Female Jockeys

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ItalianStallion

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Do you feel that female jockies are getting the chance they deserve within the sport?

I think its a very lobbed sided bias to the males and was wondering if there could be a seperate league created just for females?. We have seen Football, a sport male dominated, have success by building another segment within the industry for females and is increasingly popular but why can't Horse Racing do this? by adding this extra segment to the sport it will allow a larger base of jockies to grow whilst I think this will create more interest it could possibly be a breeding grown to try and test out new ideas for the main Racing industry itself i.e; try the testing off free entry and if it prooves a large success then incorporate this.
 
I know that I have bad spelling and punctuation but you dont need to take the jimmy mate.
 
It was mentioned in a previous thread as to whether some sort of womens league is possible now there appears to be a few women jocks around. I am rather suprised that the company that came up with the "Brian and Ben" ideas at cost to the BHA or the Jockey Club haven't already implimented or done this yet. I dare say someone will read the forum now and say it was in the pipelines.
 
Toobe said:
It was mentioned in a previous thread as to whether some sort of womens league is possible now there appears to be a few women jocks around. I am rather suprised that the company that came up with the "Brian and Ben" ideas at cost to the BHA or the Jockey Club haven't already implimented or done this yet. I dare say someone will read the forum now and say it was in the pipelines.
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Much as though I dread to think where this thread might end up going, but in the first case Toobe, Harrison Fraser don't sound as if they were working 'at cost' - I could be wrong, but £250,000 sounds more like a profit, and in any case they were only retained to produce ideas, not to set the thing up and run it.
 
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I said at cost to the BHA meaning they paid for the service
As you say they were paid to produce ideas - I would not have said that would have been a difficult idea to come up with and based on the figures etc they were given and produced themselves. I would see it as a promotion asset. In my opinion of course.
 
Given the increase in a) fixtures and b) moderate to useless horses this venture would require, I can think of few worse ideas - particularly at the moment - to be honest.

The gender separation of many sports is based on the assumption that women cannot be expected to compete physically with men. As the likes of Nina Carberry have shown, such an argument holds absolutely no water in racing.

And this isn't even taking into account how unfeasible the whole thing is.
 
They can't. There are enough women jockeys and none is a patch on the best of the men. Women are physically weaker than men so they simply are not physically able to ride at the same level. What they can do is judge pace and tactics as well as anyone and if that is enough - along with having a horse that's good enough in the first place - to win a race then they should win but often they need strength as well and that's where they can't compete with the best men.

If I had a horse in training I'd insist that no woman ever got to ride it in a race where it had a serious chance of winning (unless it was a women jockeys race - and they should be banned on grounds of discrimination).
 
Interesting stuff, DO.

I find it slightly contradictory that you maintain women don't have the strength to compete with the best and then oppose lady rider races on the bounds of discrimination. What exactly do you propose?

FWIW I would rate Hayley Turner as better than many of the lads riding and Nina Carberry as the best amateur in Ireland (bar Derek O'Connor).
 
Despite the increasing amount of female jockeys around, there still wouldn't be enough to make this worthwhile and I tend to agree with trackside that there aren't a lot of worse ideas about! There was a tannoy announcement half an hour before the first at Ascot yesterday asking for any women with an amateur licence to present themselves in the weighing room since John Best's jockey wasn't eligible to ride, having not ridden a winner. Not that they specified that they had to have ridden a winner and already had at least 10 rides, but there you go. Unsurprisingly non came forth so the horse had to be withdrawn.

I also agree with DO that lady jockeys are not as strong as their male counterparts - that's not discrimination, it's biological fact. Women often get away with it on the flat but it is so much harder over jumps where they cannot compete on quite equal terms as the men. Sometimes on the flat this is also the case, depends on the jockeys concerned.

Nevermind Colin having to apologise - he does have a point you know! It's a pretty sorry state of affairs to have university students who can't spell nor utilise grammar correctly.
 
trackside528 said:
Interesting stuff, DO.

I find it slightly contradictory that you maintain women don't have the strength to compete with the best and then oppose lady rider races on the bounds of discrimination. What exactly do you propose?

FWIW I would rate Hayley Turner as better than many of the lads riding and Nina Carberry as the best amateur in Ireland (bar Derek O'Connor).
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It's not contradictory in my mind. It's nature. If women want to compete against men, fine, let them. If they're good enough they'll be fine (but they won't be). Lady rider races [sic] should be banned as we don't have men-only races.

Haley Turner is a joke of a jockey. If she was a bloke she'd be getting more slagging off than young Mr Magnier. I wouldn't let her near a hobby horse.
 
