Linda Meech (born 1980) is an Australian jockey. Born in New Zealand, she went to Australia on a working holiday in 1998 and stayed. [1]
Meech grew up on the family farm in Pongaroa, in the Manawatū-Whanganui region of New Zealand's North Island. [2] She began her jockey's apprenticeship in Queensland, then moved to New South Wales before settling in Victoria. [3] She rode in her first race in 1999. In November 2013 she became the second Australian woman, after Clare Lindop in 2008, to win 1000 races. [1] [4] [5] She won her first Group One race on Plucky Belle in the Coolmore Classic in March 2015. [2]
In 2019, Meech was the first woman to win the Victorian Jockeys' Premiership, when she rode 145 winners from 755 rides. [2] [6] As of late January 2025, she has ridden 1,942 winners, including two in Group One races. [7]
Meech also has a trainer's licence. She and her partner Mark Pegus, who is also a trainer and jockey, had a son in January 2021. She resumed racing in May 2021. [6]
The Melbourne Cup is an annual Group 1 Thoroughbred horse race held in Melbourne, Australia, at the Flemington Racecourse. It is a 3200-metre race for three-year-olds and older, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club that forms part of the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival. It is the richest two-mile handicap in the world and one of the richest turf races. The event starts at 3:00 pm on the first Tuesday of November and is known locally as "the race that stops the nation".
Thoroughbred horse racing is a spectator sport in Australia, and gambling on horse races is a very popular pastime with A$14.3 billion wagered in 2009/10 with bookmakers and the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB). The two forms of Thoroughbred horseracing in Australia are flat racing, and races over fences or hurdles in Victoria and South Australia. Thoroughbred racing is the third most attended spectator sport in Australia, behind Australian rules football and rugby league, with almost two million admissions to 360 registered racecourses throughout Australia in 2009/10. Horseracing commenced soon after European settlement, and is now well-appointed with automatic totalizators, starting gates and photo finish cameras on nearly all Australian racecourses.
A jockey is someone who rides horses in horse racing or steeplechase racing, primarily as a profession. The word also applies to camel riders in camel racing. The word "jockey" originated from England and was used to describe the individual who rode horses in racing. They must be light, typically around a weight of 100–120 lb. (45–55 kg), and physically fit. They are typically self-employed, and are paid a small fee from the horse trainer, whose colors they wear while competing in a race. They also receive a percentage of the horse's winnings. The job has a very high risk of debilitating or life-threatening injuries, not only from racing accidents but also, because of strict weight restrictions, from eating disorders.
Damien Oliver is an Australian retired thoroughbred racing jockey. Oliver comes from a racing family; his father Ray Oliver had a successful career until his death in a race fall during the 1975 Kalgoorlie Cup in Western Australia. In 2008, Oliver was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame. In August 2023 he announced that he would retire at the end of that year's spring carnival.
The Australian and New Zealand punting glossary explains some of the terms, jargon and slang which are commonly used and heard on Australian and New Zealand racecourses, in TABs, on radio, and in the horse racing media. Some terms are peculiar to Australia, such as references to bookmakers, but most are used in both countries.
The racing of Thoroughbred horses is a popular gaming and spectator sport and industry in New Zealand.
Darren Gauci is a former Australian jockey.
Thomas John Smith was a leading trainer of thoroughbred racehorses based in Sydney, New South Wales.
Harry White was an Australian jockey. He was one of the country's leading jockeys, especially in the 1970s, and was a four-time winner of the Melbourne Cup. He also won three Newmarket Handicaps, three Oakleigh Plates and three Futurity Stakes.
The 2003 Melbourne Cup was the 143rd running of the Melbourne Cup, a prestigious Australian Thoroughbred horse race. The race, run over 3,200 metres (1.988 mi), was held on 4 November 2003 at Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse.
Michelle J. Payne is a retired Australian jockey. She won the 2015 Melbourne Cup, riding Prince of Penzance, and is the first and only female jockey to win the event.
Silent Achiever was a champion New Zealand Thoroughbred racehorse. On 3 March 2012, she won the 137th running of the New Zealand Derby. She was the first filly to win the race since 1993, and only the fourth in the last 45 years.
James Hugh Bowman is an Australian thoroughbred racing jockey. Based in Sydney, Bowman has won the New South Wales Metropolitan Jockey Premiership four times and has ridden 100 Group 1 winners. He was the jockey for Australian champion mare Winx from 2014 through to her retirement in 2019. In 2017, Bowman won the Longines World’s Best Jockey award presented by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. The award capped off a year in which he added to his domestic success with international Group 1 wins in Hong Kong and Japan. In 2019, he was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame, the industry’s highest accolade. Bowman is also renowned for his “She’s Apples” winning salute and his nickname of “the Undisputed Group 1 King”.
Etah James is a retired Thoroughbred racehorse trained and bred in New Zealand and raced in New Zealand and Australia. She has won a Group One race, and over a million dollars.
Jamie Lee Kah is an Australian jockey. Since October 2020 she has been the world's top-ranked female jockey. In 2020/21 she became the first jockey to ride 100 winners in a Melbourne Metropolitan racing season.
Linda Christine Jones is a New Zealand former thoroughbred horse racing jockey. She was the first woman to be granted a race licence in New Zealand in 1977 and the first in Australasia to achieve four victories in a single day the following year. Jones finished second in the 1978/1979 Jockey Premiership with 18 winners by Christmas 1978. She later became the first woman to ride a Derby winner in each of the Australasia, Europe, and North America continents and the first female to beat professional male entrants at an Australian-registered event. Injury prompted Jones to retire in 1980; she had achieved 65 victories within 18 months. She is an inductee of both the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame and the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame.
Owen Patrick "Opie" Bosson is a jockey in Thoroughbred racing in New Zealand.
David Walsh is a former jockey in Thoroughbred racing in New Zealand. He is notable for having won the New Zealand jockey's premiership twice and riding over 2,500 winners in New Zealand and overseas.
Mervyn "Merv" Maynard was an Aboriginal Australian jockey who rode numerous winners in a career spanning almost five decades.
The 1987 Melbourne Cup was a handicap horse race which took place on Tuesday, 3 November 1987 over 3200m, at Flemington Racecourse for a stake of $1,285,000.