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There\u2019s no number on the fence and no car in the driveway. This flat block of wet soil and tufty lush grass has a kind of bare and unfinished air, as if Michelle Payne\u2019s old, white, weatherboard house was just plonked in the middle of a lonely paddock. The retired jockey\u2019s farm sits somewhere north of Ballarat \u2013 a regional centre that always seems like the coldest place in Victoria \u2013 and it\u2019s predictably, painfully frostbitten on this arctic August afternoon.<\/p>\n
The whole chilly windswept patch is honestly so far removed from the pomp, pageantry and warmth of Melbourne\u2019s spring racing carnival \u2013 the fabulous Flemington Racecourse roses, and champagne-soaked marquees, and fops and fillies stumbling drunkenly in all their hatted finery \u2013 that I briefly wonder if I\u2019m in the right spot. I\u2019m actually doubtful once I reach the front door, because it\u2019s capped with a big pile of dried bird poo.<\/p>\n
I rap my knuckles on the threshold anyway and with a delayed rustle and click she eventually emerges, the first and only female jockey to win \u201cthe race that stops a \u00adnation\u201d. That was 10 years ago, of course, when Payne, then 30, sat atop the longest of longshots \u2013 101-1 chance Prince of Penzance \u2013 yet won the day with a stunning ride, giving rise to a memoir (Life As I Know It) then a movie (Ride Like a Girl).<\/p>\n
These days she\u2019s a trainer and greets me with a high \u00adponytail and shiny face, having scrubbed up after a bitter morning in and out of the stables. Leading me down a Baltic pine hallway to her lounge room, Payne chit-chats about the frigid weather in a thin, surprisingly tremulous voice, then perches on a cushy couch, knees hugged into her chest. Her feet snug under a warm brown blanket, a gas heater kicks on in the corner and the timbre of her voice deepens.<\/p>\n
Payne\u2019s got a tale to tell, and it\u2019s not the gumboots-to-glory story you might expect following her famous victory. What came afterwards is a story about injury and exhaustion and risk, addiction and heartbreak and grief. And it starts back when she was a kind of national sporting fairytale come to life. Do you remember that day?<\/p>\n
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A triumphant Michelle Payne after winning the 2015 Melbourne Cup riding 101-1 shot Prince of Penzance.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Payne was one of 24 jockeys (the other 23 being men) hoping to win the $6-million 2015 Melbourne Cup. An elfin 53-kilogram wisp on a muscular 500-kilogram beast, she remembers a slow start out of the barriers, the wall of sound from the grandstand, and how the tempo of the race \u2013 and her own heartbeat \u2013 quickened. With her toes in the stirrups, fingertips cinching the reins, the thoroughbreds came into the final turn with an almighty rumble. It was a notoriously messy race, rife with interference, but Payne found a magically faint crack in that chaos \u2013 a beautiful expanding gap that she could barrel safely into and beyond. Dropping her body flat below the wind, she asked the gelding beneath her to lengthen \u2013 nose pointed, ears pinned \u2013 and as the wave of horse flesh crashed into the home straight, the white blazing forehead of her big bay mount surged forward like foam over flat sand.<\/p>\n
Dodging danger and streaking smoothly to the front, they scorched the entire blue-chip field together. Yet despite the surrounding whorl of power and violence, Payne now describes that moment as \u201cthe eye of the hurricane\u201d \u2013 a place for her that was quiet. Somewhat \u00adserene. Safe, even.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s fascinating how many thoughts you can have in such a high pressure race, with so much madness and extremeness going on,\u201d she says, nodding. \u201cSomehow you stay calm and think clearly. It was \u00adalmost peaceful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The real storms came later.<\/p>\n
If you read the coverage of what happened immediately after Payne dismounted and spoke to the media that day, you might think she gave the incendiary speech of a bully pulpit firebrand. Even now people abbreviate her whole message down to \u201cGET STUFFED!\u201d (often amplified with capital letters, and an exclamation mark). Yet listen to the tape more closely and her phrasing wasn\u2019t some defiant one-two punch, but rather a measured sentence: \u201cI just want to say to everyone else, get stuffed because they think women aren\u2019t strong enough, but we just beat the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Off the cuff, matter-of-fact, forthright, in her pinnacle moment. \u201cI must have thought, \u2018This is the right time to stand up for females,\u2019\u2006\u201d she now reflects. \u201cWe were still underrated, like it was a disadvantage to have a female rider. I had to say something.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her new book \u2013 Ride On: Hope, Healing and Getting Back on the Horse \u2013 she details a \u00admisogynistic continuum within the Sport of Kings, describing the struggles of trailblazers like Wilhelmina Smith (who raced in bush meets around Australia in the 1940s by posing as \u201cBill\u201d) and Pam O\u2019Neill (who had to wait until 1979 to become the first officially registered female jockey in this country). The youngest of 10 siblings, Payne naturally also talks about 1980s pioneers much closer to home, like her big sisters and jockeys Brigid, Therese and Maree, and also the sexism she herself faced in the saddle before \u00adwinning the Cup, from people critical of everything from her physical strength to her reluctance to whip.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI just want to say to everyone else, get stuffed because they think women aren\u2019t strong enough, but we just beat the world.\u201d Credit: Josh Robenstone<\/p>\n
