Melbourne Cup: Point of Law, Sold by King Charles, Wins the Race the King Wanted Most

Every owner-breeder lives with the same quiet arithmetic: most colts get sold, and some leave before they show you what they are. King Charles III ran that sum on Point of Law, a homebred son of Frankel he cheered from the Royal Box and then let go to Australia. At Flemington the colt came from behind, ran down a runaway leader late in the straight and won the Melbourne Cup for somebody else.

The easy version of this story is royal regret, and the trainer who bought him said openly that he hoped for exactly that. The sharper version is the one the King started himself. He had reportedly named this race as the one he wants above all others, and the horse that has now won it carries his breeding, his late mother’s bloodline and none of his colours.

Point of Law, ridden by Ethan Brown for Ciaron Maher, won by three and three-quarter lengths, according to Thoroughbred Daily News. Royal Supremacy had set a ferocious pace and led by around 20 lengths down the back; Point of Law caught him with about 150 metres left, the ABC reported, and Zahrann and Juja Kibo filled the places. All three are Maher horses, making him the first trainer in the Cup’s 166 runnings to saddle the trifecta. It was only the colt’s sixth career start and his second in Australia, after the Geelong Cup, and he is just the fourth horse to win that race and the Melbourne Cup in the same year, after Media Puzzle, Americain and Dunaden.

A homebred three generations deep

This was never a horse the royals bought into. Thoroughbred Daily News describes Point of Law as a third-generation homebred for the Royal Studs: the first foal of Portfolio, a mare who won twice for Queen Elizabeth II, out of the Listed winner Diploma. Trained for the King and Queen by John and Thady Gosden, he won a maiden at Newbury, ran a close fourth in the Queen’s Vase at Royal Ascot and then took the Group 3 Bahrain Trophy at Newmarket in July.

Ascot is where the King’s part of the story is on camera. Hello! reported that he was filmed cheering the colt from the Royal Box and looked disappointed as the race ended with Point of Law fourth.

The sale, and the logic behind it

After Newmarket the colt was sold to an Australian ownership group assembled around Maher, and the price was never disclosed. Thoroughbred Daily News noted that the deal ended the King and Queen’s hopes of running him in the St Leger at Doncaster, where he had been a general 14-1 chance. John Warren, the royal racing adviser, told The Straight: “I’m sure Their Majesties will derive great pleasure following Point of Law’s continued career in Australia.” The statement that accompanied the sale was blunter about the economics: like all owner-breeders, the King and Queen sell most of their colts.

Maher’s side never pretended it had found a secret. “We weren’t being geniuses by buying him,” his head of bloodstock, Will Bourne, told Thoroughbred Daily News, pointing to how often Queen’s Vase and Bahrain Trophy form has turned into Group 1 wins in Australia. One of those examples was royal too: Circle Of Fire, Queen Elizabeth II’s homebred, whom Maher trained to win the 2024 Sydney Cup.

The race he said he wanted

The detail that turns a routine sale into a story came from the trainer’s mother. Eileen Maher told RSN in July that she had sat beside the King at a Windsor Castle lunch during Royal Ascot week, and that he told her the late Queen had asked him to keep sending royal horses to be trained abroad, which is how her son came to have three of them. “He told me that the race that he wants to win more than anything else is the Melbourne Cup,” she said. “And if Ciaron could get one of those horses into the Melbourne Cup, he and Queen Camilla would definitely come out for the race.”

Within weeks, the royal-bred colt with the right profile for the race had gone to that same trainer, only no longer as a royal horse. Before the Cup, Maher told AAP that his purchase would “hopefully” prove to be the King’s loss, while warning that the colt was “very young though, very raw”. Race-day coverage carried no word from the King himself.

The jockey who nearly walked away

The ride came from a man with his own reasons to savour it. Brown had stepped away from race riding after a life-threatening fall in the 2023 Australian Guineas, and it was Maher who persuaded him back, Thoroughbred Daily News reported. “He’s going to be a superstar horse, he’s something special,” Brown said after the race. “Please don’t wake me up. It’s every jockey’s dream to do this.” Maher kept it shorter: “He’s just thrived.”

For the royal operation, the prize that stays at home is the family. Portfolio produced a colt by Churchill this February, according to Thoroughbred Daily News, a half-brother whose catalogue page now opens with a Melbourne Cup winner. The race the King wanted most has gone into the record books with his name on the line that says “bred by”, and not on the one that lists the owners.

Tags: horse racing, king charles iii, Ciaron Maher, Melbourne Cup, Point of Law