Robin Oakley

Girl power | 9 June 2016

If mares and fillies get allowances when running against the boys, why shouldn’t women riders?

How much strength do you need to win a horse race? Do women have enough? And if they don’t should they be given an allowance to help them in one of the few sports where they compete professionally against men?

The question came up as I shared a farmer’s platter with champion trainer Paul Nicholls in his Ditcheat local at the end of the jumping season. Paul is no softie: one of the things he most admires in Ruby Walsh is his toughness, win or lose, and the end was signalled for one young rider in the Nicholls yard because he came into the unsaddling enclosure in tears after a mistake. But, like the former champion jump jockey Sir Anthony McCoy, Paul believes that it is time to give the girls some assistance. If mares and fillies get allowances when running against the boys, he says, then why shouldn’t women riders?

‘Hayley Turner was a brilliant rider on the Flat, but she gave up at the end of last season. It’s really hard for girls. How many girls could compete playing with a premiership football team? Girls don’t get a weight allowance and they’re riding against the top pros. So why not a 7lb allowance?’ Noting that McCoy had suggested something similar, and that some women riders had rejected the idea, he added: ‘That’s a bad attitude. If girls got a 7lb allowance, they’d get three times the rides. We should give it a crack because there are some good girls out there.’

One of them is in his own yard: jockey’s daughter Bryony Frost. ‘She’s very talented. Rides a few hunter chasers for us. She won on Polisky for me at Ascot. I told her to come as late as you can.

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