Melbourne Cup 2015: Michelle Payne is our first Cup princess
The first woman jockey to win the Melbourne Cup didn’t set out to blaze a trail on Prince Of Penzance down the Flemington straight.
Michelle Payne has been unlucky more times than she can remember. Unlucky to miss a start.
Unlucky not to get a clear run. Unlucky to be dumped from a ride after a disappointing result.
Her frustration isn’t over the fickle nature of racing; it’s the fickleness of owners who forgive an unlucky ride by other jockeys but not by her.
The first woman jockey to win the Melbourne Cup didn’t set out to blaze a trail down the Flemington straight. Yet immediately after her starring role in one of the great Melbourne Cup stories, Payne delivered a blunt message to anyone who still doubted whether women could ride the big races: “To those who say women aren’t strong enough, get stuffed.”
It was a message, as much for the racing industry, as for some of the owners of the 101-1 longshot she had just ridden to a historic victory. As she bluntly remarked, not all the connections of Prince Of Penzance were so happy about having a woman in the saddle of their Cup runner.
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Payne knows a little about beating the odds. As the youngest of 10 children, seven of whom have worked as jockeys, she never wanted to do anything else. Her career nearly ended 11 years ago when a brutal race fall left her with a fractured skull and serious brain damage.
Her father, Paddy, a Ballarat trainer who had raised his youngest daughter on his own after losing his wife, Mary, in a car crash when Michelle was still a baby, urged her to quit riding and go back to school. Instead, Payne endured a long, slow rehabilitation and battled depression to return to the track.
At the age of 30, she has now achieved what even her Cox Plate-winning brother Patrick could not.
GRAPHIC: What the jockeys said
“I always knew a girl would win a Melbourne Cup sooner or later but never thought it would be one of mine,” her proud father told The Australian last night from his Ballarat home.
As Prince Of Penzance took control of the Melbourne Cup about 200m from the winner’s post and grimly held off the more favoured Max Dynamite and Criterion, any doubts about Payne were forgotten in the winner’s circle, where a delirious mob of dark-suited, purple-tied blokes jumped and hollered; others shook their heads in disbelief.
Some in the owners’ syndicate, such as 77-year-old Arthur Rickard, had followed racing all their lives. “They can write my obituary, when I go to my grave, that I had a winner in the Melbourne Cup,’’ Rickard said, part laughing and part crying.
Others, such as 56-year-old accountant Mark Hall, are new to the game. It took him a while to confess to his wife that the $25 a month direct debit disappearing from their savings account was going towards a horse.
Amid the celebrations, few noticed the stricken form of Red Cadeaux hobbling down the straight. In the final 150m, the horse that three times finished second in the great race fractured its fetlock. The 10-year-old was immediately taken to a vet hospital in Werribee, where the injury was assessed as not life threatening. The horse will not race again.
On the winner’s dais, Payne hugged her brother Stevie, who has Down syndrome and works as a stable hand for trainer Darren Weir. Stevie’s final message to his sister was she’d better win because he had $10 each way riding on it.
In a speech that will resonate throughout her sport, Payne laid bare one of the great myths of racing. “It is not about strength,” she said. “It is about getting a horse into a rhythm, it is being patient. And hopefully it will help female jockeys from now on get a bit more of a go.’’
Darren Weir was always convinced that Payne should have the ride on Prince Of Penzance, a horse bought at a yearling sale for a mere $NZ50,000.
Born in the Mallee town of Berriwillock, Weir came to racing’s biggest day via the dusty roads that lead to country race meets throughout the state. He famously turned up to work at his first racing job in the Grampians town of Stawell riding a horse; his car broke down after hitting a kangaroo and he figured the best way of finishing the journey was to saddle up a horse from the float.
He has since built a career as a successful trainer with stables in Ballarat and Warrnambool but remains faithful to those who helped him along with the way.
This includes the two major owners of Prince Of Penzance, John Richards and Sandy McGregor, whose father provided Weir, then working as a horse breaker and farrier, with a couple of horses to train. It also includes Michelle Payne. “She is a great rider,” Weir said. “She works hard behind the scenes. I’ve said it before, a lot of people are not that keen to give her the opportunity in these sort of races but Sandy and John have supported her all the way through.’’
At a party last night at South Melbourne pub The Emerald, Weir said he had hoped the horse would make it into the prize-winning top 10. To win was a childhood dream, “an amazing feeling”.
It would be a “massive night” of celebration, he said, “a massive week I would have thought”.
While Payne was still taking in her triumph, she reflected on the fact that not all female jockeys had had the same opportunity that she did. “I feel a bit bad because if a lot of the other girls were given the opportunity, they’re good enough to win ... I don’t want to steal the limelight from them,” she said.
Prince Of Penzance is a remarkable tale in himself. Twice he has undergone surgery to repair damaged fetlocks and, last year, he had further surgery on a twisted bowel, a condition that can end careers and, in some cases, be fatal. Payne first rode the horse to a win at Flemington three years ago and since then, she has rated him as the best horse she has ridden.
In 21 of the horse’s 22 rides, mostly at racecourses far away from the roar of the Flemington grandstand, Prince Of Penzance has had Payne in the saddle. Payne says this was the one ride she was determined to keep.
“I feel that a lot of the time I get taken off because they say she was unlucky or she missed the start or she couldn’t get it out or whatever,” she said. “Then the guys get on next start and they do the same and they say he was unlucky, it wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t get it out. That just drives me crazy because a lot of the time I am way more dedicated than a lot of those guys.
“It is fair to say I drove Darren mad about this horse because I obviously knew that some of the owners wanted to take me off. I just kept showing up and doing all of his gallops and just annoying the hell out of Darren in the hope they wouldn’t take me off. He said just win on it and don’t give them the excuse.’’
The owners no longer have an excuse. Not those of Prince Of Penzance, not of any horse.
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