My own career as a jockey started brightly enough with a debut mount at Cheltenham, jump racing’s Mecca.
I had no idea what was going on. There were no jockey schools back then, no training - in race-riding or fitness. I think I may have gone for a run once before the big day.
In the paddock, the trainer told me not to hit the horse as it was also his first race. My half-formed 19-year -old male brain was even more unaware and sometimes dim than it is now, so I took those orders to mean we weren’t off a yard and I should sit still as a statue throughout the race.
I still remember coming up the Cheltenham hill toward the winning post, horses flying by either side of me, their riders pushing and kicking and slapping and growling for all they were worth as I looked across at the large grandstand and thought ‘this is nice’.
My final ride came at another major UK venue, Sandown Park. There were no other rides in between those two. I remember looking across at the stands in that one too. I think if the trainer had fitted me with blinkers I could have done better.
The truth, though, was that, although riding four big strong jump horses at exercise each morning and mucking and grooming them in the afternoons got me fit for that job, it didn’t get me fit for race-riding. It didn’t prepare me for race-riding, and the fact my lungs didn’t work too well meant I was spectacularly unsuited to becoming a professional athlete.
And jockeys are professional athletes. You have to be very fit and athletic. Some people are natural athletes, some aren’t. Nearly all the jockeys I ever came across were athletic people. And now they have jockey schools, training, there is use of gyms and personal trainers, there is stretching and nutrition and physiotherapy, there are races everywhere to watch and replays to view time and again.
In spite of the poor form of his sire, my son, jockey Jack Gilligan, is an accomplished professional athlete with over 3,500 career mounts by age 24.
He is careful how he eats, is allowed maybe two restaurant meals a week, two days a week he fasts, just a protein bar the whole day. He had a four percent body fat measurement when tested. The average male is 18 percent.
He runs most days, hits the gym most days, stretches every day. He uses a sport psychologist. And he breezes horses in the morning - sometimes up to six breezes a day - and he rides five or six races four or five days a week.
Women are not naturally as strong as men. I think that, along with conscious and unconscious prejudice, was why women have struggled to reach the top in this equestrian discipline when they have in all the others.
Race-riding is physically demanding. Women have always had the nerve, the horse mastership, the balance, the hands, but back in the day, before sports training and fitness became a science, the naturally stronger men had an inherent edge.
But with training now, with the extra fitness and strength women riders build in the gym, I think the male edge has been eroded to the extent that in many cases now it has disappeared.
Blackmore ‘the best’
Nothing underscores that more than the case of Rachael Blackmore at the 2021 Cheltenham Festival.
Blackmore won six of the 28 races at the most pressured, intense, dangerous sporting arena there is. And then, just three weeks later, she won the Grand National.
The 31-year-old Irishwoman is considered by many, including the greatest jump jockey to ever race ride, Sir Tony McCoy, to be the best jump jockey riding today.
I wanted to know the views of a female jockey. So I called one who worked for me many years ago in Newmarket. She had a few rides for me there before she moved to the States. She was carving out a pretty successful career as a jockey in North America until, very sadly, it was cut short in 2015 when a horrible fall in a race left her unable to ride again.
“Let me preface by saying I honestly can’t stand the conversation about girl riders,” she told me. “Saying that, I think attitudes are possibly changing - and some female riders have been weak, but there have always been good ones, just as there have always been good and bad male jockeys.
“I think maybe women are being more successful now because people are now recognizing that female riders can just be good jockeys.”
I asked how much modern awareness of fitness and training has helped.
“It’s possible. I certainly tried to stay pretty fit, but because I was naturally small and light I think the fact I could eat well helped. For those riders who have to waste hard, that must be some factor, and the fact I could eat plenty helped me.
“I always ate well. My mother is a great cook and my father was actually a chef, and Italian. So I was brought up eating good, home-cooked food with healthy ingredients
“As far as fitness goes, the best way to get fit for race-riding is by race-riding. Saying that, I was good at cross country and track at school, so I always seemed to be pretty fit and athletic. I always played a lot of sports.
“I’d say most jockeys have some natural athletic ability and competitive nature. I don’t know, though, if more men are like that by nature. No matter what the situation was, for me I always wanted to do my very best every time, for myself, and for the connections.”
The amazing Rosie Napravnik
She said there was a lot of pushback against women riders when they first race rode.
“It was tough to get their foot in the door. But look at Rosie Napravnik. She was an amazing rider, smart and strong, competing successfully at the very top level. I rode a lot against her at Churchill and she was as good as anyone.
“It’s been a gradual thing. Attitudes have changed towards women, but things have changed from school sports onwards.”
Things certainly do seem to have changed. There is at times still maybe an almost unconscious bias, but now sometimes a rider is just so good that the fact they are female becomes irrelevant.
Hollie Doyle in the UK, Jamie Kah in Australia, Rachael Blackmore in Ireland, have reached the top of their profession as professional athletes, as jockeys competing as equals, respected as equals, better than most of their male colleagues.
I had a horse, Brunelleschi, who won a few races then stopped performing. I didn’t get on with him when I rode him at home, but he went well for female exercise riders. So I got an inexperienced girl apprentice, Josephine Bruning, to start exercising him for us, and I gave her the ride when he ran. She won three in a row on him and later in the season picked up a decent handicap at Newmarket. She looked after him and he looked after her. Some horses prefer the kind of handling she provided so well.
I think it is tougher for a female rider to get going, to get opportunities, to get a chance to prove themselves, but it is changing and female riders all over the world are proving right now how good they are.
There are probably more men than women that want to do the job, but there have never been more talented female riders than there are now, and that may inspire more to consider becoming a jockey.
Certainly in North America, there are probably more men than women that want to do the job. Nearly all Latin American riders in the morning and afternoon are male, and there are relatively few Americans of either sex who seem to want to do it.
Of the ones that are race-riding around the globe, there maybe has never been more talented female riders than there are now, and that may inspire more to consider becoming a jockey.
It is a tough job, though. A tough life. The rider I interviewed is as tough and brave a person as I ever met. She said she thought even before her accident that what did happen to her would be the worst thing that could happen to a her. For someone who lived such a physical active life to suddenly lose her mobility would be the worst thing she could imagine. She said she could sit at home and feel sorry for herself now, but what good would it do her?
None, I’m afraid. That is the hell of it.