The Melbourne Cup is a notoriously hard race to pick a winner in.
Factors that make it hard to pick a winner are:
It's over 3200 metres and very few races are run over this distance so it's hard to know if horses will stay the distance.
With the international horses, we know little about how they will race in Australia and adapt to our conditions.
There are 24 horses running which is a huge field.
The barrier a horse draws is important with such a huge field of horses.
Most of the horses have excellent credentials; that's why they are here. So there are very few horses you can totally write off.
Anyway good luck punters!