Cheltenham Festival: Irish jockey Rachael Blackmore is on the hunt for Festival glory and is still in with a shot of the Irish jump jockeys title
She says life is so much better than that!
Right in the hunt for the Irish jump jockeys title and with great hopes at Cheltenham Blackmore has already lit up the season.
But the 29-year-old Tipperary star has her feet square on the ground when she’s out of the saddle.
Blackmore said: “Sometimes it’s hard to fully take in all that’s happening.
“If you told me I’d be top conditional in 2017 I’d have hardly believed you – but I’d have happily settled for that.”
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She was 25 when she turned professional. Since then her rise has been spectacular.
Yet she knows the perils of racing’s rollercoaster.
Blackmore said: “You might ride the first two winners – fall early in the next and take a lift back in the ambulance.”
Her family are beef farmers in Killenaule, a place where horses, hurling and greyhounds are a way of life.
Combining studies with riding out each day she earned a degree in Equine Science from the University of Limerick.
She said: “It was demanding. I don’t think I was able to give either 100 per cent to be honest.”
But, as ever, she got the job done. And she is living high on the results. Blackmore said: “Nowadays there’s no big deal being a female jockey – it’s a level playing field.
“I’m lucky in that I have no weight problems, I can do 9st 3lb comfortably despite being 5ft 8in in height.
3“My breakfast of porridge and Nutella is my staple diet, but I can eat what I want.”
She thanks Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh for blazing the trail for female riders.
“They were an inspiration,” she says. “No doubt trainers had them in mind when giving me a call in the early days.”
But the gifted sisters in law were racing bluebloods. Blackmore, as an unknown in a small yard, was a long way from any of that.
So when her boss Shark Hanlon, who saw her potential he shrewdly advised her to turn professional and she took the plunge.
And now Blackmore is blazing a trail for young women jockeys like 5lb Kilkenny conditional Katie O’Farrell — the young jock who won the Saturday feature race at the Galway Festival on Low Sun not knowing she had broken her leg in a fall the day before!
Paul Townend, her front-running rival in the title race, spotted Blackmore’s potential while she was with the Shark.
He said then: “She’s very good, she’s got plenty of bottle and understands horses, and they certainly run for her.”
Indeed Blackmore and Townend go back a long way, and she remembers beating him in a pony race by a neck when she was 13 or 14.
She said: “That was my big claim to fame for a long time.”
Cheltenham Festival
THERE is no bigger stage for female riders to showcase their skills than the Cheltenham Festival.And last year four races were won by women jockeys — including the first ever victories for professionals as Lizzie Kelly took the Ultima Handicap Chase on Coo Star Sivola and Bridget Andrews the County Hurdle on Mohaayed.
They are likely to be in action again, alongside Irish ace Rachael Blackmore, and Bryony Frost, who has the might of Paul Nicholls behind her.
Gee Armytage got the ball rolling for the girls with a double at the 1987 Festival, thanks to The Ellier and the aptly-named Gee-A.
But none have enjoyed more success than the now-retired Irish ace Nina Carberry, who recorded seven victories as an amateur.
Her compatriot — and sister-in-law — Katie Walsh notched three wins, signing off with Relegate in last year’s bumper.
As Carberry said on retirement: “The girls are well able to put it up to the lads!”Watch them do just that at Prestbury Park this week.
After being crowned top conditional the leap to battling with Townend, Davy Russell and Ruby Walsh for the title brings her to a new level.
It was Eddie O’Leary of Gigginstown who suggested to de Bromhead that he take on Blackmore as his main jockey and it has proved inspired.
Now Cheltenham beckons. Blackmore said: “The atmosphere and the buzz there is just fantastic.
“There was so much hype in the build-up I wondered would it live up to expectations but it did in every way. You can feel the anticipation when you arrive at the track – it’s like no other place.
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“But as a rider you can’t get too distracted. You’ve got a job to do, that’s why you’re there, so out on the track you blank out everything else.”
Blackmore said: “Look, just to compete there is a dream come true – I imagine to win there would be just unreal.
“Honestly, I’m not even thinking about it and won’t until it happens – if it ever does.”
But surely it’s a case of ‘when, not if’ – there’s every chance it could be this week.
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