Absolutely wild 🤯 pic.twitter.com/EGbXd3YWic
— Ladbrokes Australia (@ladbrokescomau) November 5, 2024
It was party time down under, after one punter achieved what many would consider to be impossible.
The unnamed bettor placed a A$100 bet (£51.33) on the Melbourne Cup, and correctly predicted the first four horses home. The specific bet is called a Boxed First Four over in Australia. This is a bet on the first four horses to cross the finish line, but they can do so in any order.
The statistical probability of getting this correct with 23 horses in the field is just 0.81%.
What made the bet even more incredible was one of the horses the bettor included:
- Knight’s Choice – 90/1
- Warp Speed – 25/1
- Okita Soushi – 18/1
- Zardozi – 13/1
At 90/1, the odds suggested that Knight’s Choice had just a 1.23% chance of winning the race, so it really was a miracle that the punter’s bet won. His other selections weren’t exactly front runners either.
His shortest odds horse, Zardozi, was 6th favourite.
It was Ladbrokes who took the bet, and their spokesperson, Tom Hackett, said:
‘We congratulate one lucky Ladbrokes punter, who managed to find the first four in the Melbourne Cup,’
‘The customer initially thought they had won A$780,000, so you can imagine their surprise when the full dividend was revealed.
I imagine he said it through gritted teeth though, because the payout for that A$100 wager was a stonking A$3,276,070 (£1,682,638.69). Over three million Australian dollars equating to over one point six million pounds.