Rachael Blackmore's come a long way from Tipperary

After jumping over the hurdles of the male dominated horse racing industry, Rachael Blackmore roared across the finish line with her Grand National win in 2021 on Minella Times - making her the first woman ever to do so in the sport's 182 year history.

Her game-changing achievement shattered the glass ceiling but went beyond gender. Asked by an interviewer how she felt, she replied: "I don't feel male or female right now. I don't even feel human."

As jump racing's queen, Blackmore had no rival. During her 16 groundbreaking years in the saddle, the trailblazing Irish rider came and won it all - good enough to beat the men, brave enough to be a woman in a man's world, she was considered an outstanding jockey in her own right.

Before her Grand National win, Blackmore had already ridden to victory at Cheltenham in the Champion Hurdle on Honeysuckle and became the Cheltenham Festival's leading rider with six victories. In 2022, she landed the Cheltenham Gold Cup with A Plus Tard, galloping clear to the finish after waiting behind a group of horses for the right moment to shine.

On that occasion, remarking on the jubilant crowds excited to see her at the first public meet following the pandemic, she said: "To have that roar back and to get to walk back in when you can't see space and you can just see bodies is just incredible. It is the closest thing to feeling like a rock star you will ever feel without being able to sing."

Yet despite her achievements, Blackmore remained utterly self-effacing. She didn't seek attention and preferred to let her riding do the talking rather than resort to arrogant rhetoric.

Even while making her surprise announcement on Monday, Blackmore, 35, mainly used her words to praise others. In a statement posted on social media, she said: "I feel the time is right. I'm sad but I'm also incredibly grateful for what my life has been for the past 16 years. It is daunting not being able to say that I am a jockey anymore. Who even am I now! But I feel so incredibly lucky to have had the career I've had."

She reserved her warmest words for her parents who she said "provided me with the best childhood, and a pony I couldn't hold! This set the seed for a life of racing".

The daughter of Charles, a dairy farmer and school teacher mother, Eimir, Blackmore rode ponies from a young age near her home in Killenaule, County Tipperary, Ireland, and had early ambitions to become a vet.

With her degree in equine science, the traditional route into associated careers like breeding manager or trainer would have been a lot smoother but Blackmore's heart galloped only for sporting glory.

She won her first race at Thurles as an amateur in 2011 but didn't turn professional for another four years. The knock-backs came thick and fast but her quiet confidence and impervious resilience gave her the determination to keep going.

Reflecting on those early days for an nterview in 2023, she recalled the constant challenges she faced to "get yourself seen" by recalling one conversation she had with an unnamed trainer: "Hi, it's Rachael Blackmore here. Are you fixed up for the bumper (apprentice jockey) on Sunday? They thought I was an agent. So I said, 'No. It's just me. I'm just trying to get a ride'. But they said, 'No, it's all OK. We're fixed up'. They were the knocks. I'd just put the phone down and know I'd have to start again."

It was her mother who encouraged her to stick with education so she would have something to fall back on and, with no role model Blackmore had to secure her own path. In the end, her mother was happy to be proved wrong. Paying tribute to her daughter's talent, grit and humility this week, she said: "Despite the successes, Rachael remains true to herself. It's no good having success if you aren't a decent human being."

Even in victory, Blackmore refrained from airs and graces and once referred to herself as a "half-decent jockey". Yet the winner of the BBC's Sports Personality's World Sport Star of the Year for 2021 was anything but average. She clocked up 575 major wins in all including 18 victories at Cheltenham.

Her final triumph riding Ma Belle Etoile at Cork came just two days before announcing her retirement. But it was her historic win in February 2011 that Blackmore first proved her worth for Irish trainer John "Shark" Hanlon on Stowaway Pearl.

He reciprocated by encouraging her to become a conditional jockey, the term given to inexperienced riders who receive special weight allowances early in their careers.

Always one to recognise those who gave her the breaks, Blackmore said: "[Hanlon] helped me become Champion Conditional. I will be forever grateful to Shark for getting behind me, supporting me and believing in me when it would have been just as easy to look elsewhere.

"I feel so incredibly lucky. To have been in the right place at the right time with the right people, and to have gotten on the right horses... as it doesn't matter how good you are without them."

But the home run was far from straight and with very few trainers willing to take a risk on her, Blackmore rode just 12 winners between 2010 and 2016.

This changed when she got into a taxi with two horse racing kingmakers, owner Eddie O'Leary and trainer Henry de Bromhead, on the way to Aintree one day. The car ride heralded divine intervention as far as her career was concerned, as she later explained. "Eddie got me in the door at the stable and what came next was unimaginable... Honeysuckle, A Plus Tard, Minella Times, among many others," she said.

Superstar Honeysuckle gave Blackmore 16 wins in 16 starts, the pair eventually achieving 17 triumphs in 19 races before she retired from the course in 2023. Blackmore also had brilliant wins with Minella Times, Minella Indo, A Plus Tard, Envoi Allen and Allaho.

"All with one thing in common - Henry de Bromhead," she said. "He's a phenomenal trainer who brought out the best in me. Without Henry, my story is very different."

A story indeed so unique that only Hollywood has ever come close to rivalling it. When Blackmore won the Grand National in 2021, the only comparison sports commentators could make was with the 1944 film National Velvet where Elizabeth Taylor disguises herself as a man to enter the race and storms home to victory.

For Blackmore it was a life-changing win and she soon found herself being stopped for autographs and selfies. She and her trainer were keen that her prodigious ability should not be viewed in terms of gender.

"There's no deal about it," she said at the time. "If you want to be a jockey, you can be a jockey. Drive on."

Her talents exceeded the racing norm, as journalist and former Grand National amateur winner Marcus Armytage noted.

"As a jockey she had it all: tactical awareness, no more so than at Cheltenham; strength in a finish; style; an ability to get horses to relax and jump; and the capacity to take a heavy fall," he said following her retirement.

But victory did not come without occasional pain and pitfalls. Last September, Blackmore suffered a serious neck injury after a fall at Downpatrick and struggled for form when she returned in December.

Whether her injury is behind her decision to retire remains unknown but she proved a formidable force in her final season riding 35 winners and banking over £1.18million in prize money - part of an estimated £7.5million accrued throughout her career.

Since announcing her retirement, trainers and associates have clambered to applaud Blackmore's achievements. Hanlon called his former protegee an "amazing woman".

"I'm delighted she went out on her own terms," he said. "She won't leave racing because she loves horses, like us all."

Blackmore's success will undoubtedly drive many more women to get in the saddle. Thanks to her achievements, female jockeys now have a real heroine to aspire to - not just a poster of Elizabeth Taylor on their wall. Life off the track will no doubt now be a slower pace for Blackmore who leads a quiet, domesticated life off the course and regards baking as her way of "punching the wall".

She shares a home in Leighlinbridge in Carlow with fellow jockeys Patrick Mullins and Brian Hayes, whom is her partner. She wrote of him on social media: "Brian Hayes won't enjoy getting a mention, but he was more important to my career than I'll ever be able to thank him for."

But Blackmore is not done yet with ambition, particularly in the field of female empowerment. She has just published her first book Granny National, about a grandmother who realises her dream of becoming a jockey with the help of her friends.

Described by one reviewer as a "rollicking read", it mirrors the life of a sportswoman whose own unlikely dream became a roaringly successful reality.