the rachael blackmore legacy.

​Rachael Blackmore is 1/100, yes, that’s right, one-hundred to one on, to be Ireland’s sports personality of the year. In effect, Boylesport have suspended betting on the event. A defining measurement, I suggest, of the impact her victory in the Grand National has had in her homeland, and indeed in the sporting world.
It may have taken a female jockey 43-years to succeed at Aintree in the most famous horse race in the world, though in truth it is only in the past decade that they were being given mounts with form that gave them a squeak of winning. I would say it has only taken nine-years. I would go as far saying that apart from Katie Walsh on Seabass who finished third to Neptune Collonge in 2012, Minella Times was the first real opportunity for a female rider to win the Grand National. And she took it. Boy did she take the opportunity her dedication and talent deserved.
What has changed in the world of racing since Katie Walsh rode Seabass for her father Ted Walsh is that female riders are emerging who are getting rides from trainers they are not related to, and it must be remembered that Ted Walsh had said that if Ruby had become available, he would have jocked Katie off Seabass to increase his chance of training another Grand National winner. Some thought he was joking but it’s a cut-throat world in the Walsh family, it seems.
What has peeved me a little since A.P. McCoy made his pronouncement at the Cheltenham Festival that Rachael Blackmore had single-handedly changed the face of horse racing forever was that for whatever reason, and I am led to believe it was due to a personal disagreement with Bryony Frost for leaving a Sport’s Agency he is involved with, he ignored the contribution Bryony has made to this opening-up of National Hunt racing to the revelation, well, it is to some, that female jockeys can take the falls and when given opportunities on good horses can win the big prizes. Admittedly, since Bryony won the King George on Frodon, when she held the honour of winning the biggest race ever won in Britain and Ireland by a female jockey, Rachael has knocked that achievement out of the ball-park and lifted the sport not only on to the front pages of British and Irish newspapers but world-wide. But to forget to include Bryony in his statement, as others have done, was petty and unforgiveable, at least to my way of thinking.
There is no doubt Blackmore is a league in front of Frost at the moment, as Frost is a league in front of every other female jockey. Blackmore is as good, and better than the majority, as her male counterparts. She has been given the sort of opportunities that demand the excellence she provides. Her style of riding is orthodox for a jump jockey, even if she can be more easily located in a race than say Robbie Power or Sean Flanagan. Bryony is less orthodox, unique, perhaps. She rides with a longer stirrup and her head carriage suggests she is more interested in being attuned to her mount’s heart-rate than where she is going. Yet until comparatively recently her c.v. of big wins was as compelling as Blackmore’s.
Prior to Cheltenham, I compared Blackmore’s statistics to Bryony’s and it was quite revealing. On the day I conducted my survey/research, Blackmore had ridden exactly double the number of wins, 82 to 41 and had almost double the number of rides. That though is only half the story. Blackmore rides far more favourites than Frost and rides all-around a far higher quality of horse and it is arguable that Frost squeezes greater success from less opportunity than Blackmore.
I have championed Blackmore now for the best part of three-years. I am in no way knocking her and I have everything crossed in hope she can gnaw away at Paul Townend’s lead in the championship and gain an achievement greater than victory in the Grand National. She is eight behind and needs to be close to on terms come Punchestown if the reigning champion is back from injury by then. What concerns me, and seems to be passing most correspondents by in the euphoria of her Grand National success, is the vital need for there to be a Rachael Blackmore legacy. She is 31, no spring chicken, how many more years can we expect to enjoy her presence on the racecourse?
Let’s give her five-years. That’s five-years for a female jockey to emerge in Ireland to fill the void. At the moment there are, and excuse my ignorance if I have this wrong, two or three other female professional jockeys in a country with a dreadful record of giving female jockeys opportunities to turn professional. Neither Katie Walsh nor Nina Carberry thought it worth their while to turn professional, remember.
For their to be a Blackmore legacy, and after Aintree there has to be a diversity avalanche in the sport, not fifty-fifty but somewhere around twenty-eighty, twenty-five- seventy-five, with female jockeys riding in the best races with obvious chance of winning the norm and not a novelty, owners and trainers have to play their part. As does the B.H.A. To take the French approach and give female riders an allowance would be wrong, unfair on their male counterparts and unnecessary. As Blackmore has done in National Hunt, Holly Doyle has proved on the flat. Opportunity allows talent to shine through.
I have argued for many, many years that their needs to be on the flat a six-figure value race confined to professional female riders. There is no need for a series of such races, just one race of superior quality at somewhere like Glorious Goodwood or Newmarket’s July meeting. A race to attract the best female riders from around the world. And Carlisle’s popular all-female card should be given a prime-time slot in the racing calendar, with terrestrial t.v. coverage if possible and with elevated prize-money and with half the card restricted to professional female riders, if not the entire card.
But above all else, female jockeys must be given greater opportunities than at present. If no legacy presents itself after all Rachael Blackmore is achieving, the sport will be forced to stop crowing about how it leads the sporting world in diversity and gender equality.
As an elated Blackmore said at Aintree: I do not feel female or male. I do not even feel human. Blackmore is a jockey. Pure and simply that. We can no longer include her in the debate. She is so far above all her female counterparts at the present time that she has become irrelevant to the debate. She stands at the summit of our sport. We can adore and worship her for her achievements but we cannot expect her to drag successors to her crown along in her wake. That is the sport’s responsibility. That is the responsibility of every owner and every trainer and it is the responsibility of the B.H.A. to facilitate the legacy. Female jockeys have to be given the opportunity to fail. Or to succeed.