Here is the original, Michael. It is interesting but it is backfitting at its most egregious. You are quite correct in that there have been a couple of placegetters which started at 71.0 in recent years.

WAGERING on the Melbourne Cup is a better bet than money in the bank, according to mathematicians who say they've cracked a winning formula.

A punter who followed the betting formula of the University of NSW number-crunchers for the past 20 years would be $30,000 richer than if they had had put their money into a savings account at a generous interest rate of 6 per cent.

The secret is a formula the boffins call the Melbourne Cup Trifecta 50 or MCT50.

The bet eliminates all the horses that have odds longer than 50-1 and puts a $1 bet on all possible box trifecta combinations for the remaining starters.

It's a pricey method but after an initial outlay of $4896 on the 1989 Cup this "winning formula" would have returned a profit of $40,885 by 2008 - a return of 154 per cent.

"Backing this is equivalent to having put your money in the bank at 11 per cent over that time," head of mathematics and statistics Professor Anthony Dooley said.