Thirty years of races, but the odds were with Marie

As her time in the industry and years as a bookie, Mrs Wright has witnessed a huge amount of change, but she believes one thing hasn’t changes – the importance of country races for cities and towns. 

“It’s always an important event, county cups are very good for towns and races,” she said.

Mrs Wright said when she first started as a bookie there was no computers to lodge bets and instead they carried around “great big books with eight columns”.

“A lot has changed, the dynamics of it all, decimal odds, but country races are still important,” she said. 

Mrs Wright said she expected a very busy Wodonga Cup Day, saying the vent stacked up against races across country Australia.