Porridge with a good spoon of Nutella was once Rachael Blackmore’s breakfast of choice but currently she has a dilemma.
‘I’ve gone off chocolate a bit, which is very strange for me!’ she explains. ‘But I’m sure that will come back.’
The smile that follows tells you she won’t have long to wait. Blackmore, who married her long-term partner and fellow jockey Brian Hayes in a private ceremony in January, is expecting their first child in May and the form book she once studied has been ditched for the big book of baby names.
‘No, we don’t know (what we’re having), it’s going to be a nice surprise,’ she continues. ‘It really doesn’t matter. It’s just such a cool thing.’
It really is and this will explain to those who only take a passing interest in racing why the Queen of Cheltenham won’t be in the thick of it this week. Blackmore made this stage her own after her breakthrough win on A Plus Tard in 2019 and interest in the meeting would become widespread if she was being led into winner’s enclosure.
What a hook she was: there were 18 Festival victories as she galloped through the history books but, quietly, last May after career success 575 on a filly called Ma Belle Etoile at Cork, she retired. It was the right moment, having crossed so many frontiers, but it doesn’t mean retirement has been easy.
Rachael Blackmore is set to experience the unusual feeling of taking in this year’s Cheltenham Festival as a punter after her retirement last year
The racecourse is the site of many of her greatest triumphs in her decorated career, which include her four wins aboard Honeysuckle
‘Part of me isn’t going to enjoy the week massively,’ Blackmore admits. ‘I love racing; I love riding and this week in March has been such a spike, the pinnacle for the last few years. That’s not going to be there this week and I’m not sure how that makes me feel. It’s different territory, that’s for sure!
‘I’ve been kept very busy, which has been great. I’m involved in plenty of things with racecourses and I’ll be promoting Ladies Day on Wednesday. It’s nice for me to have a reason to go back (to Cheltenham). I haven’t gone racing too much as I think I’m still adjusting to not being a jockey.
‘I was so lucky with the career I had and I do miss it. I’d have felt very weird staying at home while it was all going on. I’m looking forward to it. I’m a big racing fan and there isn’t one of us who isn’t excited about it. It’s an incredible week; I won’t be in the weighing room but at least I’ll be there.’
The wistfulness invites an obvious line of enquiry. Chocolate might be reluctantly off the menu but are there other cravings or things she misses? Blackmore has answered before the question has even landed.
‘Winning,’ she says, repeating the word for added emphasis. ‘It’s the feeling of winning – you can’t replace it. It’s the feeling of being in a race, of horses jumping for you. It’s like going skiing, I suppose. If you’ve been skiing, you’ll know the sensation of going down the slopes and the feeling it gives you.
‘You can’t wait to go again once you’ve done it. It’s that exhilaration that I can’t replicate but, to be honest, I don’t think you can replicate what winning and what race-riding is like at all. I can’t even begin to explain it.’
This is the dislocation that all athletes endure when once what was normal is no longer there but, soon enough, she is smiling again and she has found herself doing it a lot more than she anticipated in the build-up; the task of studying form, unexpectedly, provided a gateway to that glorious past.
You can’t think about Cheltenham without envisaging Blackmore conjuring a withering run from her old pal Honeysuckle, the mare who won four times at The Festival, including back-to-back Champion Hurdles; one day they will be a permanent memento to the pair at the course.
‘You’ll see clips coming up on social media and I can assure you that you never scroll past them!’ she says. ‘When you are riding and you are in it, you are so focused on the next step. You enjoy it and it’s great, of course, but you are always looking ahead.
Henry de Bromhead-trained Bob Olinger helped her complete a clean sweep of Championship races at the Festival last year
‘I’m looking back at some of the races, when I’m studying the form for my Betfair blog, and thinking what I am going to say and it’s totally different watching them now to when I was riding. I’m thinking to myself: “Oh, I won that one and I won that one!” – so, yeah, it is “pinch me”, for sure.’
Gradually, the enormity of what she achieved is sinking in: the unforgettable Randox Grand National triumph on Minella Times (2021) and completing the Grand Slam of Championship races at Cheltenham, a clean sweep of the Champion Hurdle, Gold Cup, Champion Chase and Stayers Hurdle.
Bob Olinger, a wonderful old horse trained by her long-standing ally Henry de Bromhead and owned by Brian Acheson, enabled her to join the select band of riders who have that collection and, as we discuss the race, she is never more animated as the memories flood back.
‘I’m reliving it all now!’ she says. ‘Getting to win that race on ‘Bob’ was just something else. Ah, he’s a horse that everyone has thought so much of in the yard. Davy Roche looks after him and does a lot of work with him. To complete the four races on him was incredible.
‘I was supposed to take it up after the last but I couldn’t contain myself. When I turned in, I could feel him come alive underneath me. It was the same as it was in the Ballymore… oh that feeling, as a jockey, when you turn in at Cheltenham and you know your horse still has so much to give.
‘I know he is 11 now but, oh, if I could ride one horse this week, I just think I would have to pick him.’
Blackmore might have to watch it from the sidelines but her past can never be changed. She described herself as feeling “incredibly lucky” when she and Bob Olinger whistled past the winning post that means so much. You could argue the fortune belonged to those who saw her do it.
Rachael Blackmore is a Betfair Ambassador and was speaking ahead of the Cheltenham Festival, play different at this year’s festival with Betfair.
