Rachael Blackmore
It was on a bus at Cheltenham that Rachael Blackmore first realised that she would be riding Minella Times in the Grand National.
Strange times.
March 2021, when Covid-19 governed the world and we lived in bubbles with masks and memes and belts and braces. The Irish trainers and jockeys had their own bubble at a Cheltenham Festival that went ahead that year without the crowds, bussed from hotel to racecourse and back to hotel again without touching the ground. Rachael Blackmore was on the bus on the Monday, the eve of the Cheltenham Festival, on her way back to the hotel after riding out. Henry de Bromhead sat down opposite her.
“Who do you think you’re going to ride in the Grand National?” he asked.
This is on the eve of Cheltenham, remember, on the cusp of the most important week of the year. Rachael is immersed in thoughts of Honeysuckle, the wundermare’s quest to win the Champion Hurdle on her first attempt, and Bob Olinger and Sir Gerhard and Allaho and A Plus Tard. Her focus is on the next four days, visualising the races, how she’ll ride her horses, how the races might pan out, how she’ll adapt if and as planned-for circumstances change. The Grand National is something that will happen later.
“Minella Times,” she says quickly. “If he’s an option for me, I’ll ride Minella Times.”
***
Rachael recounts that bus journey now, smiling, relaxed, reclining in her armchair as she retells the detail.
“Luckily, I didn’t have to think about it too deeply,” she is saying. “Given the option, I was always going to ride Minella Times. I’d got some great spins off him earlier in the season and I always thought that he could be a great ride in a Grand National.”
The Grand National runs deep into Rachael’s past, all the way into her childhood. She remembers watching the race in her house and in her friends’ houses. The playing always stopped for the Grand National. She remembers the newspaper cuttings and the sweepstakes, the excitement before the race, the rush during it, the thrill of watching the horses jump the big spruce fences. She remembers Ruby Walsh winning the race on Papillon. She was 10.
At home in Killenaule in County Tipperary, she used to try to get her pony Bubbles to jump the freshly-cut rows of silage: Grand National fences, for all the world. The Canal Turn, The Chair, Becher’s Brook.
“Probably in my childhood,” she says thoughtfully. “When I was like ten, 11, 12, I thought it'd be so cool to ride in the Grand National. That felt like something that could happen. But the more deeply I moved into my teenage years, the more I realised, okay, that's ridiculous, that’s never going to happen.”
Reality bites.
“Like, my 11-year-old self probably dreamed about riding in the Grand National some day. She never dreamed of winning it, no way, that was too far-fetched, that was never in the equation. But as I got older, even the dream of riding in the race got further away. You just learn how hard it is to get a ride in a race, in any race, in a bumper, in a point-to-point. You realise that the Grand National is on a different planet, that it could never happen.”
And yet it did. Five years ago next weekend, there they were, Minella Times and Rachael Blackmore, in the JP McManus colours, winging their way over the first six fences at Aintree. Over Becher’s Brook and turn to your left. Over Foinavon and turn again. Over the Canal Turn, 90-degree turn and head back towards the stands.
Double Shuffle falls in front of her at the last fence before they get back onto the main racecourse, but he falls to his left, hampers Any Second Now, not to his right. Minella Times doesn't break stride.
“That’s the luck that you need.”
Luck plays a part, of course. The luck that Shark Hanlon gave her a chance and suggested that she turn professional. The luck that Eddie O’Leary spotted her talent and recommended her to Henry de Bromhead. The luck that Henry de Bromhead recognised her ability and ran with her. As a jockey, you obviously need the horses. You need the support from owners and trainers. But luck only gets you so far. You need to earn that support. And it’s a continuum. You need to keep earning it. And you need the talent and the ability and the dedication and the drive to take the chances when fortune presents them to you.
On a micro level too, you make your own luck. That’s where experience and nous and class comes into it. At the first fence on the final circuit, just over half-way through the 2021 Grand National, the horse just in front of her, Lord Du Mesnil gets a little squeeze from his rider. If you are paying attention to these things, you can tell that he is starting to struggle, so Rachael Blackmore eases her horse out from behind him. Two fences later, Lord Du Mesnil has weakened out of it and Minella Times is still rolling, past him, without expending any excess energy unnecessarily.
