Rachael Blackmore chose a mundane Monday in May to call time on perhaps the most groundbreaking career any jockey has ever had. It’s a typically understated way for the woman who has confounded expectations throughout her career to bow out. She leaves a pioneering legacy, and a sport that is transformed forever.
The scale of that transformation can be gauged by how it’s just 14 years since Blackmore rode her very first winner. That was Stowaway Pearl for trainer ‘Shark’ Hanlon at Thurles. It’s only a decade since she turned professional. At the time the idea of a female riding professionally in the toughest game of all was regarded almost in curio terms. Not any more it isn’t.
In the intervening 10 years all preconceptions and prejudices about women not being strong enough or resilient enough to ride at the top level of jump racing have been shattered. It is a sport where on average one in every 20 rides ends up in a fall and injury is inevitable. As a self-consciously tough job it is open to macho stereotypes. Blackmore has exploded them all.
If she has always been keen to underplay the gender element of her story – memorably saying after her most famous win in the 2021 Aintree Grand National “I don’t feel male or female right now, I don’t even feel human!” – what she’s achieved throughout her career has a wider context that maybe even Blackmore will only start to dwell on and appreciate now that she’s finished.
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She has always insisted on being judged on her merits as a rider alone. That something so straightforward once seemed so unlikely smacks of a time much longer than just 10 years. But she has also been keen to point out how racing did ultimately provide her with an opportunity, regardless of her sex, and no one can argue she hasn’t made the most of it.
When Blackmore was crowned champion conditional rider – jump racing’s equivalent of top apprentice – in 2017 it seemed a landmark moment. Little did anyone know it was just the beginning to a run of success that catapulted the woman from Killenaule, Co Tipperary to international fame.
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Crucial to it was her link up with Henry de Bromhead. Eddie O’Leary, brother of Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, suggested to the Co Waterford trainer that she was worth putting on some of their Gigginstown Stud runners. It was a show of faith from one of the sport’s most powerful owners and it heralded a superb run of success.
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A first Cheltenham Festival winner came in 2019 through A Plus Tard. At the same festival, Minella Indo was Blackmore’s first Grade One winner. She was the first woman to ride a top-flight winner at Cheltenham. In 2019 a first domestic Grade One came through an emerging mare called Honeysuckle. Blackmore was also runner-up in the jockeys’ championship.
It was a level of success to already alter perceptions rooted in a history that had seen women banned from race riding less than half a century before. Here was a woman who repeatedly bounced back from crunching falls and yielded to no one when it came to the nuances required in race-riding. Any deficiencies in polish were ruled out by a tactical acumen second to none.
In a results business, the ultimate results came in 2021. Honeysuckle’s success in the Champion Hurdle sealed Blackmore’s reputation for delivering on the big day. She was leading rider at Cheltenham that year with six winners and even left it with a sense of frustration, having picked A Plus Tard rather than Minella Indo in the Gold Cup and forced to settle for second.
A few weeks later came Grand National glory on Minella Times. Racing’s biggest shop window delivered a perfect outcome at a time when the Covid pandemic raged. There were no spectators at Aintree, but a world audience witnessed history. If the film National Velvet got referenced too often for comfort it probably only reflected the depth of popular appreciation.
It won Blackmore the BBC’s sports personality world star award, beating off opposition that included global figures Novak Djokovic and Tom Brady.
A year later, and Blackmore settled her score with the Cheltenham Gold Cup, winning easily on A Plus Tard. Last year she combined with De Bromhead again to land the Champion Chase on Captain Guinness and completed the set of major Cheltenham prizes in March with Stayers’ Hurdle glory on Bob Olinger. In all she has had 18 winners at the biggest meeting of all.
It reflected an athlete who at 35 is at the height of her powers. Jump jockeys now routinely ride on into their 40s. But Blackmore’s capacity for confounding expectations has never flagged. Thrust into the spotlight she has nevertheless consistently maintained a natural reserve that has been usefully self-preserving.
Whereas Ruby Walsh waved his way into retirement at the Punchestown Festival and AP McCoy wound down his career over weeks, Blackmore has opted for the low key. Her last ride, Ma Belle Etoile for De Bromhead, was a winner at Cork on Saturday, less than an hour before the 2,000 Guineas with all eyes focused on the flat. It was her 575th winner in all.
It ends a trailblazing career by a singularly talented and ferociously determined figure. Blackmore’s emergence as one of the finest jockeys of her generation hasn’t yet prompted a flow of other women in her wake. But when it happens – and it surely is when rather than if – the legacy of one woman’s pioneering exploits will be crucial.
