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About
McGuinness is a 22-year-old conditional jockey from Brackaville, County Tyrone and doesn’t come from a horse racing background. Her first experiences of riding horses came on the Donegal coast when holidaying as a child.
Her racing career began with James Lambe as a 17-year-old where she worked weekends and holidays until completing her education. She then joined Lambe full-time and started to ride out regularly, also getting the use of the trainer’s mechanical horse for practice.
McGuinness had her first point-to-point ride at Necarne in May 2021 and although it wasn?t to be as Puff My Pistons pulled-up, the experience surely taught her plenty. Her first ride under rules came at Leopardstown, which certainly isn’t a bad track to start off at!
Clearly keen to learn, McGuinness is always looking to take on advice and cites the great Rachael Blackmore as both a source of inspiration and knowledge. If she becomes half the jockey Blackmore did, she will be well on her way to an excellent career.
McGuinness rode her first winner at Downpatrick in July 2023 and it was certainly a notable one, as the horse came in at monster odds of 150/1! That success was for trainer Lambe and it would have meant a great deal to all involved.
Despite the fact that they share the same surname, McGuinness is no relation to Group 1-winning Flat trainer Adrian McGuinness. In fact, her family don?t come from a racing background at all.
Willie Mullins has begun to take notice of her potential and she has already ridden a couple of winners for him. The first of those was on board the JP McManus-owned I Am River back in June and she also scored on Zillow in a Kilbeggan handicap recently.
McGuinness has had a total of 126 rides under rules at the time of writing and from that has come seven winners. If she continues to attract the attention of some of the sport’s biggest names, her winning total will grow exponentially over the next couple of seasons.
Five of those successes have come this season and she has a very respectable strike-rate of 14 per cent. It’s also worth noting that she has a strike-rate of 33 per cent in the last fortnight, having won on one of her three rides during this period.
The aforementioned success aboard I Am River is probably the win off which McGuinness can build her profile. It doesn’t come much bigger than riding winners for the JP McManus/Willie Mullins combination and there should be more to come.
McGuinness’ first winner will long be remembered as it’s not every day we see a 150/1 scorer. Held up in the early stages, Feast made good progress under her drive and the pair got up on the post to score by a nose.
