Results count — not gender

EACH weekend The Chronicle sport team looks at pressing issues on the Saturday Soapbox.

Q: Clifford Park premier jockey Skye Bogenhuber will move to Perth after a decorated riding career in Toowoomba. Has Bogenhuber and fellow female jockeys in Toowoomba shown women can be quality riders?

Glen McCullough: FIRSTLY on Skye Bogenhuber. Can I please suggest you read the comments of trainer Michael Nolan on page 48 of today’s paper where he offers his opinion on her rise to the top of Toowoomba racing.

I think you will agree they are the ingredients for success we could all take heed from.

Of course women have “proven” themselves the equal — and in some cases more — of male jockeys.

As a racing scribe I don’t differentiate between the two genders.

Patronising women riders these days I think could be considered an insult. The runs are on the board.

However, they still face two huge hurdles — perception and discrimination.

Both are human traits you will never stamp out.

Regardless of their achievements, female jockeys will always be perceived in some sections as inferior to male riders.

But surely results will trump perception most days of the week.

Discrimination, as well, against female riders will always remain, but there is nothing new about discrimination.

We discriminate every day in choices we make.

It might might come in the brand of car we buy or even which apples we choose from the grocery store.

There’s nothing wrong with that. We are free to choose who or whatever pleases us.

But thanks to Skye and those before her, remaining discriminatory against female riders is almost stone-age. It’s all about talent and opportunity.

Ben Drewe: THOSE that wouldn’t back a horse with a female jockey must have lost thousands over the past few years.

Those punters are dinosaurs as there are female jockeys around who can do just as good of a job as their male counterparts.

There is a strong representation of female jockeys riding at Clifford Park and it is great to see.

Anton Rose: THERE was never any doubt that women could be great riders but the likes of Skye and those before her went a long way to inspiring more women to get into racing.

Sport has always needed people like Skye to show that it can be done and I am sure that with times changing, females on horseback won’t be an unfamiliar sight down at the track.

Q: Who will win the opening State of Origin game and why?

Ben Drewe: AT LONG last the Queensland dominance looks to be cracking.

As a New South Welshman, I have a subdued sense of optimism heading into game one.

It is subdued as experience shows that the likes of Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk can pull wins out for Queensland when they may look unlikely, but the NSW team looks stronger than the Maroons.

And after a decade of having it easy when it comes to deciding which players to pick, Queenslanders have turned on each other when it comes to whether or not Darius Boyd should have been picked at fullback over Billy Slater.

That sort of behaviour is what Maroons fans have loved sledging NSW about over the years so it could be a sign the tables are turning.

I think NSW will win by eight points on Wednesday night as the Maroons are still a champion team and will certainly make a game of it.

Anton Rose: HISTORY would suggest that the home team gets the better start in game one.

Queensland’s team may have elicited a pretty ‘meh’ response from the scores of fans across the Sunshine State due to the axing of Slater and the exclusion of injured Origin warrior Johnathan Thurston.

But I firmly believe that New South Wales have yet to recover from the era of ‘eight straight’.

While the blues have claimed a series win since, Queensland’s 2016 triumph brought back bad memories and opened up wounds would still keep them up at night. Queensland to edge it by at least five points.

Glen McCullough: Sadly, I can see Queensland’s Origin dominance soon coming to an end but hopefully the Maroons have one more winning series in them.

Every year the Blues are considered the better side on paper only to be humiliated where it matters. It’s Queensland again for me.

TAB DIVIDENDS