RACHAEL BLACKMORE

 

Rachael Blackmore is the reigning RTÉ, BBC World, and Irish Times / Sport Ireland Sports Personality of the Year and added to the miracle year of 2021 by becoming the first woman ever to ride the winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

The records keep falling for the Tipperary native who last year broke the gender ceiling by becoming the first female to ride the winner of the Champion Hurdle, which she repeated in 2022 and the Aintree Grand National.

Having ridden her first Grade One winner only four years ago, she is now the only currently active jockey to have landed the sport’s three biggest prizes.

She rode her first winner in 2011 on board Stoway Pearl and was the first woman to take out a professional licence in Ireland in over 30 years when doing so in 2015. She is now the most recognised and certainly among the most talented of her peers.

Hailing from the racing heartland of Tipperary, she nonetheless came from a family with no background in the sport and came into it after studying equine science at the University of Limerick. To date, she has ridden over 400 winners in Ireland alone.

In March of this year, She was honoured by being one of six Irish female sports stars to be part of an An Post series of stamps.

See who else has been named on the list alongside Rachael Blackmore by clicking on the image below.

 

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This is the tenth edition of our Sport for Business listing of 50 Women of Influence in Irish Sport.

Read more about the list and nominate who you think should be a part of it in 2022.

We are proud to do so again this year with AIG, an organisation that has pledged its commitment to equality in its partnerships with Gaelic Games, Tennis, Golf and more, for whom “Effort is Equal” and with whom we have ambitious plans to extend the reach of this annual celebration of the Women who are making a difference.

This year’s list will be drawn as before from the worlds of leadership, partnership, storytelling, and performance.

We began this journey in 2013 when challenged that we would never be able to produce a list of twenty Influential Women in Irish Sport. The 20 stretched to 30, then 40 and 50 and it still does not do justice to the talent that is out there.

This year once more, to keep things fresh we will introduce at least 30 percent of fresh names from last year. That will be the hardest part to have some names replaced but if it was too easy it would be of less value.

The list we will continue to build over the coming weeks is a snapshot of those women who are making a mark on how sport is played, consumed, grown and delivered.

They are part of making the role of women in sport unexceptional by being exceptional in what they do.