If you want to see equality in action, head to the Cheltenham Festival

International Women’s Day is the official appointed day on which to celebrate women’s achievements. But actually, I’d argue that the first day of the Cheltenham Festival is as good a day as any to celebrate women in racing; and there are lots of them.

Women are making their names in racing, on an equal playing field with men, whether it’s International Women’s Day or Christmas Day; a Friday or a Tuesday.

Go to any racing yard in the country and it’s likely that many of the staff will be female. It’s a cliché, but girls like ponies, and over half of all stable staff jobs in the UK are filled by women. But historically, racing has very much been a man’s world. As jumps trainer Jessica Harrington says in a new film Jump Girls, ‘When I started training it was very much a man’s world.’ That was in the 1980s. Amongst the jumps trainers, the likes of Henrietta Knight, Venetia Williams, and Jenny Pitman are almost household names.