I know I might regret this, but why do they not just compete, but usually with distinction, in cross country? or 3 day eventing which obviously brings other disciplines into play of course (even I understand that show jumping isn't the same as horse dancing)
 
According to ATR Miss Ferguson had been held up in traffic,and a J Ferguson was second in the race last year on Secret Night (presumably it's the same lass).
So if that was the case then they would have changed the rules since last year.

DO there are plenty of male only amateur rider races,and your comments about Hayley aren't even worth responding to as you are clearly on a wind up mission.
 
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Arkwright said:
According to ATR Miss Ferguson had been held up in traffic,if she wasn't qualified to ride in the race than the rules must have changed as she finished 2nd in it last year on Secret Night.

DO there are plenty of male only amateur rider races,and your comments about Hayley aren't even worth responding to as you are clearly on a wind up mission.
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If you can direct me to any male-only professional riders' races in this country, I'll gladly withdraw the remark.

As for my comment about Hayley Turner. I stand by it and it isn't a wind up. Neither Venus nor Serena Williams would make the top ten seeds in tennis so to suggest Hayley Turner is one of the top ten jockeys riding is miles wide of the mark.

I've watched her (since so many on here rate her) and analysed her performances as though she was just another male jockey. She's awful. In the last five seasons the only type of race in which she's got a strike rate of better than 10% is in sellers. Other than that she hovers around 8%. Assuming she gets rides from sympathetic connections hoping to provide her with a winner, that's not great. Goodness knows how many male jockeys have overall strike rates better than that.

She isn't in the same league as Nina Carberry who is actually quite polished.
 
Desert Orchid said:
It's not contradictory in my mind. It's nature. If women want to compete against men, fine, let them. If they're good enough they'll be fine (but they won't be). Lady rider races [sic] should be banned as we don't have men-only races.

Haley Turner is a joke of a jockey. If she was a bloke she'd be getting more slagging off than young Mr Magnier. I wouldn't let her near a hobby horse.
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Men only races do exist by the fact that there a natural occurance by ratio of men v women jocks. All other equestrian sports especially three day eventing, has alot of women at the top.
 
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I can't believe I've read what you've written, Warbler! I take it you've never heard of Mary King - no! Let's go back to Sheila Wilcox! Women have been at the forefront of eventing for some 50 years. Men, in fact, have had to catch up to them. They are plenty strong enough, with the stamina and intelligence to ride the three different disciplines in 3-day events, so let's not hear any more of that. Go and have a nice lie-down, dear, and perhaps a reviving cup of green tea!

All riding is about control and technique, whether you're working on a hack class, where the paces must be perfect and the horse presented as one that even a numpty could ride, to obtaining the best spot at the best time in a 10f race. Strength, per se, is secondary to sharp wits and race-awareness.

From the amount of times most of you on here have whinged about the crap rides given by male jockeys - boxed in, taken wide, too far back, too early in front, didn't get cover, shouldn't have got cover, to name but a few of the hundreds of faults you find daily - the last bloody thing you should be worrying about is whether your allegedly rubbish jockey has any muscles. You ought to be worrying about whether he has a brain.

Really, it's about time we stopped this offensive patronising of females and just let them get on with it. DO, no-one will ever have to worry about you putting them up, because you're too damn tight to even buy a tail-hair in a syndicate!

Female riders can outride men on the basis of intelligence and placement of their horses - something which they seem to be able to do much better, since I've yet to read any excoriation of women jockeys in the same way as I do, daily, of men.

As for a Women's Institute of riding - ghastly beyond words. Backward, patronising, and completely unnecessary. If a woman's a good jock, that's it, same as a bloke. If she's crap, that's it, same as a bloke.

We don't decide to not take a taxi because a woman's driving it - and yet the skills package required is identical to a male taxi driver. Alertness, knowing your way round, avoiding traffic problems, getting to the target as efficiently as possible. End of.
 
krizon said:
I can't believe I've read what you've written, Warbler! I take it you've never heard of Mary King - no! Let's go back to Sheila Wilcox! Women have been at the forefront of eventing for some 50 years. Men, in fact, have had to catch up to them. They are plenty strong enough, with the stamina and intelligence to ride the three different disciplines in 3-day events, so let's not hear any more of that. Go and have a nice lie-down, dear, and perhaps a reviving cup of green tea!
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No need to be so dismissive of Warbler's lack of knowledge of the eventing world, Krizon, given some of the stuff you've recently posted about pointing suggests you're knowledge of that sphere is probably comparable to Warbler's knowledge of eventing.
 
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