Zahra Takes Half Yours Cups Reins

A significant jockey reshuffle has put Mark Zahra in the box seat for two of the spring’s biggest prizes aboard reigning Caulfield and Melbourne Cup winner Half Yours after Jamie Melham elected to ride star filly Blue Door in The Everest on the same afternoon as the Caulfield Cup. Melham partnered Half Yours into fifth place in Saturday’s Gr1 Turnbull Stakes over 2000m and has been integral to the gelding’s rise through the staying ranks, but co-trainer Tony McEvoy confirmed Zahra will now take the ride when the defending champion attempts to repeat his Caulfield Cup success, with the arrangement potentially extending to the Gr1 Melbourne Cup. According to racing.com, McEvoy made it clear Zahra now controls his own destiny regarding Flemington, saying the two-time Melbourne Cup-winning jockey would need to relinquish the mount himself for the situation to change. Melham’s Sydney commitment is aboard Blue Door in the $20 million The Everest, where the three-year-old filly receives a substantial weight advantage and is set to carry only 51kg under the weight-for-age scale. While McEvoy acknowledged some disappointment at losing Melham’s intimate knowledge of Half Yours, he accepted the commercial and professional reality of the decision and remains delighted with how his stayer has emerged from the Turnbull. Half Yours was having only his second run of the preparation at Flemington and McEvoy considered the performance stronger than it may have appeared on paper, particularly given the searching nature of the contest and the difficulty several horses experienced racing second-up. The stable expects the son of St Jean to strip much fitter at Caulfield, where he will attempt to defend the Cup he won last spring before famously completing the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double. Zahra’s arrival therefore adds another elite big-race rider to the equation at precisely the point Half Yours approaches his primary targets, while Melham’s decision underlines the exceptional pull of The Everest and the difficult choices confronting Australia’s leading jockeys as the major Melbourne and Sydney carnivals increasingly collide.

Half Yours will have a new rider (pic: Mark Gatt)