{"id":192178,"date":"2025-10-05T21:04:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T21:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/192178\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T21:04:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T21:04:14","slug":"jamie-melham-explains-gilded-water-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/192178\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Melham explains Gilded Water ride"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jockey Jamie Melham&#8217;s nightmare trip turned out to be the perfect passage for Valiant King to win his way into the Melbourne Cup in a shock result to the Group 3 Bart Cummings.<\/p>\n<p>Valiant King hadn&#8217;t won in his previous nine starts for first Joseph O&#8217;Brien then Chris Waller but picked the perfect time to break a winning drought stretching back to May 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Jockey Jye McNeil steered Valiant King to victory at $61 over the $71 chance Torranzino while Melham&#8217;s mount Gilded Water finished third as a $2.15 favourite.<\/p>\n<p>Stewards queried Melham over the fact Gilded Water opened a big midrace lead on his rivals while setting fast sectionals in front.<\/p>\n<p>Melham said Gilded Water over-raced badly after she sent him forward from a wide barrier from where he could not obtain the cover he needed to settle.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;(It was) Horrible. He was completely out of control,&#8221; Melham told stewards 20 minutes after the race.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I still can&#8217;t feel my arms.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s very strong. But he&#8217;s much, much worse without any cover.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">VALIANT KING \ud83d\ude31<\/p>\n<p>Well that was something! Valiant King is into another Melbourne Cup, running down the King&#8217;s horse Gilded Water who set up a massive lead in the run! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sgxtI9tztY\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/sgxtI9tztY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 7HorseRacing \ud83d\udc0e (@7horseracing) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/7horseracing\/status\/1974353287622111372?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">October 4, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Despite Gilded Water&#8217;s racing manners, Melham said King Charles III&#8217;s stayer produced a &#8220;super performance&#8221; to hold third.<\/p>\n<p>She added she told the Ciaron Maher stable to employ a Norton bit to help Gilded Water settle in his future races.<\/p>\n<p>While Gilded Water needs to find another way to qualify, Valiant King earned a Melbourne Cup ballot exemption with his win in the $350,000 race.<\/p>\n<p>Waller&#8217;s representative Charlie Duckworth said luck deserted the stable when Valiant King was primed to run a bold race in the Group 1 Sydney Cup in the autumn.<\/p>\n<p>He said Valiant King&#8217;s owners bought the grey to win the Melbourne Cup last year but the gelding could improve on his midfield finish this time around.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were really unlucky to miss the Sydney Cup in the autumn when he had a minor foot issue leading into it and we just thought he was primed and ready to go,&#8221; Duckworth said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But hey, it will be much better to win a Melbourne Cup than a Sydney Cup.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jockey Jamie Melham&#8217;s nightmare trip turned out to be the perfect passage for Valiant King to win his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-192178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}