Life As I Know It by Michelle Payne

saddle.
    Because I was little and not very strong, I knew I had to develop a technique to get the horse to do what I wanted it to do. And when you’re a little kid from Our Lady Help of Christians hurtlingalong at 45 kilometres per hour on a frosty Ballarat morning, you have to concentrate. Technique was everything. I had to learn to find the rhythm, learn to soften my hands and the horse’s mouth to have it come back underneath me. Dad would get me to practise riding on the bomby old pushbike, as if it was a horse, for balance. When I was going as fast as I could along the members’ drive of the Ballarat Racecourse, I’d pull out the whip and get that pushbike first over the line. It helped me develop the rhythm of the action while staying balanced.
    At the end of each gallop in the mornings, Dad would make a few observations and suggestions. Then I’d go in for a shower and something to eat and we’d head in to school, arriving four hours or so after I’d first woken up.
    By the time I was thirteen I was riding on the training tracks at Ballarat. I felt very much at home there, and I was looking forward to the day when I got a start in an actual race.
    Dad taught us to walk the track. He reckons it’s one of the most important things, to find out where the better going would be. One time there was a meeting coming up at Ballarat and Therese was riding one of our horses. She was in The Next Room, lying on the couch watching
Days of Our Lives
.
    â€˜Like sands through the hourglass,’ came the voiceover, ‘so are the
Days of Our Lives
.’ Dad was in the kitchen.
    â€˜Come on, Therese,’ he called. ‘We’re going up to walk the track, for the races tomorrow.’ Dad thought his horse could win and the track was heavy, so he was after any advantage. The horse had drawn wide, and would start from an outside barrier, and he thought that if Therese plotted a course out wide, down the back straight, the ground might have been firmer and faster and would save the horse’s energy for the finish. But he had to check it out and show Therese where to cut across before the corner so she didn’t waste too much ground on being wide by the time she turned.
    Therese didn’t move. This was her favourite show.
    â€˜Therese! Come on!’
    Grudgingly she trudged out with him, into the mist of the Ballarat winter. She knew she had to go but she was back pretty soon.
    Dad always brings this story up because Therese hadn’t really paid attention and when the time came for the race she just got beat. Dad was so angry. He was certain she had misjudged it. After much debate he dragged her back out again into the cold to look at where the footmarks of the horse were to make his point. She was the only jockey who took that path so it was clear where she had ridden. Dad was right and still to this day he says she would have won if she’d listened and not been annoyed about missing
Days of Our Lives
. It was a valuable lesson about how racing is a game of tiny margins.
    As I got older I could see the benefit of walking the track, to see where the muddy patches were, to see where the divots were messy, and to see where the better going was. It was a sensible and practical thing to do, so I have always done it. It leaves one less thing to chance—to decide whether going the extra distance of sitting away from the running rail or going through the muddy patch can be a real equation. Sometimes it can be a real advantage to put in the extra thought and effort.
    Dad was definitely not infallible, though. Sunny Glow was a grey horse we got from Kevin ‘Dummy’ Myers. Dad always used to say Dummy by name but not by nature. The Myers were really close family friends from New Zealand. Sunny Glow was taking off in his trackwork with Cathy and me—Dad’s main trackwork riders at the time—so he had nothing left for his races.
    Dad thought he’d try working