Sunday Times article about sexism in racing

Everyday sexism in racing: confessions of a former stableyard girl
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Gender equality is an alien concept in a sport where lewd comments, female objectification and men chasing women with whips are commonplace, says Luz Wollocombe
Luz Wollocombe
Saturday March 11 2023, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times
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Ihave been a racing fanatic my whole life, so much so that I dedicated two years to riding out racehorses for a pair of top-class trainers, one in England and one in Ireland. But though I enjoyed the work, I realised that a career in racing would mean immersing myself in a sport that is 30 years behind society when it comes to gender equality — even though some of its fastest-rising stars are women.

After two years of pretending to enjoy the never ending “banter” that comes with a racing yard, nearly all of it aimed at sex — (jokes about) “riding” women and a dreadful “winning mentality” that does not translate well to the world of dating — I decided enough was enough, and walked away.

Racing, and equestrianism in general, sells itself as being the only sport where women and men compete on equal terms. It’s doing well on the surface. Hollie Doyle is second in the Flat Jockeys Championship, Rachael Blackmore topped the Cheltenham winners table last year and Bryony Frost won the big Boxing Day race, The King George, three years ago.

These superstars have proven that women can compete, and win, on equal playing fields. But if that’s the case, why are there so few of them at the top? The reason is that — at the lower levels and inside the weighing room — feminism is a foreign concept and the MeToo movement might as well be the moon.

If you take a closer look at the careers of the female jockeys who are supposedly killing it at the top, fault lines start to emerge. In 2020, Frost was forced to lodge a formal complaint with the BHA after her fellow jockey, Robbie Dunne, called her a “f***ing slut” and paraded naked in front of her. He claimed that Frost had ridden dangerously and then threatened her by saying: “If you ever do that again, I’ll f***ing murder you.” After the BHA hearing, Dunne was banned from race-riding for 18 months, which was reduced to ten after an appeal on his part. The story was shocking for onlookers, but having worked at the lower end of the racing industry, it didn’t surprise me.

The Irish superstar, Blackmore, has taken a different tack; “I don’t feel male or female,” she told Matt Chapman in her Grand National-winning interview in 2021. The options appear to be; either face being the weighing room pariah or completely ignore that you are female at all. Blackmore is in a position to empower hundreds of young girls, but perhaps she’s afraid she will get the Frost treatment if she speaks up about gender issues.

I understand her refusal to acknowledge the elephant in the room, though. Male conversations in these racing yards are akin to a Jilly Cooper novel: “sex and horses — who could ask for more?” Well, perhaps a woman trying to get on with her job while being hounded by every passing, oversexed, under-satisfied man in the vicinity. It really was a Jilly Cooper manifestation, but substitute Rupert Campbell Black (the lady-killer hero of her Riders novel) for a disappointing troop of short, malnourished men with egos as overblown as their libidos.

Frost was forced to lodge a formal complaint with the BHA after her fellow jockey, Dunne, insulted her and paraded naked in front of her
Frost was forced to lodge a formal complaint with the BHA after her fellow jockey, Dunne, insulted her and paraded naked in front of her
ADAM DAVY/PA
Jockeys get rides by coming into training yards every week and schooling the horses over fences. These were big days for the staff. The jockeys would pull up in their sports cars and everyone would flock around them, catching eyes as they legged them up on to the horses, or tightened the girths.

Comments like, “I remember you from last time, you’ve got a pretty face”, were not uncommon — base-line flattering until they were inevitably followed by a hungry look up and down. Certain girls would live for it, making sure to wear the tightest, thinnest leggings and purposefully getting in front of the most desired jockey, giving whichever lucky if undeserving bloke a full rear view as they made their way up the gallops.

What didn’t help was that riding horses lends itself to every sex pun available. Worse still, everyone is equipped with a whip, which meant boys spent a lot of their time chasing and smacking girls. This is what I would have faced every day of my working life had I pursued a career in the sport. Every day, for the rest of their lives, if they’d chosen this as their lot.

In Ireland, I was lucky enough to have a good friend working with me at one of the biggest National Hunt yards — a fellow outsider who was equally bamboozled by the level of sexism flying around. There were tales of water fights with the washing-off hose-pipes, and the odd attention seeker being thrown into the horse swimming pool, but very rarely was the line between fun and blatant objectification ever paid attention to.

Mostly the men would just make comments to each other about hips, bums and tums. One girl had to ride a horse bareback for a week or so; “I bet she likes the friction”, one jockey with a plethora of Cheltenham wins under his belt grunted, winking.

Blackmore has tended not to comment publicly on gender and equality issues
Blackmore has tended not to comment publicly on gender and equality issues
PA WIRE
At a later stage, I was walking around trying to sell a horse at the Doncaster sales. The viewer, a balding geriatric, began depicting the horse’s conformation — how long its legs were and the size of its, shall we say, rear? — but it soon became clear it was actually mine he was on about. I thought: “Does this ever stop?”

As for “girl-power” culture, well, it just doesn’t exist. You have to be Queen Elizabeth I and pretend you are male to get by without a torrent of general harassment — surely, we’ve progressed since then? The rest of the world has, so it’s time for racing to join in.

My brief escapade in the industry was entertaining and enlightening as an onlooker, but it’s deeply depressing if you have chosen to work in racing because you love horses and can’t do so without having to fend off advances, questions and sarcastic pleas about your sex life.

The success of Blackmore and Doyle against the odds are impressive and they certainly will have inspired younger women to back themselves. But that success has also allowed the industry to tick the “gender equality box” and sell a lie. The power is in the hands of the trainers.