Jamie Kah

Jamie Kah was born in 1995 in Adelaide and grew up in Mount Pleasant in the Adelaide Hills. Her parents, John Kah and Karen Gardiner-Kah, were both speed skaters who represented Australia at the Winter Olympics. Dutch heritage ran through the family via her grandparents — but speed was clearly in the bloodline.

She started at the Kersbrook Equestrian Centre between the ages of 8 and 10, working in stables from age 13. At 15, she left school to begin her riding apprenticeship in 2011 — all in on a career that most people don’t even know exists until they see it on television.

Her first race came in March 2012 at Streaky Bay, a tiny country track in South Australia. Fourteen days later, she rode her first winner at Clare. By the end of her first full season in 2012/13, she’d won the Adelaide Jockeys’ Premiership — the title for the jockey who rides the most winners in the region.

Then she won it three more times. Four consecutive premierships before she’d even turned 23.

Jamie moved to Melbourne in January 2019. It took time to learn the tracks and build relationships with new trainers, but she never looked back. Within two months, she’d won her first Group 1 on Harlem in the Australian Cup at Flemington — one of the biggest races on the calendar.

The 2020/21 season was the one that rewrote the record books. Jamie became the first jockey — male or female — to ride 100 winners in a Melbourne Metropolitan racing season. Her final tally was 105 winners, a record that seemed almost unreachable.

She was ranked the world’s leading female jockey in 2020 and 2021, and the only female jockey in the world’s top 100. Not the best female jockey in Australia — the best in the world, by a clear margin.

She also became the third woman — after Clare Lindop and Linda Meech — to ride 1,000 winners in Australia. The speed skater’s daughter had become the fastest of them all.

On 11 March 2023, Jamie was involved in a horrific fall during a race at Flemington. She suffered bleeding on the brain and multiple fractures. The ambulance carried her off the track where she’d won her first Group 1 four years earlier.

She spent five days in an induced coma at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. The severity of the brain injury was staggering — she reportedly had to Google her own name to remember how old she was. Everything she’d built — the records, the Group 1s, the partnerships with trainers — was temporarily erased from her own memory.

Months of rehabilitation followed, both physical and cognitive. Relearning race tactics. Rebuilding fitness. Convincing herself — and the stewards — that she could do it again.

She returned to racing in August 2023 with four rides at Randwick, Sydney. The comeback wasn’t smooth — she faced a suspension in 2024 for careless riding — but she kept pushing. The girl who’d left school at 15 wasn’t the quitting type.

In January 2025, Jamie married fellow jockey Ben Melham and began racing as Jamie Melham. But the racing world still knew her as Jamie Kah — the name that had appeared on those record-breaking scorecards.

In October 2025, she rode Half Yours to win the Caulfield Cup — the first woman in the race’s 149-year history to win it. Half Yours was trained by father-son team Tony and Calvin McEvoy, and was the only Australian-bred horse in the Melbourne Cup field.

Then came 4 November 2025. The Melbourne Cup. Half Yours won by 2.75 lengths. Jamie became the second woman to win the Cup after Michelle Payne — and the first to complete the Caulfield–Melbourne Cup double. Only the 13th horse in history had achieved the double. Jamie and Ben became the first married couple to compete against each other in a Melbourne Cup — Ben also rode in the race.

Post-race, still breathless: “Oh my god. This is what we do it for. This is why we get up out of bed every morning at 4am and work our arses off.”

Then the emotion hit. Her grandfather had died the week before. “The last thing he watched was the Caulfield Cup… so he’s up there opening those gaps for me.”

Michelle Payne’s 2015 Melbourne Cup win was a breakthrough moment — the famous “get stuffed” to the doubters who said women couldn’t compete at the top level.

Jamie Kah’s 2025 double represents something different: normalisation. Female jockeys aren’t making history by being women anymore — they’re making history by being the best. The conversation has shifted from “can women do this?” to “how many more records can she break?”

By late 2025, her career stats read: over 1,340 winners and 18 Group 1 victories. She’s described as the number one female jockey in the world — but some argue she’s simply one of the best jockeys, full stop.

The Flemington that nearly killed her became the Flemington where she made history — 603 days between the ambulance and the Melbourne Cup. That’s the story of Jamie Kah.