Michelle Payne gave her opinion on the Flemington track surface and manager Mick Goodie over the weekend and was fined $1500 for her troubles by Racing Victoria stewards.
To some, Payne simply had her say and the world has ‘gone soft’.
To others, the Melbourne Cup-winning jockey unfairly attacked Flemington’s track manager Mick Goodie by calling for a review of his position.
Here’s what happened.
Payne tweeted:
“Maybe Mick Goodie’s position needs to be reviewed? He has no one to answer to, gets away with it time and time again.”
“It’s not very nice to upset people but I’ve been there many times (to) our premier track, walked it and felt like going home.”
Payne went on to explain she’d been unimpressed many times when walking the Flemington track, and had often wanted to leave as soon as she’d arrived.
“Mowing the grass shorter on the inside because it’s different grass, he [Goodie] should put the rail out if he wants to avoid that patch of grass,” Payne said.
“He’s got 30 metres of track and sometimes you might want to be on three metres of that track.
“It can happen anywhere but it just happens time and time again at Flemington.
“Obviously a very hard job to be a track manager, there’s no doubt about that, but this shouldn’t be happening so many times on our best track which is a beautiful big, track.”
Under the rules of racing, stewards determined Payne’s comments breached AR175, which allows penalties to be imposed on any licence holder that is “guilty of improper or insulting behaviour at any time towards the Principal Racing Authority, the Committee of any Club or Association, or Stewards, or any official or employee of the Principal Racing Authority, Club or Association, in relation to their or his duties”.
The reaction
Payne’s comments had a big reaction, and the discussions it provoked on social media in response were more interesting than the comments themselves.
The pattern of winners on the day certainly didn’t prove out the implication that the inside of the track played best. Horses appeared to win from all areas of the track, both on the rails and wider. Punters didn’t suddenly bet towards the rails runners either after the early races.
Many of the established racing experts and identities chipped in their thoughts.
So somebody forgot to tell the punters that it was biased. Punters won handsomely betting as if zero bias.
— Dominic Beirne (@domran) March 6, 2017
With great respect to @mj_payne @FlemingtonVRC played perfectly Sat. Horses came from everywhere, back or wide no issue, a credit to Goodie.
— Rob Waterhouse (@RobWaterhouse) March 6, 2017
David Hayes, who co-trains both He Or She and debutant Ploverset, who won on the day, said he had no issue with the track.
“I thought it raced well and all of my horses pulled up well,” Hayes said.
“I had a $1.60 chance [Madeenaty] on the fence get run down by a horse out wide, which I trained, and I had He Or She win on the outside and Rising Romance was just beaten on the outside.”
In comments to Racing.com, jockey Mark Zahra admitted he thought the inside was going to be an advantage after walking the track but said it didn’t race with any significant bias.
“A lot of horses won on the inside but later in the day a horse like Mr Sneaky came from out wide and it certainly wasn’t a hard against the fence track where you couldn’t pass a horse,” Zahra said.
Many would remember when Flemington did suffer problems, noticed during Derby Day 2015 when the wider positions on the track were truly slower. Some comments were made that Payne herself may have been advantaged by this during the Melbourne Cup in 2015 when winning on Prince of Penzance.
Significant work has been done since then for a more fair surface.
27 meetings at Flem since Jan 2016 and I can see 1-2 meets at most where someone could argue the inside 3m was far better. #pleasemichelle
— Daniel O'Sullivan (@TRBHorseRacing) March 6, 2017
Where to from here?
Payne and anyone else should be free to make their opinion clear about the state of grass or any other element that makes up the way races are run. Social media offers a chance for great insight that simply didn’t exist years ago.
But let’s stand on one point. On The Roar, the policy applied to all participants is to play the ball, not the man. It’s a policy that encourages fair discussion, useful analysis, and reduces trolling.
Unfortunately, Payne’s criticism extended towards playing the man, when suggesting Goodie’s position should be reviewed.
It was also an inaccurate sledge – it’s clear Goodie faces his employers at the Victorian Racing Club who review performance, as would be the case for anyone else.
Payne’s comments overstepped the mark. The fine she received is hard to argue in that case.
Magic Man’s big day
Joao Moreira keeps rewriting the history books. The Brazilian won an incredible eight from ten races in Hong Kong on Sunday, and copped a dousing of champagne from rival jockey Karis Teetan to go with it.
The Magic Man had failed to ride a winner at a Hong Kong meeting for the first time since April, 2016 just a week earlier.
There’s no hard and fast way to explain quite what it is that makes him able to ride more winners. It’s a mix of factors that separates him, and he’s someone everyone likes.
How can we see more of him in Australia? We’ll see him at Flemington this week, although he’ll miss out out on riding in the $1 million Group 1 Newmarket Handicap (1200m), with Flying Artie ruled out through a low-grade lung infection.
There were some reports that he’s consider riding full-time here with the support of a major stable. Surely the likes of Waller, Waterhouse, Weir or even Godolphin, would be alert to that opportunity.
Cartwight: One to read
Racing is a brutal game. Racenet published a great piece written by Wayne Pasterfield, the legal counsel for Josh Cartwright, going into considerable personal detail about the young man’s life following his shocking racing incident. It’s a tough read.
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