Cracking The Ceiling

Punchestown this week hosts the end of a momentous season. It will be remembered for Willie Mullins finally landing the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Tiger Roll winning back to back Grand Nationals, for far too little rain, and way too many positive drug tests. Time is likely to primarily recall it though as the campaign when the glass ceiling finally got cracked forever in regard to female jockeys.

It's long being suspected that what's needed to overcome tired old prejudices about 'strength' is opportunity. In 2018-19 Rachael Blackmore got it. She put herself in position to make the most of it through her own talent and work. But she is the first to point out that everything depends on the quality of horse any jockey gets to ride. That requires opportunity.

With the support in particular of Henry De Bromhead and Gigginstown, and certainly not before time, Blackmore has transformed Irish racing's landscape in terms of gender.

It has coincided with Bryony Frost's rise to stardom in Britain although objectively it is the Irishwoman's accomplishments this season that are most striking. Frost as champion conditional is following in the footsteps Blackmore set here in 2017. Both also secured Cheltenham festival victories at Grade One level last month.

But the most striking element to Blackmore's season is how she sustained a title-challenge to Paul Townend through much of it, not only with the support of De Bromhead and Gigginstown but by being the busiest professional jockey in the country with over 600 rides. That's over a 100 more than the next busiest, Sean Flanagan.

Not surprisingly for a conditional, Frost's success has been primarily rooted in Paul Nicholls's support. However you don't accumulate the numbers Blackmore has without having convinced the broad spectrum of the sport that her sex is irrelevant. And it is the long-term implications of that which makes this a seminal season.

Perceptions have changed to such an extent that even some otherwise pretty unreconstructed figures within the game now object to the use of phrase of 'female jockey.' That's something that would have been hard to imagine even a dispiritingly short while ago. And there's a danger lurking in that of a smug assumption that everything in the garden is now rosy.

Blackmore has brilliantly made the most of her chances. But it can be argued that in many ways she is still the exception that proves the rule. A career as a jockey is still much too far away from being equal opportunity to dismiss the French model of allowances to encourage more chances for women.

What can't be trotted out anymore however are tired old clichés about a lack of strength and resilience in relation to women who ride racehorses for a living. With a general feeling within the sport that young talented riders coming through are at a premium, that's both a timely and hugely positive step towards a potentially very different looking jockeys room in the coming decades.

Definite predictions are always a fraught exercise in racing but surely Blackmore's superb season in 2018-19 will come to be regarded as a vital step in that progress - unless it's topped in 2020 with the title.

For now though we can look forward to a week of the best the jumps game can produce in this country, with 39 races, a dozen of them Grade One, across five days, and worth €3.2 million in total. Up to 130,000 are expected to cram into Punchestown and there's nothing original in predicting how most of them are likely to spend most of their time examining the fortunes of Willie Mullins.

A 9,802-1 six-timer on Day Two of last year's festival was the latest startling example of the dominance Mullins has exerted over the most valuable week of the racing year in Ireland. The ammunition he has assembled to fire at this week's top races is remarkable including a potential clean-sweep of Wednesday's Gold Cup.

The Cheltenham 'Blue Riband' hero Al Boum Photo is back at the scene of Paul Townend's notorious brain-fade a year ago. His Aintree winning stable companion Kemboy amongst the likely runners too. That pair are likely to be the focus of attention on the run-in to the race. But it's worth recalling how last year's winner Bellshill is zero from four at Cheltenham and unbeaten in three here.

Saturday's Champion Mares Hurdle is among the top events that Mullins has farmed in the last decade, winning it in five of the last six years. Only the exceptional Apple's Jade interrupted the streak. It will be fascinating to see running plans this time with last year's winner Benie Des Dieux and Laurina holding entries in it.

Both also holds entries in the previous day's €300,000 Champion Hurdle and the prospect of seeing Laurina again is intriguing. An awful lot went right for Mullins at Cheltenham but Laurina not making the frame in the Champion Hurdle left many in the operation stunned. An impressive return to form this week could still leave her looking like a mare with the racing world at her feet.

If she lines on Saturday's 'Family Day' card she might even perform in front of the biggest crowd of the week. The final day's transformation over the last decade saw it become the best attended programme in the country last year. Potential lessons from that for other tracks are outlined here - Punchestown's Popular Family Day

News that the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board plan to appoint an outside organisation to monitor betting trends and potential rule breaches within the next three months is probably an overdue acknowledgement of reality.

Regulators of other sports employ betting monitoring companies, such as Sportradar, to help in relation to suspicious betting patterns around match fixing in particular. The IHRB is tendering a four year package estimated to cost around €350,000. It's a lot of money but the breadth of the modern betting environment means support is important for personnel already under pressure.

€2.5 million is even more money. That's the figure bandied around about what it's going to cost to resurface Dundalk's controversial all-weather circuit. Plans are underway for it to take place in May and June of 2020. Maybe the situation will become more clear after a HRI board meeting today. But on the back of such widespread unhappiness about Dundalk the prospect of it being more than a year before a new surface is in place looks less than satisfactory.

Dundalk officials have indicated that fibre will be added to the current surface this summer before racing begins again in September. But when the Trainers Association claims the vast majority of its membership have no confidence in Dundalk then such a prolonged period of uncertainty has the potential to be very fraught indeed.

Finally, it feels weird but the classics do actually begin this weekend at Newmarket. Both Guineas look wide open with the colts classic gelded of much interest through a cast of horses not there. The absence of Too Darn Hot in particular is disappointing. But with Quorto, Calyx, Mohaather and Persian King absent as well it leaves the 2,000 looking relatively threadbare.

The nature of these things is that something could emerge to put their stamp on proceedings but damned if there's anything leaping to mind. However a win for Madhmoon and his veteran trainer Kevin Prendergast emerges well clear in the popularity stakes.