Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne has announced a women’s-only syndicate to attract more female investors and owners into the sport of kings.
“It’s something that I’m very excited about because a lot of women have approached me and asked me how to get a race horse and how to get into racing,” she told ABC NewsRadio.
“You see so many guys enjoying all the fun at the races, it’ll be great to be able to get the women involved as well.”
Payne’s criticism of a ‘blokey sport’ was well documented after she rode into history by winning the 2015 Melbourne Cup.
She now thinks it is time women did more than make up the numbers in the fashion stakes.
“I think it’s just an area where it hasn’t been made easy for women to be able to get into racing and I hope this will open up a bigger opportunity and make it easier to entice more women into racing,” she said.
“Not just going for the fashions in the field, and actually be involved in the ownership.”
Payne said her personal goal was to both train and ride a Melbourne Cup winner.
“Yeah, it’s obviously every trainer’s dream to train a Melbourne Cup winner so to be able to ride and train is unique,” she said.
“So that’s the next goal and obviously a pretty far-fetched one but in racing that’s the beauty of it — if you don’t have a go you never know so I’ll have a bit of fun trying.”
The Ballarat based trainer/jockey says she has not had many calls from overseas yet, to either ride or train, but hopes that will change.
“There’s not so much [overseas interest] at this stage but I’m hoping we can work on that,” she said.
“Obviously it’d be great to have support from overseas as well but at the moment I’m pretty overwhelmed with the support I have from Australia so I’m focusing on that.
“But I am really looking forward to heading overseas to try and find a Melbourne Cup winner.”
Payne said she plans to head overseas herself around July or August but is open to the idea of bringing a horse to Australia earlier if the right one comes along.
This post originally appeared on ABC News.
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