Blackmore rescue act lifts racing from trough
HENRY de Bromhead, the trainer whose successes this season are fast making him National Hunt’s Aidan O’Brien, summed it up best. ‘Aren’t we so lucky to have her?’ he said.
And racing is. Rachael Blackmore has single-handedly changed the narrative of 2021 in her sport.
Arguably, she has changed the future and course of racing itself.
Take Blackmore away and this would have been a year of outrage, of racing at a crossroads, certainly in the affections of the public. When a photograph emerged of Gordon Elliott sitting astride the dead novice chaser, Morgan, it is true to say that horse racing, and horse racing folk, had never been held in lower esteem than in the days after its publication. The long-held belief that racehorses were the most cared-for animals on the planet was being severely challenged. Once that conviction crumbles, it is a very small step to then focus increasingly on horse fatalities, cruel accidents, cruel actions and the dark side of humanequine relationships. And then, along came Rachael. Actually, that isn’t strictly true. Blackmore may now be a household name but she is no overnight success. She is 31 years old, a graduate in equine science at the University of Limerick, and rode her first winner as an amateur more than a decade ago, on February 10, 2011. She was champion conditional rider — the award for National Hunt jockeys under the age of 26 who have not won more than 75 races — in season 2016-17, and two seasons ago she came second in the Irish jockeys’ championship with 90 winners from 615 rides.
She was also the leading jockey at this year’s Cheltenham Festival. So this achievement has been coming. Make no mistake about that. It is just that her career peak, so far, has coincided with what was an equally dramatic trough for her sport.
There will always be a winner of the Grand National, and that winner will always have a story to tell. We’ve seen that countless times over the years.
Yet a conventional tale of triumph on Saturday would not have altered perceptions of racing the way that Blackmore’s victory on Minella Times did.
A conventional winner would still have carried a connection to Elliott astride poor Morgan.
Despite being brought up on an Irish dairy farm less than two hours from where Elliott has his yard, Blackmore is somehow apart from that.
She comes from the same community that sees horses as working animals, yet her story as a pioneer, the first female winner of the National, breaking barriers, surmounting obstacles and reversing preconceptions as smartly as she navigates and jumps fences, places her apart.
And with every stride around Aintree at the weekend, Blackmore set her sport apart, too. She left in the distance that miserable image and its connotations. The image that we couldn’t believe we were seeing.
She ushered in a new era in which young girls may have a photograph of a jockey, not just a horse, on the wall, as a reminder of what is possible.
There is a little girl and a pony called Bubbles in Blackmore’s back story, too, but this triumph does not need twee sell.
The idea of a woman winning the Grand National was once considered fantastic enough to be a novel (1933) and a film (1944).
The reality, of course, is that women were not even allowed to compete in the race until the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act (1975). Now, they ride as equals.
Blackmore piloted Minella Times over the 30 fences perfectly.
In doing so, she corrected the opinions of those who believed that the physicality of jump racing would ultimately prove a barrier to 50 per cent of the population.
It was not so long ago that AP McCoy was advocating weight allowances for female jockeys to help them to compete. He meant well in what he was suggesting.
‘Female jockeys are very competent riders but perhaps a woman should receive an allowance like a filly does in a race,’ said McCoy.
‘It’s a very physically demanding sport and they are not going to be as physically strong.
‘If it comes down to strength in a finish, a woman is not going to be as strong as a man.’
It didn’t seem the most outlandish idea that McCoy was putting forward, yet Blackmore has destroyed it.
She proved not just equal at the Grand National, but she proved herself to be better than her contemporaries.
And she did it while carrying probably the greatest weight of all: the soul and the standing of her sport.
As Henry de Bromhead so wisely pointed out, they are, indeed, so lucky to have her.