Rachael BLACKMORE
It’s the stuff of Hollywood biopics: female jockey takes on the men at their own game, and wins the biggest and toughest race in the world. When Rachael Blackmore became the first woman to win the Grand National, she broke one of the greatest gender barriers in sport. Though female jockeys have been allowed to enter the event (which started in 1839) since 1975, Blackmore was still only the 20th to compete. It was a truly incredible moment.
Daughter of a dairy farmer and a school teacher, Blackmore grew up riding ponies, but she never dreamed of a career in racing, instead thinking she would be a vet. She only went professional in 2015.
“I was a bit taken aback,” she says, “because it’s just not something that I thought I could do. I didn’t feel I was good enough to do it.”
2021 proved that comprehensively wrong, when she won not just the National, but was leading jockey at Cheltenham to boot. She prefers not to dwell on questions of gender, avoids the limelight, and cracks on quietly and without fuss. But it’s hard not to imagine a new generation of young girls and boys watching her ride, and dreaming big.