4 ANZAC DAY RACE DAY Steeplechase. Jockey Jack Purtell won the feature Gallipoli Handicap on Sporting Spirit. The meeting concluded with the Victory Highweight. This formula continued with minor variations for the next dozen years The VRC held its 1962 Anzac Day meeting at Caulfield. Whenever Anzac Day fell on a Sunday, there was no meeting: this did not change until 1993. In 2001 and 2007, the meeting was held at Moonee Valley when Flemington’s track was under renovation. Otherwise, the VRC has conducted Anzac Day races at Flemington continuously since 1961. The program has evolved. In 1972, the venerable classic for three-yearolds, the VRC St Leger, switched from the Autumn Carnival to become the Anzac Day feature. In its new spot, it was won by such good horses as Taras Bulba, Lord Dudley, So Called and Gurner’s Lane. Many individual heroes, battles and places of wartime significance have since been commemorated. Race names have honoured, among others, British nurse Edith Cavell, General Sir John Monash, Lone Pine, the Somme, Villers-Brettoneux and Beersheba in the First World War; Nancy Wake, Kokoda, Shaggy Ridge, Changi and Hellfire Pass, the Normandy landings, the naval battles of Matapan and the Coral Sea, and the City of Darwin Squadron in the Second World War; Long Tan and Coral-Balmoral in Vietnam. Lieutenant F.K. Bice (Left) and Captain R.L. Matthews (Right), patients of the 115th Military Hospital, Heidelberg watching the 1945 Melbourne Cup from the Front Lawn at Flemington. (Image credit: Australian War Memorial)
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