Doyle: Maybe we’ve proved girls can be as good as the boys
JOCKEY Hollie Doyle knows what it feels like to come up on the rails and win a sprint to the finish. She has done it all her career and could do the same in the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year awards. The 24-year-old has gone from 33-1 in the betting on Tuesday to 9-4 second favourite for tonight’s prize.
‘To be seen as on a par with the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Tyson Fury blows my mind,’ she says. ‘It’s crazy.’
Doyle thought her agent was joking when he said she was on the shortlist. But it has been an unprecedented year.
She had intended to strike a line through 2020, disregard it altogether. A year when she hoped to try to eclipse her record of 116 winners from the last season was merely a pipe dream as the coronavirus pandemic struck.
Doyle had to bide her time when racing was shut down for 10 weeks, but it was a chance to return even stronger.
‘I used that time to train and try to make myself as good as I could as I was looking forward to this year,’ she says.
It has paid off. She recorded her first Royal Ascot winner and weeks later rode an 899-1 five-timer at Windsor, making her the first female to claim five winners at a meeting. She smashed her British record of winners in a year by a female rider with 146 wins and claimed her first Group One success on British Champions Day at Ascot.
Last week, she became the first woman to win at the Hong Kong International Jockeys’ Championship.
‘I know it’s good to be at the top but it’s really hard staying here,’ she says. ‘I never feel I can relax. I have always put myself under pressure. I feel I have to be this busy to keep the interest of owners and trainers. I hope I might grow out of that feeling... it’s not a healthy way of living, having that fear you’re going to get replaced or forgotten about.’
She says it has nothing to do with being a woman. ‘It’s about being good enough to win and I am pretty sure if I was a boy, it would have been the same.
‘I was really not in a good place a few years ago, I suffered with confidence issues and I spent every day thinking I wasn’t good enough. I was shy but I thought I could ride then suddenly I wasn’t the best of the bunch and that was a shock. ‘When I left home and went into racing at 16, I didn’t find many people who wanted to help. I remember going into the weighing room, being intimidated by all the other jockeys. Not many people would talk to me... offer help or advice.’ Doyle believes that it was not for lack of opportunity that more women did not race when she started. ‘It was just that they didn’t want to,’ she says. ‘Now they realise they can do it and can get to the top. So maybe we have proved girls can be as good as the boys. ‘From where I’m sitting now, I would say it definitely is a level playing field. But I guess that’s easy for me to say because I’m doing well.’