When eight-year-old Jamie started riding lessons on her little pony named Bessie, she hoped she would one day win the coveted Melbourne Cup.<\/p>\n
“It’s something she’s wished upon her whole life so [I] can’t believe she’s done it,” Karen Gardiner-Kah told ABC Radio Melbourne after her daughter’s history-making win on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“It’s all like a fairytale come true.”<\/p>\n
Jamie Melham, nee Kah, galloped into the history books as the first female jockey to win the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s win added to her long list of achievements \u2014 most notably being the only female to rank in the Thoroughbred Racing Commentary’s top 100 jockeys globally in 2021.<\/p>\n
Her journey to becoming one of the world’s best jockeys started young in the Adelaide Hills.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jamie Kah on a horse as a young child. (Instagram: Jamie Lee Melham)<\/p>\n
She began attending regular lessons and pony camp at Kersbrook Equestrian Centre, near where her family lived, between the ages of eight to 10.<\/p>\n
“Jamie could already ride when she came here, her mother wanted to polish her skills \u2026 wanted to invest in her development,” the centre’s principal trainer, Nicki Stuart, recalled.<\/p>\n
“She was a very determined little rider, she had a little pony called Bessie that tested her mettle on many occasions.<\/p>\n
“We helped with her foundation as a jockey.”<\/p>\n
Stuart said she watched and celebrated Melham’s achievements over the years, including sponsoring her when she first started her jockey career.<\/p>\n
“She’s a great ambassador for horse welfare and ethical riding techniques,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Her affinity with animals is second to none.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Eighteen-year-old Jamie Kah had almost 200 race wins. (ABC News: Mike Sexton)<\/p>\n
At age 14, Melham worked part-time in the stables of trainer John MacMillan at Mount Pleasant but it was not long before the teenager decided to pursue an apprenticeship.<\/p>\n
“For her to sign up to be an apprentice jockey, there were a lot of meetings with her family to decide to leave school,” MacMillan told ABC Radio Adelaide.<\/p>\n
“When she started riding, she had an enormous amount of talent plus she listens to what she’s asked to do.<\/p>\n
“There’s an old saying that ‘work beats talent when talent doesn’t work’, well Jamie has the talent and the work and that’s why she’s always going to succeed.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Race trainer John MacMillan and young Jamie. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
By the time she turned 18, Melham had ridden almost 200 winners including in Melbourne and Singapore, and won the Adelaide Jockeys’ Premiership in the 2012\/13 season.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Melham became the first female jockey to ride a century of Melbourne metropolitan winners in a season and in the same year, she clocked up 1,000 winners to her name \u2014 an honour that only two other female jockeys, Clare Lindop and Linda Meech, have achieved.<\/p>\n
Her path to the Melbourne Cup was not always about breaking records when in 2023, she had a serious fall at Flemington that resulted in severe concussion and a brain bleed.<\/p>\n
But she got back on the horse and on Tuesday, became the second female Melbourne Cup winner, after Michelle Payne paved the way 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
“The significance of Jamie breaking that glass ceiling is more the fact that she’s the only female jockey in the top 100 world ranked jockeys, and there are probably hundreds of thousands jockeys around the world probably more than that,” MacMillan said.<\/p>\n
“But winning the Melbourne Cup goes beyond the gender, anyone to win a Melbourne Cup is a rare thing \u2014 there’s only been a little over 150 of them so she’s in a small club regardless of gender.<\/p>\n
“Jamie was always talented, always dedicated, always going to make it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When eight-year-old Jamie started riding lessons on her little pony named Bessie, she hoped she would one day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[154158,64,63,154162,19570,154157,135349,153199,154161,154159,154160,84818,153326,1124,85,1542],"class_list":["post-262882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-adelaide-hills","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-clare-lindop","tag-equestrian","tag-jamie-kah","tag-jamie-melham","tag-jockey","tag-john-macmillan","tag-karen-gardiner-kah","tag-kersbrook-equestrian-centre","tag-melbourne-cup","tag-michelle-payne","tag-south-australia","tag-sports","tag-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262882","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=262882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}