Greg Miles, the race caller who narrated a record 36 Melbourne Cups, points out that Payne came up in an era of \u201cgeneric struggle\u201d \u2013 meaning a prejudicial disinclination of older male trainers to use female jockeys. \u201cIt was still a battle,\u201d Miles says. \u201cBut the change came with a wave, and Michelle rode the top of that wave.\u201d<\/p>\n
One small measure of what some now call \u201cthe Michelle Payne effect<\/a>\u201d? Ten years ago, 48 per cent of Racing Victoria\u2019s apprentices were young women, whereas now the number is 77 per cent (clearly outnumbering men, 31 to nine). But it\u2019s hard to shake those sexist slights. Even after her popular victory, star jockey Glen Boss was quoted in The Daily Telegraph and The Herald-Sun noting that Payne had a \u201cbee in her bonnet\u201d and might regret her post-race speech upon reflection.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if Glen was taken out of context, or he really meant it, and I don\u2019t really care,\u201d Payne says now with a quiet shrug. \u201cHe\u2019s not a woman in a man\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless, the overall response was more positive than negative, but even the afterglow of victory had drawbacks. Year on year there\u2019s a story in whoever wins the Cup, but when that story emerges from outside the big stables and international owners? \u201cA local 100-1 chance, ridden by a female jockey?\u201d asks Victoria Racing Club (VRC) chairman Neil Wilson. \u201cFrom that moment on \u2013 as with any jockey, trainer, owner \u2013 their lives change. But that was heightened for Michelle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018My feet weren\u2019t touching the ground. It was unbelievable madness. I\u2019d won group one races and knew the buzz, but this was times a hundred.\u2019<\/p>\n She did media all night, then got up at 6am to do 30 more interviews straight. (Yes, 30.) The requests kept coming. She would be in Washington, D.C. one week, Royal Ascot the next. \u201cMy feet weren\u2019t touching the ground. It was unbelievable madness,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d won group one races and knew the buzz, but this was times a hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n Even trips to the shops turned tiring, every errand taking longer as people stopped to say hello. The outpouring was lovely, yet she grew anxious and overwhelmed, sensing she could never quite meet the expectations of appreciative strangers. \u201cI would say \u2018Thank you\u2019, but I didn\u2019t know what else to say,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019d stand there like they were waiting for me to do a backflip.\u201d<\/p>\n People sent gifts and letters, which were often hard to reconcile. Boxes filled with socks or candles or T-shirts. Payne is religious and prays to God, so others began leaving pictures of Jesus at her gate. Soon it was no longer about what people wanted to give but what they wanted to take. \u201cOne guy requested a job and said he wanted a house with a queen-sized bed and a pool,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was getting out of hand. People would just jump my fence and come onto my farm.\u201d<\/p>\n A man was spotted taking surreptitious photos of her house. Harassing phone calls soon started. Frightening confrontations with stalkers. All of which required a huge security upgrade. Interestingly enough, there wasn\u2019t a whole heap of sympathetic carry-on from her family about the fallout from her new-found fame. The Paynes are a tight clan, incredibly proud of one another but also utterly pragmatic, with little interest in any big-noting or hoo-ha.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve gotta take the good with the bad \u2013 that\u2019s what I thought at the time,\u201d says Andrew Payne, her big brother of six years, quite cheerily. \u201cYou wanted it desperately. You got the accolades. But there\u2019s going to be some things you don\u2019t like, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Such blunt fatalism is born of their earnest origin story, of course. Payne\u2019s mother and father met in New Zealand. Family lore recalls the day they decided to pool their entire savings and put it all on a horse he was training. The 200-1 longshot won, and they suddenly had enough money for a house. But \u00adbecause the Paynes are chancers as much as workers, they spent the winnings on new horses instead. One of those was Our Paddy Boy, a $NZ1300 weanling that turned into a champion and was sold for $300,000 in 1980 \u2013 a windfall that helped pay for their move to Australia.