12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Rachael Blackmore: Queen of Cheltenham will be badly missed by the sport she changed
Rachael Blackmore, the most successful female rider of all time, announced her retirement from race riding on Monday evening. A statement put out on social media brought down the curtain on the career of a lady whose success has been as great for the sport as it has been for the jockey herself.
From the time she rode her first winner, aboard the Shark Hanlon-trained Stowaway Pearl at Thurles on February 10, 2011, she was destined to be a success, but just how far she could go was to unfold in a stellar career which saw her smash through glass ceiling after glass ceiling.
Having started off with Hanlon and then having taken the brave decision to turn professional in 2015, she brought her success to a whole new level through her association with trainer Henry de Bromhead.
With her own determination and class, and the help of the Co Waterford trainer, the Killenaule, Co Tipperary native rose to the very top of the sport and became the first lady rider to win one of the championship races at the Cheltenham Festival when guiding Honeysuckle to victory in the first of two Champion Hurdles, in 2021. She ended that meeting with a remarkable six winners, which earned the leading rider at the meeting award, but that was just the start of something truly special.
Already long-established as a leading light to those familiar with the sport, she introduced herself to the much wider world just three weeks later when becoming the first lady to win the world's most famous race, the Aintree Grand National, aboard the de Bromhead-trained Minella Times.
That success transcended the racing world to such an extent that she was crowned RTÉ Sports Person of the Year and BBC Sports Personality World Sports Star of the Year.
Less than 12 months later, in another Festival to remember, she set more records, becoming the first lady rider to win racing's blue riband, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, aboard A Plus Tard, and did so just days after recording a second Champion Hurdle win aboard Honeysuckle.
That season meeting also included a Grade One novice chase success aboard Bob Olinger. She did not know it at that time, of course, but that fellow would hold a special place in her career as he would become her 18th and final Cheltenham Festival winner when winning the Stayers' Hurdle at this year's meeting. In doing so, he completed the set of championship race success for herself and trainer Henry de Bromhead.
It is neither fanciful nor blindly romantic to suggest she was the queen of Cheltenham, as anyone fortunate enough to have been at Prestbury Park on the Tuesday of this year's meeting will never forget the reception she received when Air Of Entitlement, a relatively unheralded mare, earned her a return to the Festival winner's enclosure after a pulsating finish to the mares' novice hurdle.
Standing on the shoulders of the likes of Caroline Beasley, who was the first woman to ride a winner at the Cheltenham Festival, Gee Armytage, Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh, to name but a few trailblazers, Blackmore was an immensely tough jockey, whose brave and positive riding earned her a place amongst the best riders of her generation, male or female.
Winning a jockeys' championship proved a bridge too far but while she faced the might of the Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott stables, like everything else she did in her career, she gave everything in its pursuit.
In the 2020/2021 season she won a remarkable 92 races in Ireland and that took her to second place in the championship, eight behind champion jockey Paul Townend. It was her second time finishing runner-up to Townend, having also done so two years earlier.
In bowing out after 10 years as a professional, with 524 winners in Ireland alone, she leaves a huge hole in a sport which owes her an eternal debt of gratitude. As racing navigated choppy waters, Blackmore wrote all the right headlines for the industry with her brilliance in the saddle. This truly is the end of an era.
