The turf: Winning women

The lovely thing about Hayley Turner is the girl-next-door quality which she retains despite having become Britain’s highest-profile woman jockey. But while she still sounds genuinely surprised about her achievements her steady gaze reflects the inner confidence she has always needed to mix it with the boys.

Most stables in the country would have to shut down if they lost their female staff overnight, and this column has banged on for years about giving women riders the opportunities they deserve. Now Hayley has added a second Group One, the Nunthorpe on Margot Did, to her breakthrough July Cup victory earlier this season. Cathy Gannon, too, has already matched her 60 victories of last season with months to go in this one, so perhaps we can stop greeting every female success in the saddle as a curiosity. It is time to abolish the fenced-off category of ‘woman rider’ altogether. Just like their male equivalents, they are jockeys — bad, indifferent or, in their two cases, top-class, tactically intelligent and instinctively resourceful.