SCONE - SCONE CUP

Presenters:  Jack Mercer and Lucy

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I’d heard Scone called the “Horse Capital of Australia” so many times I’d stopped really hearing it, the way you do with a nickname that gets repeated until it loses its meaning.

Then we actually drove into the Upper Hunter.

And I understood it wasn’t really a slogan at all.

It was a description.

Thoroughbred studs are scattered throughout this valley, including some of the most famous breeding operations in Australia, and you feel it in the landscape before anyone tells you a single fact.

White timber fencing running for kilometres.

Broodmares and foals scattered across immaculate paddocks.

That particular quiet that seems to settle over serious horse country.

And this is genuinely serious horse country.

Winx, one of the greatest racehorses Australia has ever produced, was foaled here in the Hunter Valley and today lives at Coolmore as a broodmare.

Lucy had this trip half-planned before we’d even checked into the motel.

She’d booked us onto a stud tour for the day before the Cup.

No negotiating involved.

And I’ll admit I was glad she had.

Standing beside a paddock watching foals that might one day become Group 1 horses stumbling about on legs that seem far too long for them is a different thing entirely to reading about breeding in a race book.

Lucy had also found the Australian Stock Horse Society museum and insisted we wander through town past some of Scone’s historic buildings.

By that evening, I was fairly thoroughly educated.

Then, the morning after the Cup, when I was quite content to nurse a coffee, she had us in the car again.

Lake Glenbawn.

A walk by the water.

Apparently we were “working off yesterday.”

“You don’t come all this way to sit in a motel room,” she said.

Which is very much the Lucy motto in nine words.

We’d come up for the Scone Cup, but it became the anchor for a proper long weekend rather than the whole point of it.

If you’ve never seen a landscape genuinely built around one animal, give yourself the days either side of the Cup.

Scone rewards people who don’t just show up for the races.

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THE SCONE GOLD CUP REPORT
15 May 2026

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Eventually, you get your turn

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By Scone, there were familiar names everywhere.

Kenny ran his finger down the field.

“Churchill’s Choice.”

“Hawkesbury,” Finn said.

“Formal Display.”

“Tamworth.”

Tommy pointed further up the page.

“What about him?”

Hellsing.

They knew him too.

He’d chased Magnatear home at Muswellbrook and missed that Cup by just 0.2 of a length.

Finn smiled.

“Maybe it’s his turn.”

Tom Sherry kept Hellsing close to the speed and, turning for home, the Cup was wide open.

Then the familiar horses started arriving.

Churchill’s Choice was coming.

Formal Display was there.

Hellsing kept fighting.

The three of them drove towards the line with horses everywhere.

Nobody called it.

They waited.

Then the number went up.

12. Hellsing.

He’d missed Muswellbrook by a fraction.

This time, by 0.27 of a length, the Cup was his.

Kenny looked down at the race book.

“Funny old game.”

Finn nodded.

“Eventually you get your turn.”

Tommy smiled.

“Sometimes.”​​

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