<\/p>\n Payne (at front) at the family home in Ballarat with siblings (from left) Maree, Bernadette, Patrick, Stevie and Therese.Credit: Courtesy of Michelle Payne<\/p>\n Michelle was the last born of their big brood. There might have been more, but her mother died six months later in a 1986 car accident, just down the road from home in Ballarat. People pitched in to help, of course, but the kids themselves became Michelle\u2019s primary front-line carers. Family friend Jacqueline Moore visited the Paynes at home on the day of the tragedy, and was struck by the scene. \u201cNot one of them was crying,\u201d Moore remembers. \u201cThey\u2019re an interesting bunch. The most non-emotional people I know. They just got on with it \u2013 and cracked on. But I sometimes wonder if that stoicism has a cost.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018You have to be doing something you love, and you have to be a bit mad, too. That\u2019s the way with any athlete.\u2019<\/p>\n Being a jockey is incredibly dangerous, after all. There aren\u2019t many sports where an ambulance speeds along behind every contest. Like all riders, Payne suffered more than a few serious falls, but the one that really rocked her came in 2016, just a year after her big victory. She doesn\u2019t remember flying over the front of Dutch Courage in Mildura<\/a> \u2013 only the pain that followed after the young mare trampled her.<\/p>\n \u201cHorrendous. It was horrendous,\u201d Payne says. \u201cI remember waking up on the ground in agony. I knew I was bleeding internally, straight away, I don\u2019t know how.\u201d<\/p>\n Payne falling off Dutch Courage in Mildura in 2016; \u201cIt was horrendous,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n The medical team tried for 45 minutes to get her onto the stretcher, but Payne had scrunched herself into a protective ball, refusing to uncurl. \u201cFinally when they gave me the morphine, they could lay me out flat. I was in another world,\u201d she says. \u201cBut in the lead up to that fall I didn\u2019t know how I was going to go on, because it was all just so much. The fall actually gave me a chance to reset.\u201d<\/p>\n Airlifted to Melbourne\u2019s Alfred Hospital, her pancreas had been smashed to pieces and required an unusual operation to salvage the fraction that worked while stitching the remains to her stomach. She remembers weeks of chapped lips and regurgitating ice chips, epidurals that barely touched the sides, and nightmarish hallucinations of gremlins and devils. Soon, though, she began walking slowly around the ward \u2013 two laps, just like in the Cup \u2013 and found other patients joining her, often trailed by their family and friends in a shuffling, sorry, smiling convoy. She\u2019s still managing the effects of the fall almost a decade later.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very good at reading myself and my energy levels,\u201d she says. \u201cI just stick to a very basic diet. Lots of steamed vegies, lots of protein shakes, easy-to-digest food that I can get my nutrients from without my body having to work too hard to break it down.\u201d<\/p>\n The family rallied around her and even raised the touchy subject of her racing mortality. \u201cThat was one of my horses, so it hits closer to home,\u201d says big brother Patrick, who now runs a training operation an hour from Melbourne in partnership with his little sis. \u201cThat\u2019s when I said, \u2018Why do you want to keep risking it?\u2019 But you also can\u2019t make the decision for her. The old man is Irish, and she\u2019s very pig-headed herself.\u201d<\/p>\n With brother Patrick; they run a training operation together.Credit: @michellejpayne_\/Instagram<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fair question, though. Just last month, their nephew Tom Prebble (son of sister Maree and brother-in-law Brett Prebble, also a retired Melbourne Cup-winning hoop) fell during a race at Warrnambool, necessitating spinal surgery. Prebble is apprenticed to Michelle and Patrick, and had just begun emerging as a young star this winter. The full extent of his injuries remains unclear<\/a>, and the family \u2013 which has asked for privacy \u2013 is understandably still reeling from the accident.<\/p>\n Payne was no stranger to potentially catastrophic injuries, either, including a fractured skull with bleeding on the brain, and breaks in the neck and back. Five female jockeys had died in the three years prior to her fall on Dutch Courage. And looming over all of this is her big sister Brigid, the eldest of the Payne siblings, who died of a heart attack following a series of aneurysms in 2007, six months after falling heavily during barrier practice. Brigid was just 36. Knowing all that, why keep going?<\/p>\n Payne answers carefully \u2013 neither expansive nor reserved \u2013 with soft eyes that hold their gaze. She ends her sentences where they\u2019re supposed to end, riding them right up to the finish and no further. \u201cEveryone asked me in every single interview, \u2018Are you going to retire?