{"id":641925,"date":"2026-10-26T16:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T16:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/641925\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T16:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T16:08:10","slug":"mcdonald-locks-in-cup-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/641925\/","title":{"rendered":"McDonald locks in Cup ride"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Melbourne Cup-winning jockey James McDonald will ride the Joseph O\u2019Brien-trained Trustyourinstinct in this year\u2019s edition of the great race.<\/p>\n<p>McDonald rode Aeliana to third in Saturday\u2019s Cox Plate, then on Sunday, that mare\u2019s trainer Chris Waller said it was \u201cvery unlikely\u201d that she would contest the Melbourne Cup, paving the way for the star hoop to commit to Trustyourinstinct.<\/p>\n<p>A son of Churchill, Trustyourinstinct was last seen in the Group 1 Irish St Leger at the Curragh, where he placed fourth, 4.5 lengths behind Scandinavia. Prior to that, the gelding won the G2 Curragh Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melbourne Cup-winning jockey James McDonald will ride the Joseph O\u2019Brien-trained Trustyourinstinct in this year\u2019s edition of the great&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[60231,53030,32786,13829,42081,314774,314775,111,139,69,310837,213,314773,53029],"class_list":["post-641925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aeliana","tag-chris-waller","tag-flemington","tag-james-mcdonald","tag-joseph-obrien","tag-melbourne-cup-2026","tag-melbourne-cup-jockeys","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-point-of-law","tag-sports","tag-trustyourinstinct","tag-verry-elleegant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}