Diane Crump’s death before Christmas was marked by a long obituary in the New York Times. It was a portrait of an extraordinary woman, but also of a world we think we have left behind. In 1970, Crump became the first female jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby, the most famous race in America. Only a year earlier, she became the first professional female jockey to compete at a track in America where betting was legal. By forced entry, she passed through those doors.
Acceptance, though, was a different matter. When she was booked for her first professional ride in Florida in 1969, six male jockeys withdrew from the race. Crump was accompanied to the saddling enclosure by racecourse security, through a scrum of photographers, reporters and onlookers. One racegoer shouted that she should “stay in the kitchen”.
The resistance to female jockeys was more than societal – it was institutional. In 1968, Kathryn Kusner was turned down for a riding licence twice by the Maryland Racing Commission. Refusing to accept their decision, Kusner brought a case to the circuit court, on the grounds that she had been the victim of gender discrimination. The court ruled in her favour.
But when Penny Ann Early received a license to ride in Kentucky later that year, male jockeys unanimously boycotted her first three races and the racecourse blinked. She was effectively frozen out.
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There are more than 70 licensed female jockeys in America now, but, for the most part, they don’t compete at the top level. Since Diane Crump, only five other female jockeys have ridden in the Kentucky Derby. Over the last 20 years, only one female jockey has ridden in a Triple Crown race.
In this part of the world, a similar pattern has been established. There are more professional female jockeys now than ever before, but how many of them feel they are being treated equally?
For the first time in nearly a decade, Rachael Blackmore won’t be riding at Cheltenham next month. She retired last May as the most successful female jumps jockey of all time and one of the great Cheltenham Festival jockeys of the modern era.
But at the height of her career, Blackmore’s success masked a more mundane reality for every other woman in the weighing room. Her breakthrough didn’t open a floodgate.
In 2021, a few weeks after Blackmore was crowned leading jockey at the Cheltenham Festival and a few days after she became the first woman rider to win the Grand National, Clare Balding – the broadcaster and former amateur jockey – offered an interesting perspective in the Racing Post.
“Everyone says [Blackmore’s success] proves it’s a meritocracy, but it doesn’t,” said Balding. “It proves she’s outstanding and given the opportunity, she’s better than everyone else. The next step is can you just be given the opportunity to be allowed to be mid-division? That’s equality. It’s the median. When you look down the [jockey] standings, in both flat and jumps, it is still striking how few women are getting that consistency of opportunity.”
At Cheltenham this year, there will not be a female jockey with a high-profile ride, with the possible exception of Jody Townend in the Bumper – a race she won last year for Willie Mullins. Other than that? A few will pop up in the races for amateurs and maybe a couple in the handicaps, all of it on a completely differently level to Blackmore in her pomp.
People wondered what the legacy of Blackmore’s success would be and how soon it would materialise – as if that was a linear process or as if it was inevitable.
The simple narrative that readily gained traction was that Blackmore was following in the footsteps of Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh, both of whom had won big races at all of racing’s marquee meetings without ever turning professional.
When Blackmore took a huge leap and left the amateur ranks in 2015, she was the first Irish female professional jumps jockey since Maria Cullen in the 1980s. In that sense, she was blazing a different trail to Walsh and Carberry. For her, the risk of failure was far greater.
Has the landscape changed much since she turned pro? In Blackmore’s first full season as a professional, she rode six winners in Ireland. That year, Carberry had 19 winners, Sarah O’Brien rode 17, Katie Walsh 13. Compare that to last season: Jody Townend was the leading female jumps jockey in Ireland with eight winners and no other female rider had more than six.
In Blackmore’s first season as a pro, female jumps riders in Ireland rode 74 winners between them. Last season, that total was 36.
Racing is remorselessly tough and for young jockeys, the difficulty of making a breakthrough is not gender specific. Young men struggle too. The issue, though, is equal opportunity.
Katie O’Farrell turned professional shortly after Blackmore and, for a variety of reasons, handed in her jockey’s licence five years ago. When she reflected on her career a couple of years later, she wasn’t convinced that anything fundamental had changed, despite the success of Carberry and Walsh and Blackmore.
“Of course, it’s different to 20 years ago,” she said. “Of course we’ve progressed. But where are the rest of the girls? Where are the girls coming through? You don’t see it happening. For a girl, the obstacles are left, right and centre. If a lad gives a horse a bad ride, he’s just given it a bad ride. If a girl gives a horse a bad ride, it’s a much bigger deal.”
Every so often, a marker of progress will materialise. At the beginning of the month, Aamilah Aswat became the first black female to win a jumps race in Britain. Astonishingly, it was just her fourth ride.
In Ireland, Anna McGuinness has had a breakthrough year with nine winners already. Three of them were for her boss Willie Mullins, but the others were for six different trainers. All told, 33 trainers have put her up on one of their horses this season. In racing, that kind of trust is hard-earned. McGuinness’s talent has been noticed. In a cut-throat game, she has a chance.
But it was naive to think Blackmore’s success, or the success of Carberry and Walsh before her, was going to transform the landscape of the weighing room. That struggle continues.
