Michelle Payne’s Melbourne Cup win set for small screen treatment as a miniseries

JOCKEY Michelle Payne’s history-making ride aboard Melbourne Cup roughie Prince of Penzance looks set to be immortalised on the small screen.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - NOVEMBER 04: Michelle Payne, Australian jockey poses a day after she won the 2015 Melbourne Cup, riding Prince of Penzance, and becoming the first female jockey to win the event during a Melbourne Cup Carnival press conference at Crown Entertainment Complex on November 4, 2015 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

JOCKEY Michelle Payne’s history-making ride aboard Melbourne Cup roughie Prince of Penzance looks set to be immortalised on the small screen.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal plans are under way to turn her inspiring and at times heartbreaking story into a prime time TV miniseries.

A major Australian TV production company has already approached key people involved in the Payne story, including the jockey herself, with a view to dramatising the remarkable underdog tale for a national audience.

“I’ve already had one production (company) calling, wanting to talk to me and Michelle­,” one source close to the Payne family said.

Payne’s story is truly a remarkable one.

She was only six months old when her mother died in a head-on car crash with a vehicle her friend was driving.

One of 10 children raised by her father Paddy, she overcame myriad hurdles in her career to triumph at Flemington in the nation’s biggest sporting event.

Not only did she become the first woman jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, she did it in a strong field which had pushed her mount’s odds out to a longshot 100-1.

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Champion ... Melbourne Cup winning jockey Michelle Payne / Picture: Getty Images

Prince of Penzance has his own backstory, partly owned by a group of mates who chipped in a few grand each in a scheme devised at the pub.

And of course the strapper was Payne’s brother Stevie, born with Down syndrome.

It’s believed the Payne story will be told in a similar format to Howzat!, which plotted the course of Kerry Packer’s World Series cricket dream, and Not The Boy Next Door, a biographical miniseries about the life and struggles of songwriter Peter Allen.

Payne’s understated father yesterday said he put his daughter’s famous win down to the bond she shared with Prince of Penzance.

“She’s ridden it in 22 out of 23 starts, she knows the horse very well and the horse knows her,” he said. “I think the odds were too long, people weren’t giving it a chance.”

Michelle Payne celebrates as she returns to the mounting yard on Tuesday / Picture: AAP

Originally published as Michelle Payne’s Melbourne Cup win set for small screen treatment as a miniseries