Magnificent Michelle Payne

Love it. Michelle the Magnificent. A beacon in the fight against misogyny.

"Payne was magnificent. Panting and bouncing in the saddle while returning from the win she told of her fight against a misogynous industry and a battle to fight off moves to take her off Prince of Penzance a couple of weeks before the moment of glory.
Typical. Woman does hard yards. Bloke takes over at the winning moment. But not so on this occasion. She fought to keep her ride and won on it.
Riding back to the pavilion she said this about males who thought a female could not win the Melbourne Cup, "You can all get stuffed."
Meanwhile, back at the pavilion, the miserable, frightened, beholden set-piece speakers spoke their set-piece speeches. Ironically, they imagined that this would be safe. Their PR speech writers propping them up from any possible faux pas.
Well, the safe, offend-no-one approach backfired this time.
The glossy failure of the Governor-General and the Emirates representative to seize the moment of history illustrates the desperate poverty of a large part of public life in Australia today: safety, bum-covering, offend no-one, no spontaneity.
The obverse is of course, inspire no one. And if ever there was a moment to capture imaginations and inspire Australians it was the day the first woman jockey won the Melbourne Cup.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/history-made-but-speeches-missed-it-20151103-gkpwjc.html#ixzz3qRAklbYi
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