{"id":212622,"date":"2025-10-20T07:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T07:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/212622\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T07:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T07:11:10","slug":"zahra-links-with-al-riffa-in-bid-for-third-melbourne-cup-the-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/212622\/","title":{"rendered":"Zahra links with Al Riffa in bid for third Melbourne Cup \u2013 The Straight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Zahra has been confirmed as the jockey for Melbourne Cup topweight Al Riffa.<\/p>\n<p>Al Riffa, trained in Ireland by Joseph O\u2019Brien, will carry 59kg in the $10 million race for which he is now favourite after the withdrawal of Sir Delius.<\/p>\n<p>Zahra will be chasing a third Melbourne Cup triumph after winning on Gold Trip in 2022 and Without A Fight in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>A son of Wootton Bassett, Al Riffa underlined his Melbourne Cup credentials in winning the Irish St Leger in September.<\/p>\n<p>Syndicator Australia Bloodstock, who has celebrated Melbourne Cup success with Protectionist (2014) and Gold Trip, purchased Al Riffa after the stayer\u2019s emphatic win in the Group 2 Curragh Cup in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Zahra has been confirmed as the jockey for Melbourne Cup topweight Al Riffa. Al Riffa, trained in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-212622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}