Ruby Walsh: 2021 belongs to Rachael Blackmore and Kellie Harrington
A simple unseat from Jason The Militant in the Aintree Hurdle must have had Rachael Blackmore thinking her luck was out that week, yet she delivered the most significant success of them all on Minella Times. Picture: Healy Racing
After racing finishes in Navan this afternoon, Rachael Blackmore will make her way to the RTÉ studios in Donnybrook for the Sports Personality of the Year Awards. Were this not an Olympic year — and it shouldn’t be — she would be sure to collect the top honour.
It is not an award racing wins very often, Barry Geraghty being the only jockey to have won it, having done so in 2003 when he, too, was leading rider at the Cheltenham Festival and won the Grand National aboard Monty’s Pass. But even he will see the magnitude of the difference between his and Rachael’s achievements.
She has achieved things in 2021 that are milestones in sport, not just horse racing, because she didn’t dominate the women’s section of a sport, she dominated the sport of horse racing on the biggest stage.
From Honeysuckle winning the Champion Hurdle to Quilixios in the Triumph Hurdle, she took every opportunity which presented itself to her last March at the foot of Cleeve Hill. For the sport’s purists, she even won a couple that easily could have been defeated and pulled herself off the ground a few times for good measure too.
Some will argue that confidence is critical in sport and that Honeysuckle’s victory allowed Rachael to ride with freedom from there on. Perhaps it did, but Aintree is the counterargument as her confidence can’t have been high.
A simple unseat from Jason The Militant in the Aintree Hurdle must have had her thinking her luck was out that week, yet she delivered the most significant success of them all. Why? Because Rachael is as mentally resilient as she is physically hard.
She set off down the inside in the Grand National like she owned the track and went about her business on Minella Times in the no-nonsense way she does everything. The magnitude of what she achieved wasn’t lost on her, but her body language didn’t change to watch her round the elbow with a furlong to go and with history within touching distance. It was still the same jockey controlling the realisation of what was about to happen until it did happen.
Over 100 people have ridden a National winner, many have been leading rider at the Cheltenham Festival, and a few have managed both in the same year, but she is the only woman. Rachael’s achievements were “firsts”.
She is the consummate professional and an incredible icon for horse racing, but so too is her opposition tonight: Kellie Harrington. The Olympic boxing gold medallist represents everything great about being Irish.
I have had the pleasure of talking to her on the radio. She is a genuinely sound person who worked in a hospital through the lockdown, and who has brought incredible joy to inner-city Dublin.
Her achievements are no less nor greater than Rachael’s. They are just the two women who achieved so much simultaneously. Neither has a sense of entitlement, and neither is doing what they love for fame. Both are excellent ambassadors for their sport, and both represent the 2020 women’s sport logo of “seeing is believing”.
They will both inspire children to try a sport, and they have shown a lot of people that you can achieve all you want if you try hard enough. Neither deserves to leave RTÉ tonight without a gong, but one will have to. Nevertheless, 2021 will always be their year.
HAMPION Champion Flat jockey Oisin Murphy has temporarily relinquished his licence to ride to focus on his rehabilitation for issues relating to alcohol-based incidents during 2021.
He also faces some BHA inquiries surrounding the breaches of Covid protocols when he returns to the fray, but one imagines if he can deal with the first issue, the second will solve itself.
I wish him luck because he is a talented 26-year-old man with the global racing stage at his feet. It would be a shame to see such talent wasted, but it also takes a big person to ask for help. He is taking that first step, and hopefully it leads him down a path to achieve all his gift for race riding will allow him.
This weekend sees the final pre-Christmas meetings before the festivals begin on the 26th. My attempts at making the Christmas expenses cheap have failed miserably and are somewhat in keeping with my own attempts to win that €19 million Lotto prize.
We have a shot at both left, so in keeping with a sports person’s spirit, failure only means one thing: Try harder. So, we must have another go. That said, lessons should be learnt from all failings, so we will make a few changes to the plan of the attack and include Sunday’s racing with Saturday’s and see if that works.
A voucher for The Blue Book is an excellent Christmas present, but the Green Book (Haydock 11.50) will suffice this year. An Ex Patriot (1.15 Ascot) would make excellent use of it on a holiday when they Journey With Me (12.35 Navan) or, perhaps, if they ventured to the beautiful Island of Braganza (1.40 Thurles, Sunday) in the Philippines. One would hope not to be looking at a Ciel De Neige (2.20 Navan) when on a sunny island in the South China Sea, but we have all Remastered (2.40 Haydock) the art of dealing with poor holiday weather.