“You do a lot of these things without even knowing you're doing them,” says Rachael. “You just get a feel for racing. But my whole thinking for the Grand National was like, you’re just concentrating on your own horse. You're watching what's going on around you, of course, but that’s to try and make sure that you avoid things. Like, I don’t remember thinking race tactics. It’s more survival tactics. Get your horse into a rhythm, conserve as much energy as you can.”
They jumped the third last fence and crossed the Anchor Bridge crossing, back onto the main racecourse, just two fences to jump in the 2021 Grand National. Jet had a clear break on the rest of the field, but Rachael wasn’t worried. She didn’t think that Jet was or wasn’t going to come back to them, she was still just concentrating on her own horse, keeping him in his rhythm. She was happy with how he was travelling and she didn’t want to change anything that could alter that. Then she had a look to her right and saw her good friend Patrick Mullins on Burrows Saint, travelling well, and she thought, wow, Patrick is going to win the Grand National.
“Then, I was kind of getting there as well,” she says. “My horse was starting to roll, and suddenly others around me weren’t travelling as well as I was travelling. I remember jumping the last and going to The Elbow, and I remember half-way up there being like, this could happen. We could win. And then the other side of my brain was like, no way, something's going to come and pass you. And then when we went around The Elbow and I could hear the commentator. You normally you can't hear the commentator because of the crowd, but there was no crowd.”
It's Rachael Blackmore and Minella Times, who are out four lengths clear …
“I knew that my horse was still going forward, that he wasn't tying up. He was still galloping on. And then I heard the commentator say that, I was like, oh God. And then you're just getting so many different thoughts in your head, but the main one is just get to the line, get to the line. Get to the line! And then you get there. And like, it was just, it was an incredible feeling. There was no relief, it was just sheer elation straight away. I’ve just won the Grand National.”
***
Cheltenham Festival 2025, Wednesday evening, half-time, two days down, two to go, and no winner on the board yet. Rachael Blackmore goes back to her house and thinks, it might not happen this year.
Her Cheltenham Festival record is phenomenal. She rode her first winner there in 2019, A Plus Tard in the Close Brothers Novices’ Handicap Chase, won by 16 lengths, and three days later she landed the first Grade 1 prize of her career when she and Minella Indo sprang a 50/1 shock in the Albert Bartlett Hurdle.
She has ridden at least one winner at every Cheltenham Festival since. Two Champion Hurdles on Honeysuckle, a Champion Chase on Captain Guinness, a Gold Cup on A Plus Tard, Ryanair Chases on Allaho and Envoi Allen, and that magical Festival, 2021, when she rode six winners and was crowned Leading Rider at the Festival. It has to come to an end at some stage, she thinks to herself. And it might be that it comes to an end this year but, even if it does, my God, how lucky have I been here?
Then on Thursday she wins the Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle on Air Of Entitlement and she wins the Stayers’ Hurdle on Bob Olinger. In so doing, she joins an elite club that is comprised of just four other jockeys – Ruby Walsh, AP McCoy, Barry Geraghty and Richard Johnson – who have won the Big Five races at Cheltenham.
“It wasn’t eating me up or anything on Wednesday evening,” she says now. “Nothing like that. It was just a thought that came into my mind. This place, this magical place, it just keeps on giving. And then for me to get more out of it on the Thursday. I was like, how much more am I going to ask it to give? You know? So, leaving Cheltenham on the Friday, I was thinking, is this the last time that I will ride at the Cheltenham Festival? Has this place given me everything it's going to give me? Do I really want to roll the dice again?”
It had been a truncated season for her, the 2024/25 season. She had been zinging through the early throes, 10 winners in July, seven more in August. Then she had a fall at Downpatrick in September. She thought that it was fine at first, just a sore neck, but you don’t mess with your neck or your back so she had it checked out, just to be sure, before she went riding again. The x-rays revealed that she had broken her neck, fractured her C2. That was an automatic 12 weeks on the sidelines.
The timing was poor. Not that there is really a good time of year for a National Hunt jockey to be on the sidelines for 12 weeks, but the winter season was just getting going, and she missed the formative months. It was frustrating, sitting on the sidelines watching horses winning, horses that you would have been riding. She returned in December.