\u2019\u2009\u201d she says, pausing. \u201cI left the decision up to my gut. I didn\u2019t want to put any pressure on myself straight away, and I wasn\u2019t going to let myself be scared off it, either. Don\u2019t restrict your living by being afraid of dying.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s happy she returned to the saddle, too, enjoying some of her favourite wins in subsequent years, unencumbered by the need to prove anything. The joy is in the exhilaration, pressure and sometimes, she admits, even the danger. But the partnership with the animal is where she gets sentimental, even romantic.<\/p>\n Riding a horse aged 11.Credit: Courtesy of Michelle Payne<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the most beautiful thing, where literally you can move your little fingers or lower your body weight an inch, and they feel it and give you everything they have,\u201d she says. \u201cThat sensitivity, from such beasts, is just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n She tells me about the horses outside right now, like Bully (race name Bullitt County), a \u201cnanny\u201d who watches over younger horses – her sweetheart who would take care of anyone who sat on his back. \u201cYou look at his face and he instantly makes you smile,\u201d she says. \u201cHe comes up and waits for you to hold his face and give him a kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n Horses to her aren\u2019t just animals but anthropomorphic companions, likened to everything from dinosaurs to kangaroos and clowns \u2013 pets, friends and empaths \u2013 but also rebels, bluffers and bastards. They are her everything.<\/p>\n Touching softness aside, Michelle Payne has also always possessed a particular blunt savvy. \u201cEven at three years of age, I could never put anything past her,\u201d says Andrew, laughing. \u201cI could not trick her. She was \u00adalways sharp, always watching.\u201d<\/p>\n She was a cute kid and good at school, which didn\u2019t sit so well with her less academic siblings, who used to call her \u201cStink\u201d for no other reason than the funny outburst their teasing would prompt. Michelle was never afraid to speak up or out. Patrick remembers a time when she was seven years old and a religious group came door-knocking, asking if anyone in the house had money to spare. \u201cYeah, I\u2019ve got some money,\u201d said Stink, \u201cbut I\u2019m not wasting it on you people.\u201d<\/p>\n That nature never faded, and in the years since her win and then fall, Payne emerged not just as a talking head but a reliably strident voice in racing. \u201cIt\u2019s part of my personality, and probably the way we were brought up,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen you\u2019re one of 10, you have to stick up for yourself. And if you have a platform, why wouldn\u2019t you use it for good?\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a reference to more than a handful of times in more recent years in which she either became a news story herself or waded into a topic or controversy because she felt obliged. \u201cShe\u2019s definitely happy to have a point of view,\u201d says Wilson of the VRC. \u201cOften with some risk attached.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2018, for instance, she successfully fought against a rule in NSW that denied her the right to be a dual \u00adlicense jockey and trainer (already allowed elsewhere), and was in turn praised by Racing NSW boss Peter V\u2019landys<\/a>, a kindred straight-talker. \u201cWithout the determination and drive of Michelle Payne,\u201d V\u2019landys said, \u201cthis may not have come to fruition.\u201d<\/p>\n She pulled no punches in criticising tracks for being too hard, got fined by stewards for doing so, but doubled down online anyway, with a post on the social media platform Twitter (rebranded as X): \u201cLikely to scratch Sweet Rockette if the track looks too firm. And cop another fine for looking after my horse and owners. Absolute bullshit.\u201d (The upshot? A $300 fine for Payne, but a change was made also to ensure tracks would have enough softness and give, especially at the height of summer.)<\/p>\n Then in 2019, when jockey Linda Meech was dumped from her Victoria Derby ride<\/a> only a few days before the race, Payne was stunned, having weeks earlier seen Meech ride the horse, Thought of That, when it was \u201creally colty and misbehaving\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to be doing something you love, and you have to be a bit mad, too,\u201d Payne reckons. \u201cThat\u2019s probably the way with any athlete. You just have to be a different breed.\u201dCredit: Josh Robenstone<\/p>\n \u201cI was in the race,\u201d Payne says. \u201cAnother jockey might have said, \u2018Stuff this, take that horse away, it\u2019s crazy\u2019, but she rode the horse and won on it, then she won on it again. It wasn\u2019t winning before that.