Following the news that Rachael Blackmore has retired, look back on how A Plus Tard's Gold Cup win in 2022 crowned a remarkable year for the rider.
Article published March 2022
Two Champion Hurdles, a Gold Cup and a Grand National. The sport’s biggest prizes would sit proudly on any jump jockey’s CV gained over the course of a career of perhaps twenty or thirty years in the saddle. For Rachael Blackmore, though, those are her accomplishments in the last 12 months alone.
Reaching the top as a jump jockey is one thing, but Blackmore’s achievements in just the last year or so have earned her wider recognition in the world of sport, something which few jockeys, however successful they are, manage to do. Among the awards she picked up at the end of last year, pride of place has to go to the BBC’s World Sport Star of the Year accolade, formerly the Overseas Sports Personality of the Year, which has been won in the past by such sporting greats as Pele, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Usain Bolt.
If few outside of racing, or beyond Ireland, were aware of Blackmore’s rapid rise to the top of her profession, that all changed at Aintree last April when she made front-page news by becoming the first woman to ride the winner of the Grand National (replay below). Though as she remarked immediately after passing the post first on Minella Times, ‘I don’t feel male or female right now. I don’t even feel human.’
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Minella Times was only Blackmore’s third ride in the Grand National. That historic victory came just over ten years after her first success under Rules when Stowaway Pearl won a handicap hurdle at Thurles for lady riders. That was one of only seven successes for Blackmore when riding as an amateur (she rode another 11 winners in points), something she combined with her university studies with the aim of becoming a vet. However, it was race riding that was to become her profession as she became only the second Irish female jump jockey to join the paid ranks in 2015.
Blackmore’s career once turning professional developed rapidly in the following seasons, starting with another ‘first’, that of becoming the first female jockey to become champion Irish conditional in the 2016/17 season. She was still claiming 3 lb when landing her first big-race success, on Abolitionist in the 2017 Leinster National for Ellmarie Holden in March 2017, and rode out her claim in June of that year.
The biggest boost to Blackmore’s career undoubtedly came following her link-up with Minella Times’ trainer Henry de Bromhead, Ireland’s most progressive jumping yard in recent seasons. With a total of 90 winners in 2018/19, Blackmore found herself challenging for the Irish jockeys’ title before finishing runner-up to Paul Townend and she set a new career-best seasonal total (92) in Ireland when runner-up to Townend again in 2020/21.
It was De Bromhead’s stable which provided Blackmore with her first two winners at the Cheltenham Festival in 2019, the same two horses, it turned out, who would provide their trainer with a Gold Cup one-two in 2021 and again this year. A Plus Tard won the Close Brothers Novices’ Handicap Chase, while Minella Indo caused a 50/1 upset in the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle. The latter’s win came just 24 hours after Bryony Frost on Frodon in the Ryanair Chase had narrowly beaten Blackmore to the honour of becoming the first female jockey to win a Grade 1 over jumps at the Festival.
When the two stable-companions took their chance in the 2021 Gold Cup, Blackmore turned out to be on the wrong one as A Plus Tard was beaten a length and a quarter into second behind Minella Indo. But that came at the end of a remarkable Festival for both jockey and trainer, Blackmore’s six wins making her the first female jockey to be leading rider at the meeting. Five of those successes came at Grade 1 level, including on Bob Olinger (Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle), Sir Gerhard (Champion Bumper), Allaho (Ryanair Chase) and Quilixios (Triumph Hurdle).
But the highlight was when making more history to win the Champion Hurdle on Honeysuckle. That mare’s repeat success this week set up another attempt to complete the Champion Hurdle-Gold Cup double, something that had not been achieved by a jockey at the same Festival since Tony McCoy accomplished it with Make A Stand and Mr Mulligan 25 years earlier.
A year younger than Minella Indo, A Plus Tard’s runaway success under Blackmore in the Betfair Chase at Haydock earlier in the season showed he was better ever. Even so, a repeat of last year’s Gold Cup result briefly looked on the cards when Minella Indo quickened clear on the home turn, but, delaying her challenge later on A Plus Tard this time, Blackmore was rewarded with a terrific response after the last from her partner who stormed clear up the hill to put 15 lengths between himself and Minella Indo at the line.
It’s a measure of how much Blackmore has changed perceptions that her participation in the Gold Cup – her third, after all – was hardly newsworthy. But the fact remains that only a handful of years ago it would have been remarkable for a female jockey to have a ride at all in the Gold Cup, let alone on the favourite.
Whereas 18 women have ridden in the Grand National, Blackmore is one of only four to have had a ride in the much more select Gold Cup field. For that reason, her win on A Plus Tard was even more significant than her Grand National victory last year.
It's worth going back to the 1984 Cheltenham Gold Cup which was won by Burrough Hill Lad who became the race’s first winner trained by a woman, Jenny Pitman. Like Blackmore, Mrs Pitman had also made history at Aintree the year before her first Gold Cup success (she was to win it again seven years later with Garrison Savannah) when Corbiere won the Grand National.
But another piece of Gold Cup history was made in the 1984 renewal when Linda Sheedy became the first woman to ride in the race, partnering the mare Foxbury, a 500/1 no-hoper who showed prominently early on but was tailed off with a circuit to go before being pulled up. Incredibly, it was to be another 33 years before conditional Lizzie Kelly became the next female jockey to have a Gold Cup ride on 40/1 outsider Tea For Two.
Kelly had made history on the same horse, owned by her mother Jane and trained by her father Nick, when becoming the first female jockey in Britain to win a Grade 1 over jumps in the 2015 Kauto Star Novices’ Chase. A bad mistake at the second meant the pair parted company early in the Gold Cup, though they went on to win the Bowl at Aintree weeks later.
'Closest thing to feeling like a rock star'
Kelly and Tea For Two completed the 2018 Gold Cup when seventh at 50/1 before Blackmore became just the third woman to ride in the race when fourth on Monalee at 20/1 on her first attempt in 2020. Bryony Frost joined her in the 2021 renewal when fifth on Frodon.
Blackmore picked the right year to win the Gold Cup too. In stark contrast to the scenes that would have greeted them 12 months earlier, she and A Plus Tard returned to a rapturous reception from a record crowd, something which wasn’t lost on the winning jockey.
‘To have that roar back and to get to walk back in when you can’t see space and you can just see bodies is just incredible. It is the closest thing to feeling like a rock star you will ever feel without being able to sing. It is just incredible to have people back and I feel very, very lucky.’