“You're gone for 12 weeks,” she says. “You're out of sight, out of mind. It’s not ideal, for anyone, for any jockey, it doesn't matter who you are. There’s a sense that everyone has got on fine without you.”
The 2025 Cheltenham Festival was massive, that Thursday at Cheltenham. The ride that she gave Air Of Entitlement was not the ride of a jockey who was riding at the Cheltenham Festival for the final time. It was a ride of confidence, of precision timing. Buried in among horses and ridden for luck, no better than 10th or 11th jumping the second last flight, eighth on the run to the home turn, fourth on the run to the final flight and delivered on the far side to get up and win by a half a length.
Bob Olinger in the Stayers’ Hurdle two and a half hours later was not dissimilar. Nursed into the race by his rider, seventh in a packing field on the run to the home turn and ridden for pace, ridden to maximise the potency of his speed. Still on the bridle on the run to the final flight and then unleashed on the run-in, his turn of foot taking him to victory.
“I remember walking out of Cheltenham on the Friday evening and thinking, is that my last Cheltenham Festival? I put it to the back of my mind though. We still had the other spring festivals to come, and I never wanted to be thinking about it while I was riding. I said that I’d get to the June break and then think about it properly.”
The Punchestown Festival marks the end of the Irish National Hunt season. It would have been a fitting end-point to Rachael Blackmore’s remarkable career, as it has been for many other illustrious careers. But to end at Punchestown would have been to bring the curtain down in the public glare, with all the razzamatazz that went with it, and that was never going to be for her.
“One or two people asked me about it at Punchestown, but I was never going to stop while I was riding at Punchestown. I just wanted to be thinking about riding at Punchestown. In my head, I was always going to get to June anyway. But then in May, after Punchestown, the winter horses were going off on their summer breaks and I just started to think: why am I going to ride through May, through June, if I’m not going to ride at the 2026 Cheltenham Festival? That was the key for me. Am I going to ride at Cheltenham next year? If I’m not going back to Cheltenham, there’s nothing to be gained by doing this.”
She got ready to go racing on the morning of 10th May 2025, she set off for Cork, for Mallow, for one ride, Ma Belle Etoile in the rated novices’ hurdle. An ordinary Saturday, away from the public focus, away from the limelight. It was quintessential Rachael Blackmore.
“I said to myself that morning, okay, if this mare wins today, I think that's it. I was only 99% sure, and it was all only in my own head. I didn’t speak to anyone, not even Brian (Hayes, fellow jockey, then partner, now husband). I wanted it to be something that I had clear in my own mind before I said it to anyone.”
Ma Belle Etoile did win. Led from flagfall, and didn’t see a rival after that until they were pulling up after passing the winning post.
“When I pulled up, I was done. I was almost sure that I was done. But I still hadn't told anyone. It was surreal, the lads in the race saying well done as we pulled up. And trotting back in, I was like, is that it now? I think that that’s it now. The last time I’ll ride the winner of a race. The last time I’ll come back into the winner’s enclosure.”
***
Rachael Blackmore was a female jockey of course, but that only ever described her, it never defined her. The first female to be crowned champion conditional jockey in Ireland, the first female jockey to win the Champion Hurdle, the first female jockey to win the Gold Cup, the first female to be crowned Leading Rider at Cheltenham.
Pioneer, pathfinder. Blazing her own trail.
Horse racing is an unusual sport in that male riders and female riders compete against each other on an equal footing. Rachael only ever wanted to stand on her own merits and, because she did, she stood tall. She was unequivocally one of the best jockeys of a golden generation of jockeys.
The first female jockey to win the Grand National, a race for which female jockeys were ineligible until 1977. ‘I don’t feel male or female right now,’ she famously said in the immediate aftermath of that victory when it was put to her. ‘I don’t even feel human.’
“When I started riding,” she says slowly now, “Nina (Carberry) and Katie (Walsh) were already there ahead of me, doing brilliantly. They were very much role models for me. And they never made a big deal out of the fact that they were female. So I followed their lead. I didn’t want to be thought of as different, because as a jockey riding a horse in a race, I was no different.”
