Since ancient times, the jockey profession has enjoyed special attention and honor worldwide. As a rule, they began to learn it from childhood in special schools, circles, or in stables. But, recently, equestrian sports have started to pay special attention to eloquence, as well as the charisma of the rider.
This is not surprising because these animals are often sold after the races, and their cost directly depends on how effectively a jockey can present a stallion.
The best jockeys gather each year at the Cox Plate to win the competition with their stallions. Darby Munro was a record man of the Cox Plate, having gained five winning prizes as a jockey. In 2021, John Allen was the champion jockey, winning on the State Of Rest.
Experts advise wagering on victory in the tournaments of those pairs of horses and jockeys with at least six contests and at least 15% of wins.
Why betting on Cox Plate is profitable?
There are various opportunities to enjoy the game and get extra cash with fantastic offers from bookmakers. Cox Plate is extremely popular among gamblers, especially in equestrian sports. As a result, the attention of many wagering platforms is drawn to the competition.
Every day, numerous bookmakers worldwide allow individuals to bet on the results of horse contests. However, even the average player is tough to navigate with abundant information and all kinds of data, not to mention beginners.
True experts can only achieve real success because equestrian sports only look like a simple discipline for gambling. You should understand the sport’s nuances, the best gambling strategies, and other issues. Review various free forecasts from experts and tips on the forums. In estimating the probability of a particular prediction, analysts rely on analyzing a large amount of information.
Successful gamblers know about all the advantages of gambling in this discipline:
- Equestrian sport is pretty predictable, especially if you are trying to guess more than one winner of the race but betting on the winners;
- You can hit a big jackpot by starting to play according to the chosen strategies with small amounts of money;
- High odds even on the clear favorite of the tournament;
- Wide selection. The player himself chooses the variety in which he is better versed!
In most cases, the success of a player depends on how much he understands this sport.
How to wager on horse racing?
In order not only to bet on equestrian sports but also to win at a distance, you must do the following:
Very carefully read the rules, types, participants, and other features of the races. You need to reach a level where you will at least roughly know who has more chances even before the start of the contest. For example, if you have been gambling on football and understand this sport, you know which team is stronger even before the beginning of the match. You need the same in the discipline.
Learn how to conduct a qualitative analysis of equestrian sports stakes when you know. It would help if you saw what form the selected participant is in, what they achieved before, and what has changed now. Pay attention to all the factors for equestrian sports to generate some additional income.
Remember that you need to pay attention to bookmakers specializing in a specific industry or at least give a wide line on them. For example, Poolbet is not very popular among football, tennis, and other sports fans.
Still, the office was created on the hippodrome and had a good selection of options for equestrian sports. Therefore, you may decide it is better to have accounts in several bookmakers to wager on the discipline at the best odds.
Keep reporting. The simplest and most effective option is an Excel spreadsheet showing all rates. For example, you can write down the date, amount, ratio, and other details. Then, in the future, you will be able to analyze your successes and change what prevents you from earning.
Should you bet on Cox Plate?
Horse racing is a part of equestrian sport in which two or more stallions compete. It is the oldest discipline, its essence was to find out which animal would be faster and more enduring. Even before the advent of modern bookmakers, spectators argued when betting on such a discipline.
Now the global market for discipline exceeds 200 billion dollars, and most bookmakers offer to bet on the races online.
The discipline is trendy among foreign bettors, especially in the UK, USA, UAE, India, and Australia. However, recently gamblers have increasingly begun to look towards this discipline, which attracts attention, first of all, by a large selection of outcomes on which stakes are accepted by bookmakers and sometimes by unpredictable developments.
Races at hippodromes take place every day all over the world, and bookmakers provide a vast number of markets in the gambling lines, including online, on the results of the contests. The largest number of competitions are held in the United States (average over 40,000 per year).
The statistics evidence the popularity of equestrian sports and their stakes. They bring about 47% of the total income in the gambling world.
All the facts allow us to say that the amount of stakes made by players has exceeded 83 billion euros annually. Thus, we recommend you to risk and make stakes.
FAQ
The principle by which you should select a good bookmaker for gambling on the discipline is no different from choosing any operator. Today, many large domestic and foreign bookmakers accept stakes in this discipline.
First of all, pay attention to the reliability of the bookmaker and its age. Then it is worth looking at how broadly they cover equestrian sports competitions, how high the quotes offered are, and how variable the event schedule is. By and large, these are the main points that need to be emphasized. The second row lists the loyalty program, bonuses, and the work of the support service.
Today you can place stakes not only before the start of contests but also in live mode. Being able to watch streams while sitting at home allows you to more accurately capture small nuances that will not be visible on the racetrack — and quickly react to how the situation develops in the contest.
Bookmakers offer to wager on competitions taking place not only in the USA or Europe but even on the African continent.
Betting on such a discipline, just like any other sport, needs to be done using certain strategies. Otherwise, you will not succeed in the long run. True, it should be borne in mind that not all of them are good.
The most popular strategy is to gamble on the victory of the favorites in the first three races of the day. She is also known as «Trixie». Due to its simplicity and a rather high efficiency, such tactics can be successfully used even by beginners who do not yet know all the subtleties.
The fact is that in such tournaments there is usually a clear favorite who wins. The main thing implies the coefficient for each stake was not lower than 2. If you correctly predicted the winner in at least two contests, then you are guaranteed to make a profit.
Another game system you have to consider is the Dutching strategy. It is best to use it where there is no clear favorite, and quotes in the line will be presented at least at the level of 3.5-4. By wagering on several stallions, the gambler will be in the black if one of them turns out to be the winner of the race.
There are strategies in which stakes are placed on underdogs. But as practice shows, in such discipline, the favorites more often justify their status. In fact, now you can find a huge selection of tactics and it is simply impossible to talk about each of them within the framework of one material.
Articles about betting on equestrian sports state the annual turnover of bookmakers in the United States in 2018 alone was 11.26 billion dollars! And this is only the legal market. According to experts, the illegal turnover is from 80 to 150 billion annually!
If wagering on equestrian sports is so popular worldwide, you can earn a lot on it. Otherwise, people would not spend that kind of money. Some examples confirm this.
Here are some notable cases where equestrian sports have brought in a lot of money:
- engineer Steve Whiteley won £45 million. He played several stakes at once, one of them was on a stallion named Lupita, who had not won in 26 contests before, and the coefficient on her was 12;
- a 60-year-old gambler won $8 million, but the limit forced the bookmaker to settle for $1 million;
- an unknown player put 50 pence on a stake with a quote of 706128 and won (he took 353 thousand euros)!
You can google other news about these and other amazing cases related to such kind of wagering.
In addition to the classic European, American, British or other odds, you can wager here as follows:
- AP (Ante-Post Price) — appear long before the start of the contest and are fixed;
- EP (Early Price) — appear immediately after the approval of the list of participants, usually no more than 48 hours before the start of the contest;
- BP (Board Price) — quotes that are set at the hippodromes when the stallions go out into the courtyard and there is little time left before the start of the contest;
- SP (Starting Price) — quotes at the time of the starting salvo!
Each type of these odds has its own advantages. But it is impossible to say which of them is the most profitable. Sometimes they are at their highest when the contests start, and sometimes long before they start.
But it would be unwise to choose AP at the initial stages because such quotes appear at a time when nothing is really known about the race. Sometimes gamblers do not even have access to information about the composition of participants.
You can wager on one stallion, and then another, even stronger one, will appear.