Melbourne: Michelle Payne made sporting history when she became the first woman jockey to win the Emirates Melbourne Cup in its 155-year history.
She was little known to the sporting world before this, but is now the most talked about jockey in the world.
Here are some interesting facts about the 30-year-old who has been riding professionally since 2001:
Michelle was born in September, 1985 in Miners Rest near Ballarat in central Victoria.
Her mum Mary died in a car crash when she was just six months old.
She is the youngest of 10 kids and is the eighth Payne child to become a jockey — five of her older sisters and two brothers are also jockeys. Her brother Patrick is a well known trainer in Victoria.
Michelle won her first race on Reigning, a horse trained by her dad, when she was just 15.
She won her first Group 1 race, the Toorak Handicap, at Caulfied, in 2009, aboard the late Bart Cummings-trained Allez Wonder.
In March 2004, she suffered a horrifying fall while racing at Sandown where she suffered a fractured skull and bruising on the brain. Her family pleaded with her to quit, but she refused.
She became on the third female jockey to ride in the Caulfied Cup in 2009 when Cummings invited her to ride Allez Wonder again. She finished 6th.
Michelle lives with her brother Stevie Payne, 32, at their farm in Essendon, near Ballarat.
Stevie suffers from Down Syndrome, but works as a strapper at Darren Weir’s stable, and is Michelle’s biggest source of inspiration.
Before the Melbourne Cup, Michelle had won in excess of A$20 million (Dh52.87 million) by way of prize money but that figure is set to change dramatically following her dream success in the $6.2 million Melbourne Cup.
