Life As I Know It (8 page)

An alternative way—and this is the much easier way—is to buy a proven young horse with potential. That at least eliminates the first few steps in the four-legged lottery, as Australians have called it. Our Paddy Boy was a very attractive Melbourne Cup proposition and, even before making it to the Cup, if he remained fit and well, he was almost assured of winning good prize money for his owner along the way. He was also an ungelded colt and, with his potential as a stayer, was likely to be an attractive sire once he'd finished his racing career.

The offers to buy him started coming in. Trainer Ian Saunders in Sydney had an interested owner, and the very successful West Australian businessman Robert Holmes à Court, put in a bid. Although tempted by the $200,000 on offer, Dad and Peter Moran held on.

Dad was a battler from New Zealand and his share, $100,000, would have gone a long way to setting the family up. At the time a decent home could be bought for around $25,000. Mum and Dad could have added a few bedrooms and still had change. It was a risk not to take the money. Our Paddy Boy could have been bitten by a snake the next day, or struck by lightning, or damaged a tendon at trackwork, or had bone chips in his fetlock joint. He could have developed colic, or heart arrhythmia. He could have got caught in a fence, or a float could have jack-knifed on an icy Ballarat road. But what racing people know best is risk. So Dad hung on.

At his next start, Our Paddy Boy, ridden by Mick Mallyon, finished sixth in the Moonee Valley Stakes, a run that appeared somewhat disappointing. Dad was concerned he'd blown his opportunity. Colin Hayes, one of Australia's most successful trainers, however, had been keeping an eye on Our Paddy Boy and asked Mick what he thought. Mick gave our horse a good rap. Hayes offered $300,000 for Our Paddy Boy on behalf of the British Pools magnate Robert Sangster, probably the best-known horse owner and breeder in the world at that time.

Dad didn't draw breath this time. The sale was organised immediately and the adventure was over. It was time to head back to the farm in New Zealand.

Our Paddy Boy had made a huge impact on our family. He gave Mum and Dad and the seven kids a magnificent time in Australia, and they made many friends along the way. He introduced them to the beautiful country around Ballarat and he won $50,000 in prize money. As sad as it was to lose him, their $150,000 share from his sale gave our family financial security. Andrew was still a baby and Mum was pregnant with Cathy. They were going home to the farm in New Zealand, returning to the people they loved. They felt blessed.

Our Paddy Boy proved to be a handful for Colin Hayes, who wanted to run him in the Cox Plate a few weeks later. The horse didn't take well to his new surrounds. Stable jockey Brent Thomson couldn't control him and Mick Mallyon was having trouble as well. Hayes rang Dad.

‘You've sold me a wild horse, Pat. What's wrong with him?'

‘Nothing wrong with him when he left here,' Dad said.

‘Well, he's giving us grief. We can't get near him,' Colin explained.

‘He must be missing his mate,' Dad said.

‘Who's that?'

‘Gentle Joker,' Dad said. ‘I don't think you've got an option. You're going to have to take him as well.'

‘How much?' Colin asked.

‘$12,000.'

Gentle Joker was not much of a horse, although he did win a race for the Hayes' stable, but he did ensure that Our Paddy Boy was at his best. Our Paddy Boy became more and more popular. He ran third in that Cox Plate and then third in the VRC Derby the following Saturday. He had a big future ahead of him. When he returned in the Autumn he won the prestigious AJC Derby at Randwick, and then took out the Sydney Cup as a lightweight three-year-old at his next start. Although he experienced injuries over the following twelve months he ran a brave fourth in the Melbourne Cup of 1981 to Just a Dash, having hit the front briefly at the 300-metre mark. Soon after he was retired to stud in Queensland.

Back in New Zealand, Dad began the search for another Our Paddy Boy, or at least another bargain. During 1981, while continuing to farm, he began purchasing stayers with a view to preparing them for Australian and Asian buyers. He had developed a good reputation and some big owners and trainers trusted his judgement. Lloyd Williams, who owned Just a Dash, went on to become a major owner—he has since won the Melbourne Cup three more times with What A Nuisance, Efficient and Green Moon—and purchased a number of horses from Dad. These days, when I ride for Lloyd, I am conscious that he has known our family since before I was born.

Connected as they felt to their homeland, Mum and Dad, now with eight kids, decided to head off on a second Australian adventure in 1982, after their farm was taken over by the local council. Dad was going to have a bit each way as a horse trainer and a farmer.

Dad continued life as an owner–trainer, a role far more common in New Zealand than in Australia. He was also trying to encourage owners to place their horses with him. He didn't ever have a big team of horses but he had consistent success. And, as his kids grew older, one by one they became his apprentices. Until it was my turn.

Dad had mixed feelings about my decision to leave Loreto to become a jockey at the end of 2000. He had been pretty tough on me when I rode trackwork for him during those high school years.

‘You're keen, but you've got a lot to learn,' he would say. He wasn't convinced I had the talent, although I sometimes wondered whether the sharpness of that criticism was his way of pushing me, and whether he'd used the same tactic with the others. He'd also become increasingly concerned about the dangers in horse racing as time went on.

He thought I needed to get a good education. Dad had read my reports from Loreto, which suggested that, if I applied myself, I would get reasonable results. I think he liked that I was good at geography! Dad believes in education, which is why he worked so hard to put us through St Pat's and Loreto. It's just that we were all so desperate to become jockeys—except for Margie, who went off to study and became an accountant, and Brigid who dabbled in journalism for a while in her early twenties. Therese talked about midwifery and perhaps I could have chosen a profession that involved problem solving—I like the idea of being a detective. My Loreto friends think I would have gone into one of the caring professions. But despite his reservations Dad knew that I was never going to do anything else except ride.

