Daily News Roundup

 

Tuesday NOV 3

Twilight Payment has led the Melbourne Cup field to the line to win Australia’s biggest horse race.

Equal favourite Tiger Moth finished second with Prince of Arran placing for the third consecutive year.

Twilight Payment was running in his second Melbourne Cup, after finishing 11th last year.

Jockey Jye McNeil took Twilight Payment right to the front from near the start, keen to make the Cup a fast-run race — and he succeeded.

By the 1,000 metre mark Twilight Payment and Finche led the rest of the field by six lengths, and they still were one-two at the final turn.

Twilight Payment was not headed in the straight, despite a great late run from Tiger Moth in just his fifth start.

“First and foremost, I’d like to thank Joseph O’Brien, Mr Williams, and the whole family for the opportunity today,” McNeil told Channel Ten after the race.

“I’m absolutely stoked I could pull it off.”, said McNeil, a 25-year-old rider from Victoria,

“There’s too many emotions…It’s a very big moment.”

He paid tribute to his partner Jess and son Oakley, who was born in August.

“Jess and the boy, Oakley, will be watching from home today, and unfortunately they couldn’t be here… But I’m sure them, along with a lot of people, will be very proud,” he said.

Lloyd Williams has now won seven Melbourne Cups as an owner.

It’s the second victory for trainer Joseph O’Brien, who won with Rekindling in 2017.

His win means that O’Brien’s father, Aidan O’Brien, is still waiting for a win in the Melbourne Cup after two decades of trying.

Another leading chance, Anthony Van Dyck, broke down in the finishing straight and was pulled up with 350 metres to go. The 2019 Epsom Derby winner was later found to have broken a fetlock, and was euthanised.

The Cup was unlike any other in the event’s 160 year history, with racegoers banned due to coronavirus restrictions.

Only trainers, jockeys and strappers and racecourse workers were allowed on-track

###

Victoria has recorded another day without any new coronavirus cases or deaths, as Melburnians head to beaches, parks and picnics to enjoy a warm and sunny Melbourne Cup Day.

“This is the quaddie we want for the last 4 days: 0,0,0,0,” the state’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, tweeted in response to the numbers.

Melbourne’s 14-day rolling average of daily cases remains at 1.9.

The 14-day average for regional Victoria is zero.

There are two cases with an unknown source of infection in Melbourne from the past two weeks, an increase of one since yesterday.

Health Minister Martin Foley said the latest mystery case was first reported in Deer Park on October 30.

“It is currently being managed as a new infection out of an abundance of caution, pending further tests and follow-up,” he said.

Victoria’s coronavirus testing chief, Jeroen Weimar, said all close and secondary contacts connected to the Deer Park case were in isolation.

“We’re doing the genomics on that at the moment to see where that came from, but it’s a bit of an unexpected development that we haven’t seen coming,” he said.

The infected person had two younger siblings who went to two different schools, but they and their contacts have all tested negative.

A case is considered under investigation when health authorities are still trying to figure out where the person got infected.

It officially gets changed to a mystery case when the source of the infection remains unclear, but can be reclassified if authorities eventually discover where it came from.

Professor Sutton said 12,841 tests have been received since the last update.

Just 38 active coronavirus cases remain in Victoria, Mr Foley said.

There are two people with COVID-19 in hospital. Neither are in intensive care.

###

Firefighter Muammer Celik’s heart sank when he reached a small girl trapped under the rubble of the recent deadly earthquake in Turkey.

She was lying motionless, covered in dust.

He asked a colleague for a body bag.

But as Mr Celik extended his arm to wipe her face, the three-year-old child opened her eyes and grabbed hold of his thumb.

“That’s where we saw a miracle,” said Mr Celik, from Istanbul’s fire department search and rescue team.

“This is a firefighter’s joy.”

Turkish firefighter Muammer Celik said he found the girl lying on her back between her bed)

The girl, Elif Perincek, spent nearly three full days in the wreckage of her apartment after the quake hit Turkey and Greece, killing at least 94 people.

In Turkey, many buildings were reduced to rubble or had several floors pancake together.

Mr Celik said he found Elif lying on her back between her bed and a closet in a space that was just big enough for her.

Rescuers took her on a stretcher to an ambulance as emergency crews searched for survivors in eight other buildings.

She became the 106th person to be pulled alive from the rubble.

It was the second dramatic rescue that day, after a 14-year-old was also pulled out alive.

Elif’s mother and two sisters — 10-year-old twins — were rescued two days earlier.

Her six-year-old brother did not survive.

“A thousand thanks to you, my God. We have brought out our little one Elif from the apartment block,” Mehmet Gulluoglu, head of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), wrote on Twitter.