Photo: WILLIAM WEST / AFP
Ten years after watching entranced as Michelle Payne rode to Melbourne Cup glory, Jamie Melham was welcomed into the two-member club of winning women jockeys at "the race that stops the nation" by her hero on Tuesday.
Triumphant at Flemington on a gelding named Half Yours, Australian Melham shared her triumph with close friend Payne, who smashed through the glass ceiling in 2015 on 100/1 outsider Prince of Penzance.
After 155 years of men winning Australia's most prestigious horse race, Payne famously told the racetrack chauvinists who she said had dogged her career to "get stuffed".
On Tuesday, Payne hugged Melham after seeing the 29-year-old tear down the same trail she blazed to win the gruelling A$9 million (NZ$10.3 million) handicap.
"The times are changing," Payne told Melham as the jockey wiped away a tear.
"It's just unbelievable. Well done, what a ride."
Only weeks after becoming the first woman to win the A$5 million (NZ$5.7 million) Caulfield Cup, Melham coaxed another magical run out of the same five-year-old trained by father-and-son duo Tony and Calvin McEvoy, winning by three lengths from Goodie Two Shoes.
"I almost rode it as good as you rode yours," Melham told Payne with a smile. "I tried to copy the ride a bit."
Only 13 horses have won the Caulfield and Melbourne Cup in the same season over their 150-year histories.
Melham became the first female jockey to achieve the double in what has become a career-defining Spring carnival.
Like Payne, Melham's rise to the pinnacle of the sport has been built on toughness and perseverance.
There has been trauma, injuries and errors of judgement.
In 2014, when riding at a rural race meeting in South Australia, one of her closest friends fell from a horse in front of her and was trampled. She died in hospital from her injuries.
Seven years later, racing stewards banned her for three months, along with jockey and future husband Ben Melham, for breaching COVID-19 protocols at a house party near Melbourne.
She was trampled after a heavy fall at Flemington in 2023 and was put in a six-day coma in hospital. Returning to the saddle felt like riding "drunk", and it took most of a year for her to fully recover.
Having endured all that, there was little surprise when she won last year's Victorian Derby after being head-butted by a horse which left her with a bruised and bloody nose.
Days later, she was third in the Melbourne Cup on Ciaron Maher-trained Okita Soushi.
Having raced as Jamie Kah until getting married this year, she rode past her husband at the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday as he toiled to 14th on the back of Smokin' Romans.
Melham pledged pre-race that Half Yours' prizemoney would be half her husband's.
Plenty in the crowd of 80,000 at Flemington will have shared in the spoils; Half Yours was a sentimental favourite as the only locally-bred horse in the field of 24.
"It shows that we can do it," said co-trainer Calvin McEvoy.
"It's still our race, but it's become a lot harder to win with an Australian-bred horse."
- Reuters
