the coming of the flat, sam and rachael have to decide & female changing facilities.

​The Aintree National is not yet run, Sean Bowen is yet to be confirmed as champion jockey, Dan Skelton is still to bury the thought that Paul, Nicky or Willie might yet mug him for his first trainers’ crown, and the promise of the final glories of the season at Fairyhouse and Punchestown is still to be bestowed upon us, and already the over-reach of the flat is beginning to take centre-stage. Indecent haste, I call it. 
In Ireland, this coming Monday, there will be Guineas trials and Group 3 races, with the Ballydoyle battalion primed and ready for their first forays into a season where each horse will incrementally improve from looking rubbish first-time out to becoming favourites for Group 1’s and classics by early August. It is just what Aidan can achieve, whereas others cannot.
It would not be so annoying if after the Lincoln meeting there are a slew of meetings, yet there is not. Why? Because the Aintree National meeting takes precedence, quite rightly, all next week. Would it not make more sense if the Lincoln followed the Aintree National, with flat meetings every day in the following week? And if Ireland can stage Guineas Trials within a week of the opening meeting of the season, give me a reason why the Craven meeting cannot be staged in the week after the Lincoln in order to keep up the momentum of the new season?

Of more importance, at least to me, is which horse will Sam Twiston-Davies and Rachael Blackmore choose to ride in the Aintree National? At the start of the season, and after the initial entries were published, I did not think for a moment that Sam would have a choice. Broadway Boy had looked the quintessential National horse as he stayed well, jumped well and had the necessary class needed these days for the Aintree National. I picked him amongst my first thoughts for the winner, yet, as with Sam, it seems, I have my doubts as he ran no sort of race at Cheltenham last time and it is clutching at straws to suggest the faster ground (really, since when has good-to-soft been considered to be ‘faster ground?) was the underlying factor in a very disappointing effort. To me, the horse has lost his form and I have given up on him for this year. Beauport looks by far the safest decision Sam can make as he has all the same attributes as his stable-mate yet with the added bonus of being in good form. 
Rachael’s decision is far harder. Does she plump for the 12-year-old class of Minella Indo who demonstrated in last year’s Aintree National that he can cope with the fences and stay the distance or does she go for the unknown and choose Senior Chief, a horse of lesser class but who may improve for the unique course and fences and the distance? I would advise Rachael to stay loyal to the old boy as it might be his swan-song and the Minella horses have always been lucky for her.

In her book ‘They’re Off’, Anne Alcock predicted ‘when their needs are eventually met in more sophisticated fashion’.
Anne Alcock was referring to separate changing facilities for female jockeys at racecourses. Her book was published in 1978. In 2025 separate female changing facilities have yet to be met by an embarrassing number of racecourses in this country.
Anne Alcock was not moaning at the disparity between male and female jockeys as she had sympathy for racecourses as the Jockey Club had made no plans for the implantation of the Sex Discrimination Act, no doubt believing that with their connections they could achieve special dispensation to keep the female outside of the jockey ranks. And when she said ‘no plans’ that was proved by the ad-hoc arrangements that were put-in-place so that the female pioneers could change clothes without the eyes of their male colleagues upon them. The office of the clerk-of-the-course was used at one racecourse, a cottage just down the road was another, an old caravan, public toilets were also used. Washing facilities were hardly considered a pre-requisite, nor mirrors. The in-mates of a female prison would be better served than the woman who were leading the way to where we are now. Not that anyone considered it a possibility we could be where we are now.
Female jockeys won their right to race and facilities have improved in the intervening 50-years, yet still, even with the ever-increasing number of female jockeys and the success they have achieved, not every racecourse has dedicated changing facilities for female jockeys. It is no defence to say money is tight as this situation has been ignored for the best part of that fifty-years.