I was already a jockey. It was in me. It
was
me. I'd known since I was five, if not before. Everyone knew. My family, my Loreto
friends, my teachers. They all knew that I'd had the passion all my life. Dad had heard me talk about it for years.

‘I just want to win the Melbourne Cup,' I would say, and I meant it.

That wasn't just a way of expressing my intention to get as far as I could in horse racing; it was actually what I wanted to do. I wanted to
ride the winner of the Melbourne Cup
. I wanted to stand on the podium with the Melbourne Cup in my hands. That was my aim. I think Dad knew how determined I was, and that I was willing to give it my all.

A
FTER BECOMING THE
eighth Payne to ride, the local television news came out to do a story on me. I was fifteen. ‘She's your baby, Paddy!' the journalist says in the story. And he asks Dad if he'd tried to talk me out of it.

‘How could I stop her?' Dad asked. It was the right response. I was doing exactly what I wanted, what I believed I was meant to do. When asked what my ambition was I said, ‘I just want to be the best jockey I can be.'

When I said that, I could hear my father's voice, I could feel the reassurance of his rock-solid belief. He encouraged us to be thankful for our blessings, to respect others, and to give our best. He had taught us by example in the way he lived, and also by instruction and explanation. He could be incredibly harsh and honest but I always felt he had the very best intentions, and hoped we would find a depth of happiness, if not an inner peace in our lives. If I was to find that depth of happiness, and meaning, in being a jockey then that's what I needed to do. He would support, encourage and
nurture me, even though I was going into a profession that he knew only too well was dangerous.

Those best intentions weren't so obvious when he was tearing strips off us in the yard. He was quick to show his frustration, a trait he has passed on to Therese and Patrick, and a little to me. And he can be stubborn, especially when he's convinced he's right.

As he had been to my sisters and brothers when they were apprenticed to him, Dad was my father–mentor, and master–mentor. There was no separation of the roles. The papers to make that official were a mere formality required by the conventions of racing and the law. Life as I knew it went on. Being a jockey wasn't a job, or a profession for me. I felt it was even beyond a vocation. I felt the deepest sense of personal connection with being a jockey. And I trusted that my father understood that—because he was
my father
.

He taught me to be kind to horses, to work with them, to understand them, to love them. I watched him love them and I watched them love him. He also made it very clear, though, that you had to be in control and they had to know you were boss. I learned that from a very young age, when Dad would get us to break in the young horses with him. They have to learn you are in charge from the start and so did I. Horses are very smart and intuitive animals, they know if someone is nervous around them; they know when they can get away with anything they want. And it can be a fine line.

When I was quite young we had a couple of older horses—Moving Away and Colorado Ring—which had over a hundred starts each. Both won more than fifteen races. When Dad walked towards their paddock they'd see him and acknowledge him. They'd start neighing. Dad would look straight at them.

‘How's my old mate,' he would call out as he got nearer to them. I could feel the affection between them.

Dad also taught me how to live with horses, in the same place as horses, and to look after them. To treat them with respect, but to also win their respect. To be part of their day. And to ride them. He taught me to believe in the relationship between horse and jockey.

‘Some horses go good for some jockeys,' he used to say.

Dad also taught me how to break in a horse. I reckon I was as young as seven when he did. When he brought a yearling back from the sales, he'd put it in a box and put me on it, bareback, as he'd done with most of the kids before me. He'd get me moving its head left and right. He had a consistent message: ‘You're the boss. Don't ever let the horse think otherwise. You
show him
you're the boss.'

I heard that over and over again.

Soon after, we'd put a saddle on the horse and go through the same process. Left and right. I progressed from that to being led around on the back of the horses. Dad then started me on a lunging lead, trotting in a circle on the racehorses. I learned to rise to the trot. Once I could trot I was ready to take the next step, to break into a canter. I'll never forget that first day.

The horse I used to ride was a lovely old chestnut called Campaigner. He'd won a few races so he had definitely earned his keep, and he was the perfect horse for me to learn on—placid and obedient. We were in the little circle of one of the small day yards near the stables. I broke into a canter and all I can remember is trying to get into the jockey position. I was all over the place, bobbing along, so tiny, trying to stay balanced like all my brothers and sisters did, like the really good jockeys who were riding at the time did. Cathy and Andrew were watching the lesson and were killing themselves laughing. I was so angry.

I was concentrating so hard and when we stopped, I said, ‘Dad, tell them to stop laughing at me.' But nothing could make them stop. Dad was probably trying hard not to laugh himself.

He continued to put me on the lead in the mornings, whether it would be at Home or in the centre of the training track at Ballarat in front of all the other trainers, while the other kids would be working the horses around the track. My practice was used as a warm-up for the more vigorous work the horses would do with the others to build up the horses' fitness.

I was riding more and more but I couldn't get enough of it. Any chance I could get I'd take. But in the afternoons Dad used to take the horses for a stroll and a pick of grass down the road to get them out of the paddocks before feed time. We didn't really like doing this job. I always wanted to ride down the road but he said we had to lead them, which was pretty tiring for a nine-year-old who'd been up since before dawn and had had a day at school. And we were also keen by this time to get home and play on the Nintendo I'd won at the school fete in Prep. We loved Super Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros. Dad was not impressed. He hated us playing electronic games and being inside. He couldn't get us to work. He threatened to cut the cords and we'd keep saying, ‘One more game, Dad. I've just got to finish this level.' But then we just did what we were told and tended to the horses.