Jamie Melham poses with the 2025 Lexus Melbourne Cup after riding Half Yours to victory at Flemington Racecourse. Photo / Josh Chadwick / Getty Images
Michael Guerin in Melbourne
The racetrack that nearly killed her changed jockey Jamie Melham’s life forever when she rode Half Yours to win the A$10 million ($11.5m) Lexus Melbourne Cup on Tuesday.
Melham rode an inch-perfect race to add Australia’s most iconic race to the Caulfield Cup she won with Half Yours last start, making her the first female rider to win Australian racing’s most famous double.
Michelle Payne was the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup in 2015.
The Flemington that Melham ruled today was different to the one she left in an ambulance 603 days ago.
In March 2023, Melham, then named Jamie Kah before her marriage to fellow jockey Ben Melham, was involved in a horror fall and crashed to the Flemington turf in the VRC Sires’ Produce Stakes.
She suffered a brain bleed and broken bones and spent six days in an induced coma.
When she came out of it, she didn’t know her own name or age.
It took five months before Melham was allowed to ride again and longer to return to her best.
The feel, the timing, the eye for the gap so crucial to race riding took months to return.
Doubters questioned whether the golden girl of Australian racing would ever again be the undeniable talent who burst on to the Victorian scene after moving there from South Australia.
They should have known better.
Post fall and during occasional minor scuffles with officialdom, Melham has always looked most comfortable on horseback.
Yes, she is an athlete and very much a competitor. But at heart, she is a horsey girl.
This year the old Melham was back.
Her quiet confidence and soft hands make her a favourite with trainers and punters as she competes with some of the world’s best jockeys.
In racing, there is no “female division”. Melham wouldn’t have it any other way.
However, she did have some input from husband Ben before heading to Flemington yesterday as he helped her analyse the race until it was burned into her brain.
“Ben and I don’t often talk about races but we must have gone over this 15 times and it worked out exactly as we hoped,” said Melham.
“I was midfield and travelling well, cut the corner and got the gaps at the perfect time.
“But you still need the horse to do that, to take those gaps. And he was so up for it, he is a lovely boy and I told him that when I was giving him a hug after.”
Melham was struggling to come to terms with the enormity of her victory, which is life-changing for any jockey but as the first female to complete the Cups double and being incredibly marketable, she will have a role to play in future Melbourne Cup days, on or off the track, for as long as she desires.
What was special felt like a dream because Half Yours is trained by father-and-son team Tony and Calvin McEvoy, who have been two of Melham’s biggest supporters since they all raced in their native South Australia.
“We saw her coming up through the ranks and knew straight away she was special,” said Tony McEvoy.
“We got sick of her beating us, so we joined forces and have had enormous success together.
“So to do this together, the Cups double, is incredible.”
The McEvoys only purchased Half Yours in an online auction last year, the gelding having won two minor races back then from five starts and Calvin blowing their original budget to secure him for A$305,000.
He has since won more than A$9m and while he will now be asked to carry weights that may make handicap racing unfavourable in the future, he is a good enough horse to continue the fairytale at the elite weight-for-age level.
Half Yours is by the unfashionable stallion St Jean, who won a City Of Auckland Cup at Ellerslie when trained in New Zealand by Donna Logan towards the end of his career.
St Jean stood at stud for a fee of $3000 for much of the past eight years and is a father to 67 foals.
Even now, as the father of the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double winner, St Jean stands at an $11,000 stud fee, small change in the big-money world of breeding champion racehorses.
St Jean’s story defies logic.
The Half Yours story proves it is not where you start in life, but where you finish.
But it was Jamie Melham who reminded us all, no matter how tough life gets, never give up.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.