Rachael Blackmore: Irish horse racing’s accidental trailblazer

As they flashed past the post in Clonmel that day, Rachael Blackmore’s mind became diseased with worry. Her horse Most Honourable had been chased down by Stephen Gray aboard Rock On Bach and she couldn’t be sure if he’d caught her or not.

The problem wasn’t so much her judgment, more her confidence. It was coming up to six months since she had turned professional and she still didn’t have a winner against her name. In that place, you quietly make an ally of hope rather than brazenly drape your arm around confidence. By the usual metrics, this was not a major race. But in Blackmore’s head, as she waited for the tannoy man to announce the result, it may as well have been the Grand National.

“First, number nine . . .”

Most Honourable took it, the winning distance a short head. Ireland’s only professional female jumps jockey had her first win since joining the paid ranks. A summer that had seen her placed in a dozen races, including four seconds, was ending with her smiling for the camera.

“It was a big relief, one million per cent relief. Because once you can say you’ve ridden a winner as a professional, you’re different straight away. People take that bit more notice of you. I wouldn’t say I was worried about it but it was just taking a long time to come.

“I turned professional on March 16th and this was in September. People were saying to me that maybe this was the wrong thing to do and that maybe I shouldn’t have turned pro. You’d have people thinking this, that and the other about you. But I knew that once I had my first winner, all of that would go out the window. When they called out my number, I didn’t go, ‘Oh yes, I won!’ I just went, ‘Oh thank God, finally.’”

Neat and tidy

Blackmore is an unlikely trailblazer. When we meet, her most pressing wish is that The Irish Times don't go making a big hoo-ha over her. "It won't be that big, will it?" she asks. "Just leave it as a little column at the side, neat and tidy."

Well, no, not that big. But not that small either. Drop into most yards around the country of a morning and you’ll find plenty of female stable staff and work riders but very few ever make it to the track. Of those who do, the vast majority ride in flat races only and almost without exception, the National Hunt jockeys stay amateur.

Blackmore is that exception. While professional female jump jockeys are more common in Britain, Blackmore is the first to make a go of it in Ireland since Maria Cullen in the 1980s. For all the various achievements of Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh over the past decade, neither of them have gone the whole hog and turned the slog of race-riding into the day job.

“It’s weird. Some of my friends who don’t know about racing are like, ‘Oh wow, you’re professional – you must be really good!’ But it doesn’t work like that. You take Derek O’Connor, the champion amateur rider – he’s as good as Ruby Walsh. People just go with what suits them. It suited me to become a professional but just because I did, it doesn’t make me a better rider than Nina or Katie.

“Katie and Nina have both won the Irish Grand National. How many other amateurs have even won an Irish Grand National? They’re able to compete at that level without it mattering whether they’re amateur or professional. They never needed to turn.

“I turned professional because I was going badly as an amateur. I needed to try something different, I needed to get more rides and better rides. For other jockeys, the career path is do really well as an amateur, move up the ranks and turn professional. For me, I wasn’t doing well as an amateur so it was a case of trying something different or give it up altogether. I didn’t have much to lose.”

To enjoy race-riding, you have to be on good horses. It’s a grim old life if all it involves is chugging around on also-rans every day you go out. Amateur jockeys are guaranteed rides in bumpers but once it comes to hurdle races and chases, they fall down the pecking order. And unless your name is Carberry or Walsh, the female jockeys fall further still. The truth of it was that she was going nowhere.

Finished college

“I had got to the point where I was finished college and you’re kind of going, ‘Right, what now?’ Being an amateur jockey was great but I had to get a proper job too. And I wasn’t really doing as well as I wanted as an amateur. I wasn’t getting the rides on the good horses. So it was Shark Hanlon’s idea that I go professional on the basis that there would be more opportunities for me in his yard if I did.

“He planted the seed. I really don’t think I would have otherwise. It wasn’t in my mind to do it. Growing up, I never had it in my head that I wanted to be a jockey. It was never a case of, ‘My career choice is to be a jockey.’ Because it never felt like it could be a reality. You have to be ultra-talented to succeed. I still can’t really think that my career is a jockey. You have to be realistic about it too. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing, maybe I should be thinking that I am a jockey and that’s that.”

The conventional wisdom when it comes to women going professional as jumps jockeys is that the falls are too much to bear. On average, jump jockeys have a fall once in every 19 rides. Of those falls, one in five results in an injury. Bones will be broken, nothing surer. Yet she is willing to put herself in that position, regardless of the misgivings of others.

“I got a bit of that too when I turned pro. But my point of view on it is that I was already riding point-to-points every weekend, which is over jumps. To me, if Shark has a horse going in a point-to-point over the weekend or going in a handicap chase during the week, the horse going to the track is generally a better horse and a better jumper.

“Any of his horses going point-to-pointing who are really good, they’re going to be ridden by the top boys. That’s obvious enough because they’re the horse that are going to make the big dollars at the sales. So to me, it’s a matter of going where the better horses are.

“I see exactly what people are saying about the falls but I was getting plenty of falls point-to-pointing too. I had one bad injury. Well, I broke my collarbone and stuff but no, the only bad one I had was a head injury a long time ago. Nothing too major after that.

“I’m not going to ride anything that’s a really horrible jumper. But that’s not because I’m a girl. It’s because no jockey wants to ride really horrible jumpers. I’m not going to be stupid about it. I’m not going to be silly.”

Better rides

So far, the decision to go professional has proven a sound one. Since that day in Clonmel, she has ridden three more winners, one of them in England. She has been legged up on 86 horses this season already, nearly double what she rode last year. She is getting more rides and better rides and bit by bit, her reputation is growing – Patrick Mullins recently nominated her as a seven-pound claimer for punters to keep on the right side of.

“I haven’t really thought how long I’m going to do it for. I’m doing it now. I’m giving it 100 per cent and if I ever stop giving it 100 per cent, I will finish up. I don’t want to half-do it. I want to lose my seven-pound claim. If I could lose that claim, I’d be delighted. I presume I’d want to lose the five-pound claim then as well obviously but that’s the short-term goal anyway.”