Just before 4am Irish-time on Tuesday thousands of horse racing anoraks will crawl out of bed and switch on the television to watch live coverage of the 2016 Emirates Melbourne Cup.

First run in 1861, the two-mile handicap has long been billed locally as ‘the race that stops a nation’ but it has grown hugely in international significance ever since the Dermot Weld-trained Vintage Crop pulled off a historic victory in the 1993 edition.