\u201d<\/p>\n Trainer Brae Sokolski said he knew his decision would be unpopular, but also that it was \u201cnot a decision for the public\u201d. Payne fired back online \u2013 \u201cNot for the public to decide, but the public can recognise you as a pig\u201d \u2013 and got fined again<\/a>. Unfortunately, she hadn\u2019t realised that Sokolski is Jewish and would take far greater offence at the slight. \u201cI didn\u2019t know; I just thought it was a soft subtle way of saying something,\u201d she says now. \u201cBut it was the way I said it, not what I was saying.\u201d<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n From time to time, she even talks face-to-face with anti-racing and \u201cNup to the Cup\u201d protesters, walking up to placard-holders in Warrnambool or Oakbank for a chat about the bond she forms with her horses, and the devastation she feels when they\u2019re injured (or worse). \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t hear anything, just yelling in my face; I found it fascinating,\u201d she says. \u201cThey can\u2019t fathom that a positive side to racing exists.\u201d<\/p>\n And in some ways that\u2019s fair enough, considering the likes of Darren Weir, the trainer of Prince of Penzance, who was much later disqualified from training for six years after using an electronic shock device known as a \u201cjigger\u201d on other horses. Leaked footage of the practice was shared publicly only last month. \u201cDarren is such a good horseman and trainer,\u201d she says. \u201cHe never needed to do any of that stuff, and there\u2019s no place for it in the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n Payne is a public figure \u2013 an expert analysis commentator for Nine (part of Nine Entertainment, the owner of this masthead), and a Melbourne Cup ambassador to boot \u2013 wheeled out recently to a steady stream of events and dress fittings, but she doesn\u2019t love the attention. Whenever the spotlight gets tough, she thinks of the words of her hero, Roger Federer, who she was lucky to meet in 2016 and who gave her some sage advice. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to be important,\u201d he told her, \u201cbut it\u2019s more important to be nice.\u201d<\/p>\n I wonder what Payne hated about riding, and her list is immediate and long, from the recurring 3am alarm clock to the euphemistic practice of \u201creducing\u201d: trying to lose kilograms quickly through running in a sweat suit or simple starvation. She recently became friends with swimmer Ariarne Titmus and marvels at the Olympian\u2019s own masochistic streak, spending all those hours in a pool, up and back, over and over. \u201cYou have to be doing something you love, and you have to be a bit mad, too,\u201d Payne reckons. \u201cThat\u2019s probably the way with any athlete. You just have to be a different breed.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not why she gave racing away, however. That came courtesy of multiple concussions.<\/a> She was on the farm a year ago when a bird gave her horse a fright, causing its hard head to jerk back and smash her in the face. A week later, the same thing happened. (She saw stars this time, and felt blood in both nostrils.) A week later, another knock in similar circumstances. \u201cIt was just really bad,\u201d she says, shaking her head. \u201cThe sequence compounded everything, because there was no rest between them.\u201d<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n Payne grew concerned by lingering mood swings and memory loss, lethargy and a lack of focus. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can only be diagnosed after death, but scans discovered atrophy in a small section of her brain. \u201cUndamaged nerve endings can take over the job of the ones that are damaged, so you definitely stay positive and keep a healthy lifestyle,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I\u2019ve taken a step back from training on my own, too, because the pressure and not getting enough rest just wasn\u2019t helping.\u201d<\/p>\n These days she wakes up with the sun and will jump on a horse for the occasional gallop, but no more trackwork at dawn. She joined forces with her brother Patrick as a trainer and goes to a handful of race meetings a month. He says his sister has found a good lane. \u201cWhat else does she really need to do?\u201d Patrick asks. \u201cShe\u2019s achieved, and been through the other side, and seen that it wasn\u2019t so good. I think she wants to be a happier person.\u201d<\/p>\n Being a happier person is a reference to the penultimate calamity of Payne\u2019s life so far: the death of her big sister Bernadette<\/a>, only seven months ago. Bernadette was the one who \u2013 at just 12 years old and grieving the loss of their mum \u2013 would brave the cold in the middle of the night to give baby Michelle a bottle, then lay beside her until she slept.<\/p>\n \u201cBernie\u201d was a free spirit \u2013 silly and stubborn, loyal and easygoing \u2013 but she was kicked and trampled during a riding accident in Horsham when she was 21. Her shoulder was badly broken that day, and the pain stayed with her for decades. The painkillers did, too, unfortunately. Her mental health suffered, yet despite family interventions Bernie didn\u2019t want to see a psychologist, instead looking for answers with psychics and healers. She tried working as a trainer with their dad, but as her addiction took hold there were tantrums and torment, incoherence and darkness.