4 Tuesday March 15 2022
the timesCHELTENHAM
2022A DRAMATIC YEARMarch 19, 2021 Rachael
Blackmore becomes the
first female jockey to
finish the Cheltenham
Festival as leading
jockey, with six winners
across the four days.
Earlier in the week she
had become the first
woman to win the
Champion HurdleApril 10 Blackmore
wins the Grand National
on Minella Times,
becoming the first
woman to do so.Oct 17 The full scale of
the bullying allegations
made by Bryony Frost
against fellow jockey
Robbie Dunne are
revealed in The Sunday
TimesDec 9 Dunne is banned
for 18 months, three of
which are suspendedDec 19 Blackmore wins
world sports star of the
year at the BBC Sports
Personality awardsI
f you needed a title for last year’s
Cheltenham Festival story you
could have done worse than The Joy
of Six. Sex was off the agenda.
Rachael Blackmore left Cleeve Hill
with half a dozen victories and then
firmly debunked any festering gender
debate with a Grand National triumph
that came with her pithy tagline: “It was
never even a dream.” It was the feel-
good story racing needed. Then we
heard the details of Bryony Frost’s
bullying case, the ban for Robbie Dunne
and allegations of a “rancid” weighing-
room culture. The blazed trail was
doused with mud and tears.
It is easy to overstate the importance of
sporting achievement, especially against
a backdrop of incomparable world events,
but Frost’s bravery in speaking out was a
landmark moment in racing. Blackmore,
32, is ubiquitously admired in racing, and
the easy, if unprovable, theory is that her
class and modesty will spawn a
generation of wannabes. Yet if those
same girls who watched her ride into the
mainstream read the testimony of Frost,
still only 26, they may think again.
Dunne received an 18-month ban, with
three months suspended, for bullying and
harassing Frost. His appeal is due to be
heard 12 days after the close of the
Festival. The bulk of the weighing room
appears to be on his side.
It is another reputational wound as
racing makes one of its rare forays into
the wider sporting consciousness. Two
years ago the Festival was blamed as a
Covid super-spreader event. Last year it
took place without one of its most
successful trainers as Gordon Elliott
served a six-month suspension for that
photograph atop a dead horse. Last
month Sir Mark Todd received an
interim ban after a video surfaced of him
hitting a horse with a branch. Many
within racing feel each of these things
was overblown by social media’s default
outrage, but a lay watcher’s view on
welfare may be influenced by a culture
accused of enabling cruelty to a woman.
Blackmore and Frost have long shown
they are not token women in a man’s
world, but totems for a struggling sport.
If anything good now comes from the
Frost-Dunne rift, it will surely be a more
modern, respectful environment, but the
acrimony amid the acronyms at the top
suggests that is some way off.
Blackmore could be this week’s
sensation once more, with packed
grandstands to drink in her brilliance
this time. The Irishwoman is softlyspoken and hard as nails, with the six
wins of the 2021 Festival punctuated by
four falls. “I made a few too many trips
home in the ambulance,” she grinned at
the end. The night before the Gold Cup
she walked away holding her wrist, but
you have to be brave before you can be
brilliant. The one misstep last year was
passing on Minella Indo in the Gold Cup
and choosing A Plus Tard. She duly
came second to her stablemate, but even
Henry de Bromhead, trainer of both,
conceded: “I could not split them.”
Nevertheless, only Ruby Walsh had
enjoyed such a prolific Festival in more
than four decades. Blackmore is now the
punters’ favourite and bookies’ nightmare.
On day one she will be reunited on the
big stage with the unbeaten Honeysuckle,
a year on from being the first woman to
ride the winner in the Champion Hurdle.
“Ah look, it’s not that I don’t enjoy
talking about it,” she said of the gender
stuff in the aftermath. “It’s just there’s no
deal about it any more. If you want to be
a jockey, be a jockey, drive on.”
Frost wanted to be a jockey after
seeing clips of her father, Jimmy,
winning the 1989 Grand National on
Little Polveir. She is made of strong stuff
too. When she was 15, she was knocked
unconscious by a horse and damaged the
membrane around her kidney.
Septicaemia set in. She felt her lungs
rotting. She was in hospital for two
months and when she was weaned off
morphine she felt “ants and spiders”
crawling under her skin. She had 12
operations. Anyone monitoring her
bullying allegations and believing she
needs to toughen up needs to wake up.
In December the chairman of the
independent panel hearing her claims
told Dunne that he was guilty of the
“deliberate targeting of a colleague whose
vulnerabilities you exploited”. The
chairman added: “You meant to instil fear
and humiliation and you succeeded.”
The counsel for the British
Horseracing Authority (BHA) said
Dunne was a “self-appointed enforcer of
weighing-room traditions” who
re-enacted social attitudes of the 1950s.
Dunne was accused of promising to hurt
Frost after being incensed by what he
felt was careless riding. Frost told the
hearing: “Robbie cantered up to me and
said something on the lines of, ‘You’re a
f***ing whore, you’re a dangerous c***’,
and ‘If you ever f***ing murder me [cut
me up] like that again, I’ll murder you.’”
Frost has said bringing these claims
has led to ostracism. A string of top
jockeys certainly supported Dunne. The
Professional Jockeys’ Association (PJA)
said it was appalled by the suggestion
the weighing-room culture was rancid
and said it had no confidence in the
BHA. Frost has said she felt the PJA
treated her as “an inconvenience”. In her
testimony, she said: “The isolation I have
found from speaking out, I wouldn’t wish
on anyone.”The actions and words of
Rachael Blackmore and
Bryony Frost have
proved inspirational,
writes Rick Broadbent
Struggling
sport in
debt to two
female icons