Jump Girls proves a winner alright

THE goodness of Jump Girls, the documentary on TG4 about women who are doing so well in National Hunt racing, did not end with the programme itself — when they announced that this was just the first episode, and that there’s a second part on Thursday night, I was perfectly happy to spend another hour with these people and their horses.

Which is a rare enough thing, at a time when we are always anxious about persevering with some series, about wasting another hour of our lives.

I especially enjoyed the story of how Rachael Blackmore (inset) was given her chance by the trainer John Joseph ‘Shark’ Hanlon, who had seen her taking two falls off terrible horses on the same day at a pointto-point, and was convinced that if she didn’t get away from the point-to-points, she’d be killed.

He put her on board Stowaway Pearl in a ladies’ race in Thurles, and though he fancied the horse, he did not tell her that — indeed, he fancied it so much that it was backed from 20-1 to around 6-1, and when Rachael had it leading by 20 lengths at the second last fence, these thoughts were surely running through the large red head of ‘Shark’: “Indeed I am pleased that we have gained the upper hand today on the racecourse, but of far more significance is the fact that we have seen another blow being struck against the patriarchy — and not just against the institutionalised discrimination against women which has characterised much of our society to the detriment of all, but against the specific structures of our equestrian world in which women are so deeply involved in the lower echelons, yet have been held back by those same patriarchal values.”

Now ‘Shark’ may not have been thinking that exactly, as he “collected”, and indeed those were not his exact words to the camera, which went like this: “There was a few quid got, and ’twas a great day.” But it is roughly the same thing.