MICHELLE PAYNE: on tragedy, triumph and family love

As her incredible story of tragedy, triumph and family love is immortalised on the big screen, trailblazing jockey Michelle Payne takes Susan Horsburgh back to where it all began.

As kids, Michelle Payne and her brother Stevie used to wake up early every morning, jump out of the bed they top-and-tailed in, and put on Phar Lap, the 1983 movie about Australia’s most famous racehorse. Michelle reckons they watched it hundreds of times and could probably still recite the film from start to finish.

The 11th and youngest child of Ballarat horse trainer Paddy Payne, Michelle was only five years old back then, but already fixed on a dream: to ride the winning horse in the Melbourne Cup. On a blue-sky day some 25 years later, when Michelle found herself in the mounting yard at Flemington with thoroughbred Prince of Penzance and Stevie as her strapper, about to tackle the world’s toughest two-mile race, she had to marvel at life’s machinations.

“I was like, here we are, the two little kids,” says Michelle. “I remember just looking down at Stevie,

shaking my head and smiling. Who would have thought all those years ago watching Phar Lap that we’d be here about to race in the biggest race together? That was so special.” As she headed off, Stevie told her, “Don’t get beat. I’ve got my money on you.”

Loaded into barrier one, she said a silent prayer to her mother, who was killed in a car crash when Michelle was a baby, and to sister Brigid, a fellow jockey who had died after a fall eight years earlier. She could feel them with her. And then they were off. A 100-to-one outsider, Prince of Penzance thundered across the finish line and into the history books – and Michelle, at 30, became the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup.

Seared into Michelle’s memory is Stevie leading her and the horse back to the scales. “That was just a dream come true,” she says. “It didn’t even seem like real life.” →