What have the Greeks ever done for us?* Democracy?Well, yeah, obviously democracy. Democracy goes without saying, doesn't it? But apart from that - and the Olympics, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, concepts of love, beauty, tragedy and comedy; Archimedes's screw, Plato's Platonism, Aristotle's empiricism and Socrates' defence-splitting passes from midfield - what have the Greeks ever done for us?Punctuation.Shut up!Some British intellectuals wrote to a paper last month appealing for sympathy for Greece in its debt plight because the rest of the world owed it a huge cultural debt for all the clever things its people did in antiquity.Imagine the hullabaloo that caused in the blogosphere. Who knew that Pythagoras was actually Bulgarian, that the Greeks stole ideas from the Persians, or that rape was once a casual pastime of Greek gods and citizens alike?A veritable Pandora's box was opened. From the twittery I learnt that Pandora, the first woman on Earth, actually opened a jar, not a box, when she inadvertently released bad stuff into the world.The evil from that jar included war, something ancient Greeks and their gods pursued with enthusiasm. From their battlefields we get Achilles heels, wooden horses and the marathon.The latter derives from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger who ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in 490BC. He ran the 42.195km, said his piece, and died.We remember our debt to him whenever we run the same distance - with watering points.Actually any drawn-out, arduous affair is called a marathon. Like the Greek debt crisis or a long horse race. At least with a race like tomorrow's Gold Cup at Greyville there is a clearly defined finishing post. The eurozone financial fiasco? Not so much; it's some ill-defined place called Grexit - a word that's become another handy little Hellenic contribution to world culture.The Gold Cup is nowhere near Pheidippides's 26 miles and 385 yards effort because horses going flat out can't keep galloping for much more than a couple of miles. So that's how long the Gold Cup is: two miles, or 3200m.It is the premier stamina event on the racing calendar and is steeped in history; even myth.It has a reputation for throwing up long-shot winners, so punters who wagered on outsiders in the Durban July purely because they were greedy about the odds have a fair chance of recouping some money tomorrow.A few years ago I bragged about my brilliant record of picking Gold Cup winners, well and truly putting on the mockers. So look away now if you believe in Tyche, the blind mistress of fortune in Greek mythology who governed mankind with inconstancy.The favourite is Wild One, which at 3-1 isn't wild at all. You must consider Hot Ticket (7-1), Disco Al (7-1) and Solid Speed (5-1), but I'm seeking legendary payouts with Coltrane (14-1), Wild Ash (20-1) and Gone Baby Gone (50-1).A clutch of other big races are on the card, notably the Champions Cup, which is billed as a "boat-race" between stablemates Futura (5/4) and Legislate (5/2), with the red-hot Punta Arenas once again rather underestimated at 6-1.* Apologies to Monty Python's Life of Brian...