Melbourne Cup 2015: Michelle Payne upsets odds to make history in Australia

First woman to win famous race triumphs on 100-1 Prince of Penzance

Michelle Payne lands the Melbourne Cup on Prince Of Penzance (Getty Images)

The race that stops a nation also warmed the cockles of its heart as Michelle Payne made history by becoming the first woman to ride the winner of the Melbourne Cup since its inception in 1861.

Prince Of Penzance, at 100-1 the joint longest-priced winner of Australia’s most famous sporting contest, was no friend to punters as the six-year-old gamely held off the strong late challenge of Willie Mullins’ much-fancied Max Dynamite and Frankie Dettori.

But to everybody else this was a fairy-tale result for the sport and made better with each subsequent utterance of the wonderfully engaging Payne, whose post-race victory comments contained a strong sense of vindication.

Payne is from a famous and extremely popular Victoria state family steeped in racing, one of 10 siblings (eight of whom pursued riding careers) brought up from a young age by her trainer father Paddy Payne after her mother, Mary, died in a car accident.

Having ridden a Group One winner in 2009, Payne, now 30, is hardly a girl from nowhere, but she was happy to reveal the trials she has gone through to achieve her life’s dream in what she feels is still very much a male-dominated sport Down Under.

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“You know some owners were keen to kick me off, so I can’t say how grateful I am to one of them, John Richards, and [trainer] Darren Weir for sticking by me strongly and keeping me on,” she said, before really revealing what she thought.

“Everyone else can get stuffed. They think women aren’t strong enough, but we’ve just beaten the world.

“It’s about so much more than strength. You have to get a horse in rhythm, be patient. I put in all the effort I could, and galloped him all I could to stay on him because I knew he had what it takes to win the Melbourne Cup.

“And, hopefully, this will help female jockeys to get more of a go from now on,” added Payne, by some coincidence wearing the same purple, green and white colours of Emmeline Pankhurst’s women’s suffrage movement.

Payne weighs in at just over seven and a half stone and talks lightly and politely, despite how it may read on the page, but she is a tough professional in a tough sport, the veteran of bad falls and injuries (including a fractured skull) like the rest of them, and is no pushover, either off or on the track, as demonstrated by the start of her race description.

“We were going a bit steady early and I had to give him a dig to hold my spot. Joao Moreira [drawn two wide of her in stall three] was a bit pissed off with me because he was trying to get to the fence and I was already in there.”

Everything else was a dream come true, quite literally. Payne told her school friends when she was seven that she would win the Melbourne Cup and has been imagining, day and night, what it would feel like ever since. Now it was for real. “It panned out exactly how I thought it would,” she continued. “I couldn’t work out why I was so calm. It was like it was meant to be. Unreal.

“The last 1,000 [metres] just opened up. I got on to the back of Trip To Paris and I was actually clipping his heels, I was going that good, but I didn’t want to check him.

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“He was still towing me into the home straight. Darren said count to 10 [before letting him go]. I was trying to count, but didn’t count, I was just hoping it was long enough. Then he just burst to the front and powered to the line. Unbelievable.

“When I won on him here as a three-year-old I thought he was a Melbourne Cup horse. I felt like he would run the two miles that strong, but, far out, I didn’t think he would be that strong.”

Having gone close before in the world’s richest two-mile handicap, with horses boasting better form than Prince Of Penzance, Weir – another Victorian and last season’s champion trainer in Australia with an astonishing 298 winners – had not quite shared Payne’s optimism.

“I didn’t want to stand up and go for an early crow, but I could see they were travelling beautifully,” he said. “It’s hard enough to get a horse good enough to run in this race these days, let alone win it, so I said to my owners, ‘Just enjoy the day’. He crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s back home but realistically I thought he had a good chance of running a top 10.”

Job done, Weir’s thoughts immediately turned to the next pressing matter, reminding the folks back in Ballarat to get the pubs open.

Magically, the dream that became a reality was not quite over: Prince Of Penzance’s owners stepped aside to allow his proud “strapper”, Stevie Payne, arms aloft, to lead in the six-year-old gelding.

Michelle’s brother, who has Down’s syndrome, was given the job of choosing the draw at the “barrier ceremony” last Saturday and picked stall one, a vital element in this most famous of victories.

Dettori was fined A$20,000 (£9,300) and banned for one month, an extremely severe punishment by UK standards, for causing a ripple effect of interference when switching Max Dynamite to challenge.

Red Cadeaux, runner-up in the race three times, was retired immediately after badly injuring a fetlock. Racing Victoria later reported that Ed Dunlop’s globetrotter was “comfortable with his leg in a splint” and confirmed that the injury, though serious, was not life-threatening.

Payne’s particulars: Who is Michelle?

Born 29 September 1985, the youngest of 10 children. Raised on a farm at Miners Rest, near Ballarat, Victoria. Lost her mother, Mary, in a car accident when she was six months old.

Became a jockey on her father’s horse aged 15 – the eighth member of her family to do so. Fractured her skull in a fall in Melbourne in 2004.

Made Melbourne Cup debut in 2009. Her brother, Stevie, who has Down’s syndrome, who works in the stable she rides for. She has won over A$20m in prize-money.