November 3, 2015 will go down in history. Why? Michelle Payne became the first woman jockey to win the Melbourne Cup in Australia with her six year old horse, Prince of Penzance.
The Melbourne Cup is a 155 year old race, but Payne is only the fourth female to ever participate. The first woman jockey in the Cup was Maree Lyndon in 1987, only 28 years ago. Payne’s odds were slim (100-1) and she faced the pressures of being a woman in a male-dominated sport. After winning, she said, “My sister Margaret and I both had a feeling we would win this race. It’s such a chauvinistic sport, a lot of the owners wanted to kick me off. Everyone else can get stuffed [who] think women aren’t good enough.”
Despite the superstition that wearing blue helps you win the Cup (about a quarter of the winners have worn blue), Payne wore purple, green and white during the race: the colors of the suffragette movement. Coincidence? Payne’s advocacy for gender equality says otherwise. Speaking for women jockeys, she said, “People think we’re not strong enough and all the rest of it blah, blah, blah. But you know what? It’s not all about strength. It’s so much more involved – getting a horse into a rhythm, getting the horse to try for you, it’s being patient. We [females] sort of don’t get enough of a go.”