MICHELLE Payne has become caught up in public spat over her replacement as the rider for Melbourne Cup winner Prince of Penzance for the start of his spring campaign.
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Part-owner John Richards from Ballarat has told racing.com that the ownership group had decided that Payne would not ride Prince of Penzance in his first-up assignment in the group 1 $500,000 Memsie Stakes at Caulfield on August 27.
"The horse will be running in the Memsie Stakes and she won't be riding," he said.
The Racing Victoria website also reports that no jockey has been decided on for the Darren Weir-trained Prince of Penzance for the race.
Richards said concerns for the Ballarat jockey's wellbeing and Payne not being race fit were the major reasons for the decision.
Payne is on the comeback from pancreatic surgery after she was seriously injured in race fall at Mildura in May.
Payne put her disappointment in the public arena via Twitter on Wednesday when she posted: "Not anymore I'm done, Why work your arse off for people who don't appreciate what you do and write you off anyway #moretolife."
She removed the Tweet shortly after it was posted.
Payne is back riding trackwork, largely in Ballarat for the likes of Weir and her brother Andrew Payne, but she has not confirmed whether she will return to race riding, and if she does when this might be.
Payne has ridden Prince of Penzance in all but one of 25 race starts, which have produced seven wins, seven seconds and two thirds for $4,431,190 in stakes.
Hugh Bowman finished second on the seven-year-old in the 2014 Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Flemington.
Prince of Penzance has had just the one start since winning the Melbourne Cup at 100-1.
He finished second to stablemate Tonopah in the group 3 RA Lee Stakes, 1600m, in Adelaide on May 21 - two days before Payne’s Mildura fall.
Payne has expressed a desire to return to race riding since she was released from hospital.
She again told the Australian Woman's Weekly earlier this month that “there’s no reason I won’t race again”.