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While jockey Michelle Payne is rightfully being saluted worldwide for becoming the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, it was trainer Darren Weir who defied industry and public perception that gave her the chance.
Thoroughbred racing is a huge industry, but it’s as chauvinistic as it is big.
As the 30-year-old Payne has found out during her frustrating career, trainers haven’t been queueing up wanting her undoubted talent – with the exception of Weir.
Payne has ridden Prince of Penzance 23 of the 24 times he’s started, but none more important and public than yesterday.
Payne turned the Prince of Penzance into the King of Flemington for a day, an unforgettable and emotional occasion.
And Payne had a short, but poignant, message to all those who reckoned a woman wasn’t strong enough to ride a Melbourne Cup winner.
“Get stuffed”.
But those two words would never be said to Darren Weir, who has also employed Michelle’s younger brother Stevie, a Downs syndrome sufferer, as a strapper for the last decade.
“Stevie’s terrific, he can follow the work sheet, he can saddle them up, he can swim with them, hose them, and he’s got a great rapport with the horses,” was Weir’s comprehensive salute.
One of the lasting memories of many yesterday was Michelle giving Stevie a big hug. They have been a team all their lives, and yesterday was the biggest day of them all.
Prince of Penzance, brought for $50,000 as a yearling in New Zealand, has had very serious setbacks in his six years with two joint surgeries and a twisted bowel that required colic surgery to became the fourth 100-1 pop to win the coveted Cup after The Pearl in 1871, Wotan in 1936, and Old Rowley 75 years ago.
In the interim three female jockeys have shown Michelle the way.
In 1987 Maree Lydon became the first aboard Argonaut Style in finishing 20th.
In 2007, Clare Windrop and Lisa Cropp rode Dolphin Jo and Sculptor to finish fifth and ninth respectively.
And 2009 was Michelle’s first Cup ride on the Bart Cummins-trained Allex Wonder, finishing 16th.
But it’s taken 155 years for history to be rewritten by a female hoop who lost her mother Mary in a car accident when Michelle was only six months old, leaving her father Paddy to raise ten kids. Eight of the kids turned out to be jockeys, but only Patrick and Michelle finished their apprenticeships.
If that wasn’t a hard enough road, Michelle has had her fair share of setbacks. She has experienced concussions, brain and vertebrae damage, resulting in many months of rehab.
But that’s all in the past, and it will be interesting to see how Michelle Payne will be treated by other trainers in the future now she’s a winning Melbourne Cup jockey.