Female jockeys tipping scales in their favour
Rachael Blackmore and her ilk are finally showing women can truly compete at the top in racing,
The success of women jockeys never came into sharper focus than when Rachael Blackmore was the leading jockey at the Cheltenham Festival in 2021 and, three weeks later, did something previously only achieved in a 1930s novel whose plot was sufficiently far-fetched to be lapped up by Hollywood when she won the Grand National on Minella Times.
That was the moment, almost four decades after Caroline Beasley became the first woman to ride a winner at the Cheltenham Festival and the first to win over the Aintree fences, when we could finally drop the smashing cliche about the ever-rising glass ceilings being broken and racing joined other equestrian disciplines as a sport in which men and women could truly compete at the top on an equal footing. It had been some time coming, but even the disbelievers realised then that women could be as effective, if not more, than men in the saddle.
In addition to her two Champion Hurdles on Honeysuckle, the dynamic Blackmore has also won a Gold Cup on A Plus Tard. By a long chalk, she is the most accomplished female rider. On this side of the Irish Sea, Bryony Frost has a King George VI Chase and a Ryanair Chase on her CV.
On the Flat, Hollie Doyle continues to blaze a trail in terms of both quantity and quality of winners. Hayley Turner, who set the standard, is just 39 shy of 1,000 domestic winners, a total she should reach some time in 2023 given a fair wind.
If you looked at last Saturday’s Betfair Chase, when two of the five runners were ridden by Blackmore and Frost, you might have extrapolated from it that 40 per cent of jump jockeys are women.
Over jumps, however, that is far from the case.
While women riding at the top on the Flat represent the peak of a wider pyramid – one in every two apprentices in October were female – that is not the case over jumps, where just 10 per cent (or one in 10 conditional jockeys) are female.
Turner, the most senior female jockey by 10 years, says she has no reason to complain about the progress made by women on the Flat. “It’s about having someone prepared to give opportunities. I’m not at all despondent. It’s exciting how it’s changed so much from when I started and Mike Bell had to put his neck on the line to give me opportunities. You don’t have to sell female jockeys to an owner now, they’ll use them because they’re good.”
Page Fuller, 27, who is out until at least January after suffering a mini-stroke, having lost the sight in an eye going to the first fence in a race (worse than it sounds, she insists), has ridden 110 winners under Rules. While size and weight give females an advantage on the Flat, the perception over jumps is that some of the girls are too light and have to carry too much lead in their weight cloths – although lightweight Blackmore should have dispelled that notion.
“I get told to go and ride on the Flat, people look at me and think I’m 9st,” says Fuller, “but I try to be 9st 10lb. Racing shows some amazing days which may seem unachievable, but a lot of it is getting people to understand that you don’t have to ride big winners every day to make a living from it.”
She is far from despondent about the future, though. “The girls who are being inspired now by Rachael and Bryony are still at school and might be for another five years, and even then it will take them longer to filter through than it does for an apprentice on the Flat. When I left school I never considered it could be a professional career for me.”
An added attraction of staying amateur for some of the best up-and-coming female jump jockeys is the big-fish-in-a-smaller pond scenario, whereby they get to ride better horses in point-to-points than they do under Rules. Gina Andrews, Izzie Marshall and Alice Stevens, to name but three,
could all probably make a decent living as professionals but, for the time being, remain resolutely amateur.