Rachael Blackmore becomes the first woman to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup

After a historic 2021, which saw Rachael Blackmore become the first woman to win the Grand National, the Irish jockey has done it again, this time getting her hands on the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup. 

But despite winning plaudits for making her mark on the male-dominated sport, she has said she doesn’t consider herself a ‘star’, admitting that it’s the horses who do all the running.  

While Rachael’s professional success may appear somewhat inevitable, after all, as a tiny child she played on a rocking horse before graduating to her first pony at seven, Rachael had different career goals when she was growing up. 

The 32-year-old dairy farmer’s daughter from Tipperary initially dreamed of becoming a vet. Despite this, while studying equine science at Limerick University, she continued competing at amateur level.

Indeed, she was so enthusiastic about riding, she even missed her graduation ceremony, choosing to race instead.

The jockey, who won the BBC Sports Personality’s World Sport Star of the Year for 2021, poses on the red carpet with her statuette

Indeed, she says once she started riding better horses, and getting more practice in, she started to improve.

And so  despite the auspicious amateur career, the jockey has found herself scooping up accolades in recent years.

One of three children, she did not grow up in a racing family, like many other jockeys, but on her father Charles’s dairy farm in Killenaule in County Tipperary.

While studying equine science at Limerick University, Rachael (pictured) continued competing at amateur level

Her mother Eimir is a teacher; her younger sister would grow up to become a lawyer and her older brother a graphic designer. Rachael, however, always seemed destined to push boundaries.

‘She continuously climbed out of her cot even well before her first birthday. We knew she was going to have an adventurous disposition, to say the least,’ her mother once recalled. ‘And we knew she was competitive — Charles taught her how to ride and negotiate obstacles, and at a very young age she wanted to jump everything Jonathan [her brother] jumped.’

Although she didn’t turn professional until 2015, Rachael has a lifelong love of riding, and had ponies as a child

With her first pony, Bubbles, igniting a passion for racing and speed, it wasn’t long before Rachael was making a name for herself at Tipperary Pony Club.

Competitive, fearless and talented, she was described as ‘the best boy on the team’, her mother Eimir remembers.

Though horse-mad, Rachael actually wanted to be a vet when she was growing up: ‘I wanted to ride horses but I didn’t see being a jockey as a career, I always wanted to ride in races and compete but it was always as an amateur.’

Aged 13, she was thrilled to win a Cork pony race in 2004, beating a young rider called Paul Townend, who six years later would win the title of Ireland’s champion jump jockey while she continued riding in the amateur ranks.

She never dreamed that, 17 years later, in March 2021, she’d beat her old adversary again, by pipping him to be named top jockey at the Cheltenham Festival with six winners, again making history as the first female rider to do so.

When Rachael first went to Cheltenham, aged 16, it was not to race, but for a chance to wear ‘nice clothes’ and enjoy the festival as a racing fan.

‘I definitely wouldn’t have been there longing to ride in Cheltenham at that stage,’ she has said. ‘I didn’t think at that point I could be dreaming of riding winners there, so things have gone beyond what I was able to dream about.’

Her parents felt the same. ‘I encouraged her to go to college because I didn’t think for a minute she’d be able to make it her full-time career,’ said her mother. ‘Shows what I know.’

Whilst studying equine science at Limerick University, Rachael continued competing as an amateur and remained so passionate about racing she missed her graduation ceremony, leaving her parents’ mantelpiece ‘bereft’ of photographs.

But they’ve had lots to celebrate since then; photographs and trophies aplenty since Rachael won her first track winner on Stowaway Pearl in February 2011. 

Then in 2015, after what she described as an ‘average’ amateur career, Rachael decided to become a professional jockey. A move she admits could be seen as unexpected, but that she did to give herself the opportunity to ride better horses.   

‘The best horses win the race. If you are fortunate enough as a jockey to get on these horses, that is half the battle,’ she told the Irish Times.

‘A couple of people were saying, “I don’t know if you’re doing the right thing” because it is strange for someone who was extremely average as an amateur to turn professional. It’s not the usual course to take. I suppose when a couple of people were negative it did make me want to prove them wrong.’

‘It wasn’t a woman thing. I just needed the practice. That’s just what I got when I turned professional. Straight away I got more rides. That allowed me to improve.

‘When I turned professional I was not full of confidence. I had nothing to lose but I was tip-toeing in.’

Weighing just nine stone, Rachael has never had to worry about her weight, unlike some male jockeys, including her boyfriend Brian Hayes and their housemate, fellow jockey Patrick Mullins.

But she works hard building up her physical strength and on a typical day rides out in the morning, races in the afternoon and also goes to the gym for conditioning and strength.

Nor does she fear falling, shrugging off the injuries she has sustained during her career as ‘just a broken nose, collarbone and wrist — not much’.

‘I don’t think about injury. If you start thinking about what could go wrong, it is not the job for you,’ she said.

Rachael Blackmore riding A Plus Tard during the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup Chase 2022, which the pair won

Modest, tough, steely, hard-working and popular with her fellow jockeys, Rachael resists the idea that she is in any way a ‘star’. ‘What is a star?’ she asked on the first day of the 2020 Cheltenham Festival. ‘To me, Beyoncé is a star.’

Her mother Eimir agrees, recently saying: ‘She’s just a jockey. It’s just her job.’ However, she added: ‘We’ve had some gorgeous letters from little girls saying, “I want to be just like you”, and this kind of thing. And it’s wonderful.’ 

Talking about her Cheltenham Gold Cup victory after the closely-contested race, she told ITV Racing she feels ‘lucky to be getting to ride all these kind of horses’. 

She added: ‘I’ve had so many special days. I wouldn’t swap the Grand National for anything but this is the Gold Cup. I wish I had something better to say right now. I just can’t. 

The jockey, pictured here riding in the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup Chase 2022, says she finds the focus on her gender ‘tiresome’, admitting that the horses are the talent

You have all these plans about how things are going to work out. Racing doesn’t let that happen all the time and for some reason it’s happened to me today. I just can’t explain how lucky I feel.’

Rachael has also picked up awards off the race course too, scooping the BBC Sports Personality’s World Sport Star of the Year for 2021, thanks in no small part to her record-setting victories.

She however, does not like to concentrate too much on gender. 

After becoming the first female jockey to win the Grand National in the race’s 182-year history, last year – some 44 years after Charlotte Brew became the first woman to ride in it –  Rachael said she would rather be seen a jockey than a pioneer, regardless of gender.  

The rider, pictured during 2021’s Grand National Handicap Chase, which she won, says she doesn’t see herself as a star

Pictured here celebrating her 2020 PCI Irish Champion Hurdle win, Rachael says after people questioned whether turning professional was ‘the right thing’, she wanted to prove them wrong

‘I probably find it a little tiresome within the small racing bubble because I don’t think it should be a thing any more,’ she has said.

‘I fully get why it’s a thing outside the bubble because it is a male-dominated sport.

‘But at the end of the day it’s the horses doing the running – we are just on their backs doing the steering. It would be a lot different if some female sprinter was beating Usain Bolt.’

The rider has also spoken about how she doesn’t see herself as a ‘star’.

‘What is a star?’ she asked on the first day of the 2020 Cheltenham Festival. ‘To me, Beyoncé is a star.’ 

Her mother Eimir agrees, recently saying: ‘She’s just a jockey. It’s just her job.’ 

But, she added: ‘We’ve had some gorgeous letters from little girls saying, “I want to be just like you”, and this kind of thing. And it’s wonderful.’