‘True Icon’: Trailblazing Jockey Rachael Blackmore To Be Honored With 2021 Irish Racing Hero Award

Jockey Rachael Blackmore will be awarded the 2021 Irish Racing Hero Award at the annual Horse Racing Ireland Awards in December.

Blackmore became the first woman to claim the Cheltenham Festival Leading Jockey title with six winners. She found Champion Hurdle success with Honeysuckle (GB) on Tuesday, a Triumph Hurdle score with Quilixios (GB) on Friday and also won races in the middle of the meeting with Bob Olinger (Ire) and Sir Gerhard (Ire) on Wednesday, and Allaho (Fr) and Telmesomethinggirl (Ire) on Thursday.

She became the first woman to ride the winner of the iconic G3 Grand National with her success on Minella Times (Ire) described as “historic” by President Michael D Higgins, “a truly amazing achievement” by An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, with Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue T.D, saying, “You are once again a history maker and have done Ireland proud.”

Suzanne Eade, interim CEO of Horse Racing Ireland, said: “Rachael's achievements on two of jump racing's biggest stages are truly historic. Not only was she the first woman to ride the winner of a championship race at Cheltenham, but Rachael also became the first woman to win the Leading Jockey Award at the festival. It is remarkable that her six winners included five at Grade 1 level.

“Her Aintree Grand National victory made headlines all over the world and that accomplishment alone will resonate with so many within the racing industry and beyond.

“Rachael has become more than a role model; she is a true icon of our wonderful sport and a most fitting winner of the 2021 Irish Racing Hero Award.”

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Former Jockey Jeremy Mahot Honors Liam Treadwell

Former jump jockey Jeremy Mahot will honor the late Liam Treadwell by participating in the cross-Alps bicycle race. Mahot, 39, rode more than 70 winners before retiring in 2016 and now acts as head lad at the Oxfordshire yard of Noel Williams. Treadwell, winner of the 2009 Grand National, suffered a head injury following a fall at Bangor in 2016.

The Transalp Race spans 355 miles over (570 kilometres) seven days, including uphill ascents that total more than 18,000 altitude metres. Beginning on Sunday in Nauders in Austria and crossing both the Austrian and Swiss Alps, the race finishes in the Italian town of Riva del Garda.

Mahot set himself a fund-raising target of £5,000, with proceeds donated to brain injury charity Headway in memory of Treadwell, who died tragically June 23, 2020.

“I had my own personal battles with mental health at the start of the COVID pandemic, and a friend suggested mountain biking,” said Mahot. “I knew then that I wanted to do something to raise more awareness about the link between concussion and depression, particularly within the racing industry–then I heard about Bike Transalp.”

Donations can be made via: Fundraiser by Jeremy Mahot: Transalp4Treadwell: Raising Money For Headway (www.gofundme.com)

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Harrington Banned For Two Weeks And Fined After Covid Protocol Breach

Trainer Jessica Harrington has been banned from attending the races for two weeks and fined €3,500 after breaking COVID-19 protocols at Aintree's Grand National meeting, the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board announced on Monday. Harrington “acted in a manner which was prejudicial to the proper conduct or good reputation of horseracing” the IHRB hearing found and her ban will last until May 24.

Harrington, who had both Magic of Light (Ire) (Flemensfirth) and Jett (Ire) (Flemensfirth) in the Grand National, did not stay in the 'Irish Bubble' set up for the duration of the three-day meeting in line with COVID-19 protocols. Originally planning to travel the day of the Grand National and return to Ireland that evening, thus not needing the 'Irish Bubble' the trainer said she was aware of the protocols. However, she changed her plans and traveled on the Friday to carrying out some independent business with owners who had a horse they wanted her to look at. As a result, Harrington stayed with those owners instead. At the time, Harrington felt she was not breaking the rules, as she never entered the 'Irish Bubble' on race day. She now accepts that she was in breach of COVID-19 protocols.

Hearing chairman Mr. Justice Raymond Groarke noted that “a breach of these protocols could have enormous consequences for racing in Ireland and that Mrs. Harrington accepts that she has been in breach of the rules.”

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Letter to the Editor: Andrea Branchini

My fellow Americans, I put it to you that the 2021 Liverpool Grand National was an epoch-making sporting event –like the sub-4-minute mile of Roger Bannister in 1954 or the first MLB game of Jackie Robinson in 1947.

In the 1944 movie “National Velvet” a very young Elizabeth Taylor faints and slides off her beloved horse Pie after having crossed the finish line first in the Grand National–that mad race where 40 horses and riders are to jump 30 high fences over 4 1/2 miles.

The after-the-finish fall is what screenwriters call a “plot device,” so that Velvet (Taylor) and Pie can be disqualified without an unpractical and probably unfilmable reveal in the winner's enclosure. It is actually an ingenious little stratagem, because it stands to reason and is very credible that a 12-year-old girl could be totally exhausted at the end of a marathon ride that even professional jockeys find challenging.

The actual race lasts close to 10 minutes–an eternity in horseracing. Usually, the public commentary is in fact a relay of different commentators, as it is too big a job for just one voice and one single pair of eyes.

The Grand National has always been a unique legend-making legend. This is no exaggeration. The reasons why are many and would call for a long Power Point in a lecture.

Here is a short sample: the 40 horses' start seems a cavalry charge in Napoleonic times; the betting is hysterical, with the favorite usually at 8-1 or thereabouts; the race begins and ends in a racetrack proper, but most of the action takes place on two circuits over country fields perimetered by single lines of spectators (a bit like an Olympic marathon).

Special characters, portentous stories, incredible anecdotes pour from the history of the race like fresh water from a spring: the amateur of amateurs Duke of Albuquerque (find a better name!), who should have paid regular rent at the nearby hospital; cancer-recovered Bob Champion winning in 1981 and immortalized in another major motion picture; Devon Loch, the mount of Dick Francis (yes, that Dick Francis), that spread her four legs to the ground in a belly-flop when in view of the finish line; riders Marcus Armytage and Hywel Davies leading the race in 1990 and discussing the pace {“Are we going too fast?”); the supposed shiver of unhappiness that horses emit when they understand they have to go for a second lap–and so on, the material is endless.

This is definitely a race for dreamers of all types, an event that is notoriously most loved by individuals who first watched it on TV as little children (this writer included).

Then, on top of all of the above, as if it was not enough, came perfectly-cast Rachael Blackmore from County Tipperary, Ireland, to win a race in which women could not legally ride until the mid-1970s. That is why, in the Hollywood fiction of “National Velvet,” Liz Taylor had to impersonate a male jockey to ride her horse Pie in the race.

Rachael Blackmore is simply so great a jockey that her victories in the field shut everybody up–just like Joan of Arc. “I do not feel male, I do not feel female, I do not even feel human,” Rachael Blackmore said to a journalist while walking her horse to the National winner's enclosure. Those words may read otherwise on the written page, but resounded with the great humility of truth when they were spoken. A racing journalist lived dangerously (“I can feel male jockeys will not want to talk to me anymore”) when he said on TV that Rachael Blackmore's greatest asset is her intelligence. “You cannot pick her out in a race, she is just a great jockey,” said retired professional rider Chris Grant, who was second three times in the Grand National, once agonizingly close.

My fellow Americans, I put it to you that the 2021 Liverpool Grand National was an epoch-making sporting event. And I leave it to you.

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