Lizzie Jelfs has vivid memories of her first Melbourne Cup moment.
Jelfs played a part, albeit a forgotten bit role, in one of the Cup’s great fairytales in 2002 when, as a UK expat riding trackwork for Lindsay Park, she rode a horse that was used as a work mate for eventual Cup hero Media Puzzle.
She led up the Flemington gallop on Lightuma. Damien Oliver followed on Media Puzzle, eventually working past Jelfs’ mount on Dermot Weld’s Irish raider.
Lightuma won the Benalla Cup, while Media Puzzle etched both he and Oliver’s name into sporting folklore at Flemington weeks later.
Jelfs, like many Australians that year, felt emotionally invested in the Cup and the incredible storyline that few sports other than racing can produce.
“When I was working for Tony (McEvoy) I worked with a horse called Lightuma and I did a gallop with Ollie and Media Puzzle before the Geelong Cup,” Jelfs said.
“Media Puzzle only just laid up to us and Ollie was asking what I thought of my horse.”
“My horse went and won the Benalla Cup and Media Puzzle obviously ended up winning both the Geelong Cup and the Melbourne Cup.”
“So I followed Media Puzzle’s journey that year and felt a bit emotionally invested in the story, probably like everyone else that year.”
A lot has changed for Jelfs in the 23 years since Media Puzzle’s triumph.
She long ago traded in her trackwork gear for a microphone and has forged a brilliantly successful career as a racing broadcaster.
Her hands-on connection to horses now is as an owner and syndicator via her successful ‘Race With Lizzie’ brand which has been active at yearling sales across the country in recent seasons.
This week, she and a group of her ambitious clients are dreaming about their own Melbourne Cup fairytale with UK raider Furthur, whom they purchased a 25% stake in ahead of his trip to Melbourne.
Buying into a Cups contender was on Jelfs’ wish list following consultation with her clients and a timely conversation with friend and well-connected racing identity Hermione Fitzgerald alerted her to the opportunity to acquire a share in the Andrew Balding-trained stayer.
“Over the last few years and particularly over the last 12 months I’ve been doing a lot of client relations to figure out what people really want out of their ownership and a lot of the feedback I had from certain owners was that the Melbourne Cup was the race people most wanted to win,” she said.
“So I knew that there was a thirst for it and when I approached the people that I thought might be interested, the answer was yes.”
“Initially, I was just looking to buy 10% for one particular owner but there were a couple of others that were very interested so we were able to buy 25% of him.”
“The conversation with Jason (Singh, Furthur’s part-owner) started and we got into the nitty gritty but it ended up being a pretty seamless deal.”
“Now we’re able to give our owners an experience that they wouldn’t have really been able to buy into any other way.”
Furthur wasn’t just on Jelfs’ radar.
Unaware that she was in talks to purchase a stake in the horse, her 7Racing colleague Jason Richardson made a bold prediction about the horse’s Melbourne Cup prospects.
Like Jelfs, he’d watched the son of Waldgeist run second in the Queen’s Vase at Royal Ascot before capturing the G3 Geoffrey Freer Stakes over 2700m in August.
It only fuelled her interest in the lightly-raced galloper.
“The other cool part of the story is that I was sat waiting to speak to Jason about buying the stake in him and Richo text me saying that he had a prediction for me,” she said.
“He told me he’d found the horse he thought would win the Melbourne Cup and that it was Furthur.”
“He had no idea that I was exploring the opportunity to buy into the horse.”
“It was uncanny because we were just texting about completely unrelated work stuff.”
“Richo is such a good judge and the Melbourne Cup is the race that he loves doing the form for and he loves finding those horses that he thinks have the right profile so that definitely gave me a bit more confidence as well.”
Furthur turned heads in a gallop alongside American raider Parchment Party on Tuesday, pleasing Mick Dee and his traveling entourage.
Jelfs genuinely believes he can run a cheeky race with 52kg and is taking inspiration from the recent record of three-year-olds from the Northern Hemisphere, including Cup winners Rekindling and Cross Counter, as well as placegetters Tiger Moth (2nd in 2020) and Il Paradiso (3rd in 2019).
Furthur is $26 in Bet365’s Melbourne Cup market.
“To be honest with you, just having a runner is a dream come true,” she said.
“To be a part of the Melbourne Cup, which has been such a big part of what I’ve grown up with in my time in Australia, and to be able to provide this experience to my clients, is really special.”
“I think he can run really well and from what I’ve seen and from the reports from Mick Dee and the stable, he’s doing all the right things at Werribee.”
“When you look back through history, the northern hemisphere three-year-olds have got a terrific record so hopefully he can add to that.”
