Champion jockey Rachael Blackmore: I hope I can continue to inspire young women — it’s a real privilege
Jockey Rachael Blackmore arrives to the parade ring for her first ride back since injury aboard Slade Steel, back in December of 2024.
AFTER three months stuck on the sidelines the response to, and by, Rachael Blackmore when she finally returned to a winner’s enclosure on December 29 spoke volumes.
It was her 17th ride back since returning from the serious neck injury she suffered in Downpatrick in mid-September.
She had hit the post a few times, in Naas and Thurles, since returning to racing two weeks earlier so had to remain extremely patient for that first return victory.
When it finally came, on ‘July Flowers’ in the Grade 3 Mares Hurdle in Leopardstown, it got a rapturous reaction from herself and punters alike.
Jump jockeys famously treat injuries with the nonchalance and resilience of cartoon characters but the Tipperary superstar had to take this one very seriously.
She was out of racing for a full 87 days which, for such a driven and competitive athlete, must have been torturous.
Blackmore said as much in her post-victory interview, admitting “Stupidly, I kept setting myself an unachievable target over the three months but the doctors kept saying I had to sit out my time.”
Fortunately the chance to get back in time for Leopardstown – that great post-Christmas hangover cure for punters and season kick-starter for jump jockeys – provided the ideal goal for her burning ambition.
How did she cope with such a long and worrying injury and come back so strongly?
“I was in a neck brace for eight or nine weeks and then I was weaned off that but I was able to constantly go to the gym” she reveals. “I was just doing leg work at the start but I was able to keep my fitness to a certain level and when my rehab started upping it a bit I was able to go to R.A.C.E.”
R.A.C.E is the Irish jockey’s academy in Kildare town, where baby-faced teens first learn their craft, but it also now houses rehab facilities thanks to the Injured Jockeys’ Fund and was just an hour from her base in Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow.
“They have a physio, strength and conditioning coach and a dietician there and it’s a brilliant service for us to be able to get back racing as soon as possible.”
Richie Hogan, the legendary Kilkenny hurler, once told this writer of cycling to his teaching job with just one good leg to ensure he maintained his fitness while his other strapped ankle recovered.
It’s easy to imagine Blackmore pushing her body to similar lengths before she finally got the all-clear to get back on the racing simulator at R.A.C.E.
The enforced hiatus forced her to put on the brakes for the first time in several years.
She took a few holidays – including a week in Las Vegas with a friend – but jokes there was no fear or her taking up knitting or jigsaws.
“You'd actually have plenty to catch up on and do when your life is forcibly slowed down. Towards the second half of it I was in the gym a lot. That becomes the focus of your day.” She actually feels she has returned even physically fitter than before “because my injury allowed me to do so much gym work.” Yet her sport takes as much brain as brawn and Blackmore’s ability to work her way, tactically, to the front of a crowded field with just a flight or two remaining, is one of her greatest talents.
Winning six races in Cheltenham in 2021 and her historic Grand National victory the same season means Blackmore’s gender is irrelevant to owners and punters.
But she remains a minority in a male-dominated sport and feels initiatives like the women-only race series that Horseracing Ireland introduced in the Noughties, remain necessary to give more female jockeys a leg-up.
“They are a really important platform for lady riders to be able to get on horses they mightn’t ordinarily get on and to get an opportunity to have visibility. There’s plenty of good girls coming through.
She continues to inspire a generation of Irish female athletes who are excelling across a remarkable range of sports.
Her surprise victory on the Henry de Bromhead-trained ‘Captain Guinness’ in the Champion Chase last March made her one of only eight jockeys to win the three great jewels of the Cotswolds; the Champion Hurdle, Gold Cup and Champion Chase.
Yet Blackmore revels as much in other Irish women’s success as her own.
“I loved watching the Olympics last Summer, it was unbelievable! Watching Kellie (Harrington) and Mona McSharry bring home medals and then the Paralympians – Roisin (Ni Riain), Katie-George Dunleavy and Orla (Comerford) - winning more. Even watching the girls in the athletics, it was just fantastic. You'd be very proud watching them all.
“When you see little girls going around with the little white bows in their hair after Rashidat (Adeleke) and Sharlene (Mawdsley) and the rest of the relay team wore them. It just shows you the impact and importance of visibility and having the Olympics on television for them to see. It really shows the impact of female athletes.” She has not yet tired either of the response her own brilliance has triggered.
“You have young girls and boys coming up to you at the races, looking for a picture, an autograph, and telling you about their pony and how they want to be jockeys. It’s really cool,” she enthuses. “I hope I can continue to inspire them. It’s a real privilege to be in that position.” She met Tallaght’s superstar sprinter Adeleke for the first time just before Christmas when she and Leona Maguire joined her to highlight new research from KPMG, for whom all three are ambassadors.
Apart from confirming their inspirational qualities as athletes, this research found 92% of respondents believed female sports stars have a positive impact on society and 62% of respondents believed the prominence of female athletes promotes gender equality and challenges stereotypes both in sports and beyond.
Each of them, by coincidence, experienced incredible highs but deep lows also in 2024.
Adeleke, 22, won mixed relay gold and silver in the 400m and women’s 4x400m at the European Championships yet returned from the Olympics heartbroken by two fourth place finishes. Maguire, 30, was the first Irish woman to win a European Tour event and made the final of the LPGA Match Play but was badly hit by illness at the Olympics and mystifyingly underused at the Solheim Cup.
The test of this trio’s greatness is how they will bounce back in 2025 and to witness them, in the vanguard of their sports globally, is already a measure of it.
To have earwigged on their conversation at that photoshoot would have been a real treat because these are three athletes who never waste any opportunity.
“What I learned from Rashidat is that she's training now but her main competition is the World Championships in Tokyo next September.
“That’s so far away whereas, for me, it’s bang-bang-bang, race after race. It’s such a different mentality, having to motivate herself for a goal that’s so far away.
“And Leona, when she goes out to compete, she’ll be playing for hours whereas I go out and my race is done so quickly and then it’s immediately on to the next one.
“Each of us has to have a very different kind of mental strength to be who we are,” is Blackmore’s extremely astute conclusion.
She kicked off 2024 brilliantly with her first win in the legendary Thyestes Handicap Chase in Gowran Park on a 14-1 shot last January so, after her recent winning return, what are Blackmore’s big goals for 2025?
“Oh the ‘Thyestes’ was a fantastic one to win, there’s so much history to that race and I’d love to do it again but I suppose Cheltenham, that’s always the big one.
“Winning the Champion Chase on ‘Captain Guinness’ last year was incredible but, to be honest, I never really set myself up massive goals when the season starts because there’s so many different variables in racing.
“One minute you're riding, the next minute you're out for 12 weeks, so you can't ever plan too far ahead but, obviously Cheltenham, riding a winner in Cheltenham is something that you'd love to do again.”
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