No one cares I’m a woman now – I have proved people wrong
Rachael Blackmore could be top jockey at Cheltenham this week – which is a long way from her days as an extremely average amateur, she tells Marcus Armytage
Predicting who is going to ride the most winners over the next four days at Cheltenham is never easy but there is a good chance, given the way Rachael Blackmore is performing and her bookings for the week, that this year’s leading jockey will be, for the first time, female.
Indeed, bookmakers rate Blackmore, the late-starting farmer’s daughter from Tipperary, 4-1 second favourite behind Paul Townend, the first jockey to Willie Mullins, to land the title.
Apart from the undoubted talent, the strength and the undeniable truth that horses run for her, Blackmore, 30, has a smart racing brain and, having already chalked up 61 winners in Ireland this season – a tally bettered only by Townend and Davy Russell – she arrives brimming with confidence.
And this is no flash in the pan; last year, only Townend finished in front of her in the championship, and she rode her first two Cheltenham Festival winners; A Plus Tard and Minella Indo, who are both back this week.
At last month’s Dublin Racing Festival, she rode a Grade One double on Honeysuckle, in the Irish Champion Hurdle, and Notebook, in the Irish Arkle, another duo giving her book of rides a gilt-edged look.
When the Irish amateurs Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh, two Festival favourites, retired within moments of each other in May 2018, it would have been easy to think there would be something of a lull for female jump jockeys in Ireland but, by then, Blackmore, the first for decades to turn professional, was already beginning to ride plenty of winners.
However, that summer, at the suggestion of Eddie O’leary, who manages Gigginstown Stud for his brother Michael, she went to ride out for Waterford trainer Henry de Bromhead with a view to riding the Gigginstown horses in his yard.
They won, she clicked with the trainer, who is pushing Mullins and Gordon Elliott for a share of Ireland’s biggest prizes, and she now has what no other female jockey, Flat or jump, past or present, has had; the status of first jockey to a powerful stable.
“Winning on the Gigginstown horses led to Henry using me on some other horses and one thing led to another,” she says. “I felt like I landed in the yard at the right time. His yard was in really good form and we had a bit of success throughout that summer.
“The calibre of horse he has has improved since and I have been the lucky one. You still have to produce the results but it does not matter how good you are unless you have four good legs underneath you.”
In school, Blackmore had wanted to be a vet. “Being a professional jockey wasn’t what I wanted to be – 100 per cent, I wanted to ride winners as an amateur jockey,” she said. “That was the dream but it has gone to a whole new level. When I turned professional, I was not full of confidence. I had a yard behind me but I was a 7lb claiming amateur.
“A couple of people were saying ‘I don’t know if you’re doing the right thing’ because it is strange for someone who was extremely average as an amateur to turn professional. It’s not the usual course to take. I suppose when a couple of people were negative it did make me want to prove them wrong.
“It wasn’t a woman thing. I wasn’t like Jane Mangan. When she was an amateur, she was talented, very good in a finish and sharp. If she said she was turning professional, no one would have batted an eyelid. I just needed the practice. That’s just what I got when I turned professional. Straight away, I got more rides. That allowed me to improve.”
Blackmore’s first experience of Cheltenham was as a teenage racegoer. “I went there when I was 16 with friends of a similar age. We did the 21 Club [a Cheltenham nightspot], we did the racing in nice clothes. I definitely wouldn’t have been there longing to ride in Cheltenham at that stage. I didn’t think at that point I could be dreaming of riding winners there, so things have gone beyond what I was able to dream about.”
Although she had ridden at Cheltenham before, she did not feel the pressure until she turned up 12 months ago with several fancied rides. “That was a different kettle of fish,” she said. “So, it was a big relief when A Plus Tard won. Relief was my initial feeling. Then it was elation, joy, happiness and all the rest. It’s fantastic to have that under your belt now.
“It was absolutely massive. A Cheltenham winner is such a coveted thing for any jockey and I was lucky enough to get two of them last year. To think that Ruby [Walsh] rode 59 – unbelievable. People tell you it’s this, that and the other, then it happens and you’re like ‘Yeah, I believe you now’. The hype – it all does come true.
“A Plus Tard was favourite, so going back to the winner’s enclosure, walking back down the chute, the crowd was just ecstatic. The roar, the cheers – you can pick out people in the crowd that you might know – I saw one lad I was at school with. Minella Indo was a big outsider, so there was a lot of cheering and applause but more polite applause. It wasn’t financially backed applause.
“A Cheltenham winner brings a whole different spectrum to things. With girls I went to school with, who don’t know about racing, it was hard trying to explain to them that I was champion conditional jockey. But to be able to say I rode a winner at Cheltenham – they all know Cheltenham.”
Blackmore does not see herself as a pioneer for her sex within the sport.
“I probably find it a little tiresome within the small racing bubble because I don’t think it should be a thing anymore,” she says. “I fully get why it’s a thing outside the bubble because it is a male-dominated sport. But, at the end of the day, it’s the horses doing the running – we are just on their backs doing the steering. It would be a lot different if some female sprinter was beating Usain Bolt.
“But in saying that, I see why the greater media have interest – that’s great because it’s bringing interest into racing. I get that it would be massive to win a Gold Cup or Champion Hurdle – it would be pretty massive for me, too.
“But my initial feeling wouldn’t be, ‘Ah this is so big for women in racing’. That won’t come into it. But I’m not oblivious to the fact that it’s a big deal – it’s just something I’m not thinking about now. Henry doesn’t care, the owners don’t care, no one I deal with cares.”
‘A Festival win is such a coveted thing and I was lucky enough to get two last year. The hype – it all does come true’