You stand on your own merits. You are in demand solely because of your talent.
“I don't want to sound like I’m not appreciative of how special it is to be that person who gets to be the first to do these things, because that's obviously massive. But for me, during my career, all I wanted was to ride more winners and get more rides and get on better horses and ride more winners. I wanted to keep on progressing as a jockey, not specifically as a female jockey.”
RTE Sports Person of the Year 2021, up there with Roy Keane and Sonia O’Sullivan and Brian O’Driscoll and AP McCoy and Katie Taylor and Barry McGuigan and Rory McIlroy. BBC World Sport Star of the Year 2021, on a roll of honour that includes Pelé and Borg and Messi and Federer and Ronaldo and Agassi and Ali and Navratilova and Ballesteros.
“I’ve been so lucky. The support that I got throughout my career from so many people.”
Awarded an honorary MBE in 2023. Presented with Horse Racing Ireland’s Contribution to the Industry Award in 2025.
“Winning the Grand National, it was such an incredible testament to all those women who went before me. You know, like it's not that long ago that women weren't allowed to even ride in the race. The feeling that hit me was, I've won the Grand National. It wasn’t that I was the first female to do it. And that’s down to all the incredible women who went before me, who put me in that position, that I was able to ride in the race, that I was able to win the race.”
Ask her what she misses most, and she tells you quickly: winning. Winning races. Going past the winning post in front. You’d miss other stuff, of course. The horses, the team at Henry de Bromhead’s, the camaraderie of the weighing room, but the winning is what she misses most.
The people too, but they are still there.
They used to wait for her outside the weighing room at Kilbeggan, outside the parade ring at Tipperary, kids and adults, phones in hands, selfie faces on, all set to pose and pout.
“It's such a privilege to be that person that kids want to get a picture with. I never, never get tired of that. I met a girl last week and she asked me how Honeysuckle was. The girl was about ten years old! She couldn’t have been any older than six or seven when Honeysuckle was winning her Champion Hurdles. I thought that that was amazing. You never get tired of that.”
Unsurprisingly, she doesn't think about her legacy to racing.
“I just think that I was so lucky to get the opportunities that I got in racing, that I got to ride the horses I rode, for the people I rode for, to win the races I won. Sometimes, you see something now and you go, wow. Like, your name on a list, or a video of a race. I was back in Cheltenham this year for the Festival, which was great. I’m ambassador for Ladies’ Day there, so it was really nice to be back. They were showing re-runs of last year’s big races, and there I was, winning the Stayers’ Hurdle on Bob Olinger. It was nice to be a part of that.”
That was her 18th Cheltenham Festival winner, at the seventh Cheltenham Festival in a row at which she had ridden at least one winner. Her 33rd Grade 1 win.
“There’s a mural of Tommy Stack and Red Rum on the wall in Thomastown in Tipperary. I remember, every time we drove past it when I was a kid, I would think, how cool is that. Now there’s a mural of me and Minella Times on the wall of Gerry Kennedy’s pub in Killenaule. How crazy is that? There’ll be clips now too this week in the lead up to the Grand National of past renewals. You get to be part of that. You’re part of the history of the race now. I’m still in semi-disbelief about some of this stuff.”
She gets to go to family events now that she used to miss. Racing always came first, always all-consuming. She got to go to Wimbledon this year, she got to go to see Oasis. She made it to the church part of a friend’s wedding, and people wondered what was wrong.
She and Brian had their own wedding in January, and they are expecting their first child in May, please God. But still she’s flat out.
“The sponsors and supporters who were with me when I was riding,” she says, “they have stayed involved with me. I’m so lucky to work for some fantastic sponsors, organisations like KPMG, FBD Hotels, the Jockey Club, Druid Padel, Volvo cars. I’m enjoying all that for now, and I'm enjoying trying to figure out what road to go down. I was talking to a few retired jockeys recently, and they’ve all said the same thing: it’s going to take time. There’s a massive re-adjustment. Racing is so all-in. Take your time, they said to me. Find your way. That’s what I’m doing.”
Still blazing her own trail.
© The Sunday Times, 5th April 2026
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