After tough times, Towong races turn 150 with cracker Cup Day

The Giltraps were dairy farmers but once in the mid 1980s a horse they owned, Bay Matt, won on Towong race day. Mr Jones said the Towong Cup day “is to me, is what racing is all about.

“It’s the country atmosphere, locals getting together and chatting, people who haven’t seen each other for a year. It’s brilliant.”

Towong Turf Club committee member Dixie Coutts had a good catch-up with her sister, Wendy Heal, who moved to Euroa 45 years ago, but returns for the Cup every year.

“I haven’t missed a Cup since I was 6 or 7 years old — probably in 60 years,” said Ms Deal.

Their father, Tom Waters, was Turf Club president from 1959 to 1976. Mrs Deal says on Cup Day “you usually got a new dress, and if Dad had a runner, it was terribly exciting.” A mare owned by her family, French Diamond, came second in 1980.

The Cup has had a rich history. In 1928, someone stole the entire day’s takings. Two jockeys whacked each other with whips at the finish line, and the brawl continued into the jockeys’ rooms.

In 1891 a local horse, Glenloth, bred and owned by James Sutherland, from Lockharts Creek near Tallangatta, was the toast of the track when he won the Towong Cup. But due to the Depression, Glenloth was sold to a Melbourne milkman and it won the 1892 Melbourne Cup, as a 50 to 1 outsider, on a muddy track.

In 2007, Julie Madgwick, a great great granddaughter of James Sutherland bought back the Melbourne Cup trophy for $168,000.

In 1982, the Towong grandstand featured in the movie Phar Lap and in recent years local lobbying saved the structure from demolition.
Ms Coutts, whose great-grandfather TB Waters was on the Turf Club’s founding committee said the Cup continues, “because of the determination of the people to keep it going.

“Through the years there has been such determination shown by the committee and the crowd which supports us every year. The whole community really gets behind it. And that is what has kept it going. And I believe it will last”.