Let me tell you a story about the great Might And Power, the most devastating horse of the 90s.

Unfortunately I was not part of this day in history, I joined the firm, two months later but the story was told that many times 98% of it must be true... 1/X

The early days of corporate bookmaking, Darwin, Australia, pre-internet betting. Bookies would lay a bet and they'd do plenty of business with each other, either laying off, or punting on their own expertise. 2/X

Caulfield Cup Day 1998. Might And Power absolutely pisses in by 7.5L (). 3/X

The boss, Mark "Chopper" Read, immediately tells the trading floor, "Boys, there's your favourite for the Melbourne Cup. Load up". In those days, UK bookies had never heard of the Caulfield Cup, so markets were left open overnight. 4/X

Onto the phones ringing every High St bookie in Britain open overnight and the next day - 33s, 25s, 20s - whatever they could secure. At the very least they'd be able to lay him much shorter on the day, but the win would be the jackpot.

5/X

Come Melbourne Cup day, M&P starts 7/2. Penalised a hefty 3.5kg for winning the CC, he leads all the way and then gets swamped on the line by Doriemus.
6/X

Greg Hall thinks he's won, Chopper bangs the table and curses what could have been. But wait, Hall's called it wrong, the photo shows Might And Power prevailing by a nose! 7/X

Cue the pandemonium. The joint has won a pretty packet. "That's it, we're done for the day!" says Chopper, while there's still a few races left at Flemington, plus the rest of the country. 8/X

Some poor bastard (might have) got left behind to manage the phones, while the rest of the office pissed off to the finest restaurant in Cullen Bay, the place to go in Darwin at the time.
9/X

It doesn't take much to get a trading team going when someone else is paying the bill but this was one of the biggest sessions you'll ever see. Lobster, champagne, guys betting on colleagues to swim across the marina which occasionally had to have a stray croc removed. 10/X

UK bookies suddenly knew about the Caulfield Cup.

RIP Might And Power, a legend of a horse. 11/11