Rachael Blackmore, the virtuoso jump jockey who enjoyed seminal triumphs in the Grand National, Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle and Champion Chase, has stunned the racing world by announcing her immediate retirement from riding.
The news was broken on social media on Monday, with Blackmore stating that she felt the time was right to bring the curtain down on her career at the age of 35. “My days of being a jockey have come to an end,” she wrote in a post on X. “I feel the time is right. I’m sad but I’m also incredibly grateful for what my life has been for the past 16 years. I just feel so lucky to have been legged up on the horses I have, and to have experienced success I never even dreamt could be possible.”
Blackmore, who spent three months on the sidelines in the autumn with a serious neck injury, departs the stage having first become the only female jockey to win any of Cheltenham’s traditional three championship races when she guided Honeysuckle to the first of their two successive Champion Hurdles in 2021.
She won each of the festival’s features, famously executing one of the great Gold Cup rides of modern times to secure the sport’s pinnacle event in 2022 on A Plus Tard, who, like so many of her big winners, was trained by her most devoted ally Henry de Bromhead.
According to reports from Racing Post, Blackmore said: “The people to thank are endless, it’s not possible to mention everyone, as I don’t want this to be another book, but I’m going to get a few names in here anyway and to everyone else, you know who you are, as they say. First, my parents who provided me with the best childhood, and a pony I couldn’t hold! This set the seed for a life of racing. Aidan Kennedy gave me my first ride in a point-to-point. I spent time riding out for Arthur Moore and Pat Doyle which I loved. Sam Curling and Liam Lennon were also big supporters, as were Denise O’Shea, John Nicholson, Ellmarie Holden, Harry Smyth and Gigginstown House Stud.”
Blackmore continued: “I rode my first winner for Shark Hanlon, who then helped me become champion conditional. I will be forever grateful to Shark for getting behind me, supporting me and believing in me when it would have been just as easy to look elsewhere. He was the catalyst for what was to come. A conversation between [Gigginstown House Stud’s] Eddie O’Leary and Henry de Bromhead in a taxi on the way to Aintree took my career to a whole new level. Eddie got me in the door at Knockeen, and what came next was unimaginable: Honeysuckle, A Plus Tard, Minella Indo, Captain Guinness, Bob Olinger, Minella Times, among many others . . . all with one thing in common – Henry de Bromhead. He’s a phenomenal trainer who brought out the best in me. Without Henry, my story is very different.”
In 2021, Blackmore secured an unprecedented landmark when beating all her male counterparts to be crowned leading rider at the Cheltenham Festival. The following month, she rode the crest of a wave all the way to Aintree, claiming a heroic Grand National success on JP McManus’s De Bromhead-trained Minella Times that resonated all over the world.
As reported by Racing Post, Blackmore signs off with 564 winners, a record for a female jump jockey, as well as a further 12 on the Flat. More than that, though, her exploits in a physically punishing sport that has long wrestled with perceptions of male bias, succeeded in transforming preconceptions about what it is possible for a female rider to achieve in jump racing.
Blackmore catapulted racing into another stratosphere by claiming some of the single most historic sporting achievements of modern times. Support from Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown House Stud ownership vehicle initially opened a door to her association with County Waterford-based De Bromhead, and in March 2021, at a Cheltenham Festival held behind closed doors during the Covid-19 pandemic, Blackmore wrote herself into Cotswolds folklore when guiding Honeysuckle to Champion Hurdle glory.
It was the first time a female jockey had won a British championship race, although she had by then claimed two Irish Champion Hurdles on Kenny Alexander’s brilliant mare. Two years ago, Blackmore claimed racing’s greatest prize with a truly sublime ride. Tackling the Gold Cup on A Plus Tard – her first festival winner in the old novice handicap chase in 2019 and on whom she had finished second to stablemate Minella Indo in the 2021 Gold Cup – she deployed exaggerated waiting tactics on the Cheveley Park-owned star.
Blackmore still had five horses in front of her turning into the straight and delayed her challenge until approaching the second-last fence. When she asked him to quicken, A Plus Tard surged clear for an emphatic victory, turning the tables on Minella Indo in devastating fashion. The 15-length margin of superiority was the widest since Master Oats’ 1995 win, and meant Blackmore emulated McCoy by becoming the first rider since the 20-time champion to complete the Champion Hurdle-Gold Cup double the same year.
Blackmore concluded her announcement with an existential thought: “It is daunting, not being able to say that I am a jockey anymore . . . who even am I now?” she said. “But I feel so incredibly lucky to have had the career I’ve had. To have been in the right place at the right time with the right people, and to have gotten on the right horses – because it doesn’t matter how good you are without them. They have given me the best days of my life and to them I am most grateful.”
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