BROWN AND MELHAM ... FACING AND OVERCOMING ADVERSITY ON THE PATH TO MELBOURNE CUP GLORY

By Graham Potter | Wednesday, November 4, 2026

The winning jockeys in the last two editions of the Melbourne Cup can be proud of themselves in a way which extends far beyond celebrating their win of lifetime.

In fact, both Jamie Melham (who won the 2025 Cup on Half Yours) and Ethan Brown (who saluted in the Cup this week on Point Of Law) have a story to tell that goes from chilling to heart-warming … from gut-wrenching to relief … from despair and disaster to greatness and glory.

And there is not one bit of exaggeration in that description.

March 2023 was not a good month for racing at Flemington, the home of the Melbourne Cup.

On March 4, jockey Ethan Brown crashed down from Maximillius in the Australian Guineas at Flemington. He came down with Mark Zahra, but while Zahra was able to walk away, Brown’s body was badly beaten up in the fall. He suffering a severed artery which caused internal bleeding and blood loss as well as a grade 5 lacerated liver, a damaged right kidney and hairline fractures of three vertebrae in his lower back.

Just a week later. on March 11, 2023, Jamie Melham was flung from her mount Flyball during the running of the VRC Sires’ Produce Stakes. Her injuries included bleeding on the brain … she spent five days in an induced coma … a broken wrist, broken foot, broken nose … and all of an initial memory loss, confusion, impaired vision and balance issues which all had to be addressed over a long recovery and rehabilitation period.

In truth, it was a little of a miracle that both Brown and Melham made it back to race riding in the first place … but getting back in the game and making it stick was no easy task for either of them.

For Brown, there was something of a false start. He returned to race riding in August 2023 but, by his own admission, he was not ready to be back. He rode for a month before opting to take a step back, not knowing if he would ever return at all.

It is at times like that where good mates are worth their weight in gold.

Ciaron Maher has had many ‘sit down’ chats with Brown over the intervening years, from telling him that he was a better rider than he would be a trainer, when Brown was thinking of changing professions … to telling him to get back to riding … to offering his support if he chose to do that.

“He (Maher) was very firm about that. He said, ‘You are delusional mate, get back riding’ was the way Brown described one of their conversations.

While the body healed, the mindset took a bit longer to fall into line. Without Maher’s ever present positive involvement, it is fair to say Brown would probably not be a Melbourne Cup winning rider.

In the end, of course, Brown had to do all of the hard yards himself to get there … nobody else could do all that was required for him to rise to the top of his profession … and what a comeback it has been!

For Melham, the time away from racing directly after the Flemington fall was an extended one, stretching all the way out to a little over five months before she returned to the saddle.

Her progress was also interrupted, not by any self-doubt of where she wanted to go, but by a series of unfortunate suspensions, with those setbacks meaning that Melham took a while to get back to her best form.

Melham, who also enjoyed a solid, close support base throughout, famously went on to exceed any expectations she might have had on resuming riding, becoming the first female to win the Caulfield Cup / Melbourne Cup double aboard Half Yours.

Brown and Melham have deserved their respective successes in the Melbourne Cup on so many levels, some of which are still hard to comprehend.

They are Melbourne Cup warriors in the true sense of the word who stand as a shining example of how extreme adversity, with its associated physical and mental challenges, can be taken on and overcome.

Fittingly, they have now both cemented their places in the rich history of Australia’s greatest race.

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