Vale Paddy Payne
Paddy Payne Snr has died.
The patriarch of one of Australasian horse racing’s most influential families, Payne’s life with horses was framed by both tragedy and triumph.
His triumphs came in many forms from the deeds and the strength of his 10 children – of which eight were to become professional jockeys – through to his own career as a jumps jockey and then trainer in both the country of birth New Zealand and in Australia.
He brought his young family to the Ballarat area in the early 1980s for an initial two-year stint, but he and his wife Mary decided to stay on.
Tragedy was just around the corner however as Mary was killed in a car accident in April 1986 when the youngest child Michelle was just six months old.
Both Michelle and her older brother Stevie, who has Down Syndrome, were both born in Australia while their eight siblings were born in New Zealand.
In 2025, Payne told Racing.com’s Kate Watts of the struggle that followed the tragedy that claimed his wife.
‘’She's will always be the love of my life, every day I think about her,’’ he said.
‘’But when she got killed, we said we've got to make it now, we've got to give it a go.
‘’And we did that, we gave it our best shot.’’
Payne would outlive two of his children as Brigid passed away in 2007 when just 36 and in 2025 Bernadette died at the age of 51.
Of his 10 children, eight were to ride professionally and two especially were to come to great fame.
Patrick rode 936 winners throughout his career with 19 of them coming at G1 level. His Cox Plate win on Northerly in 2002 a career highlight.
Michelle instantly overtook her brother’s fame with her ground-breaking win for female riders in the 2015 Melbourne Cup. In all, she rode 772 winners of which five were at G1 level.
Therese was first to hit the headlines when a winner as a 14-year-old in the mid-1980s. She was the youngest ever to outride her country claim and had 443 career winners.
Her other siblings also rode with success with Brigid riding 41 winners, Maree (435), Andrew (166), Bernadette (188) and Cathy (219).
The only two children not to ride were Margaret and Stephen.
While Patrick won numerous feature races, including a Cox Plate aboard Northerly, it would be the youngest child who would make the biggest impact on racing both locally and internationally.
Michelle gained worldwide fame in 2015, firstly for her brilliant ride to win the Melbourne Cup aboard $101 chance Prince Of Penzanace, and then for her powerful words following the triumph.
‘’It’s such a chauvinistic sport,” Michelle said after her win. ‘’I know some of the owners were keen to kick me off…
‘’I want to say to everyone else, get stuffed, because they think women aren’t strong enough, but we just beat the world.’’
Paddy Payne explained the pivotal move to Ballarat in an earlier Racing.com interview.
‘’We initially made the move for two years, just to see how we go,’’ Payne said.
‘’When that time was up, I suggested it might be a good time to go back, because the dollar was worth $1.70 and we could do quite well out of that with the money we had.
‘’But my wife said, ‘No, I like it here – I think we should stay.’ So that’s what we did. It all worked out in the end. The whole family really liked Australia and are happy here, and we’ve done well.
‘’The reason we made the move was because the Hawera council needed our property for some settling pools,” Payne recalled. ‘’We came to an agreement with them, decided to head over to Australia and it all worked out.’’
The Paynes had some extra money for the move after selling Paddy Boy for a reported $300,000 to Robert Sangster.
The son of Blarney Kiss went on to win the Gr.1 AJC Derby (2400m), Gr.1 Sydney Cup (3200m) and Gr.3 Adelaide Guineas (1600m), along with placings in the Gr.1 Rosehill Guineas (2000m), Gr.1 George Main Stakes (1600m) and Gr.2 Theo Marks Stakes (1400m).