<\/p>\n \u201cShe would have been numbing the pain, or numbing a depression, or maybe both. Probably both,\u201d Payne says. \u201cBut by the end she was unrecognisable \u2013 Who is this person? \u2013 and scary. I had an intervention order against her.\u201d<\/p>\n Payne tries to remember the good things, but photo albums of them playing dress-ups together make her cry. \u201cI just remember asking her, \u2018What do you want?\u2019 and the answer was so sad,\u201d she says. \u201cShe said, \u2018I don\u2019t want anything. I just want to go back to when we were little kids and everybody was playing together in the puddles and laughing.\u2019 But she just wouldn\u2019t accept any help.\u201d<\/p>\n With big brother Stevie, who was her Melbourne Cup strapper and king to her Moomba queen.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n The wound is still fresh, and Payne still wonders if there was anything more they could have done. After Bernie died, they found some notes among her things: \u201cThink you can\u2019t go on?\u201d she wrote. \u201cChange might be just around the corner.\u201d It looked like she wanted to help herself but couldn\u2019t quite get over the line, and instead joined the 3000 \u201cbroken spirits\u201d who take their own lives every year in this country. \u201cI talk about it \u2013 without any answers \u2013 because maybe someone going through a similar thing will come up with an idea, a different path,\u201d Payne says. \u201cOr maybe they won\u2019t feel alone.\u201d<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n Payne isn\u2019t alone, incidentally. Her closest sibling in age, big brother Stevie \u2013 who has Down syndrome and was her best friend growing up \u2013 lives in a granny flat behind her house. He\u2019s a skilled \u201cstrapper\u201d: hosing and brushing and grooming and feeding and loving all their pretty horses with massages and songs and kisses. Stevie became part of her famous story, too, when, as her strapper, he drew the prized barrier one in the Melbourne Cup. After the win, they were king and queen of Melbourne\u2019s annual Moomba festival<\/a>. The big mantle in her lounge is filled with board games they play together, from Match Madness to Sequence.<\/p>\n \u201cHave you ever played Balderdash?\u201d she asks. \u201cVery fun. Really funny. Great for the imagination. Stevie kills me at Sequence. He\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n That mantle is filled with trophies, too, like the gold-plated Harry White whip given to the winning jockey of the Cup. Not to mention framed photos of family members and country cup victories she\u2019s had along the way, all hung crooked as hell.<\/p>\n She\u2019s got a cozy spread here. Wearing a jumper with the words \u201cBe intrigued\u201d on the front, she leads me out through her messy mud room for a little drive on her block, past the stables and the treadmill and out to those cold paddocks, surrounded by cypress trees she planted in rows as windbreaks.<\/p>\n Payne ducks under an electric fence to say \u201cHey guys!\u201d to Prince of Nottingham and Silver Pledge and Stop the Rock. And they follow her after we leave, too, loping and trotting and galloping beside her car, hoping to stay close. She loves her proximity to fresh air and peace, even when drifting back into heady memories of the thunderous race that changed her life.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mind goes to my disbelief,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is so hard just to get into the field, let alone have everything working in your favour to win it. It\u2019s crazy to think that all the stars aligned.<\/p>\n \u201cThen what came later? I still shake my head,\u201d she continues, her head remaining perfectly still. \u201cIt was tricky to navigate, but that\u2019s life. You\u2019ve gotta take what comes your way, and make the most of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Lifeline 13 11 14<\/p>\n To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald<\/a>, The Age<\/a> and Brisbane Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size There\u2019s no number on the fence and no car in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-207139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Payne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/7db5b1f7c0a11f01259c0a7b41392f99d3630e24.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Payne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/66536789ee76e6bf87be976ef57507107c1b75c5.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"With](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1379f4c4ef4114c3d142311db083f7a1bdf3aec6.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Riding](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/034062f8549c230fda867ff6f3377a454e1888a1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\u201cYou](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/7d25cdda1265c6b5684a64052c9295e3eb64afcb.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"With](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/474646a91ddeb2a167730f239fb99aaf394203ca.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n