‘It will be a very different life to the one I had previously' - Rachael Blackmore on what awaits after retiring as a jockey
The 35-year-old exited the Gloucestershire track the next day for what would be her last time as a jockey having brought the curtain down on her glittering career last week.
"When I was leaving the weighing room at Cheltenham on Friday this year, for the first time I just had a little thought in my head, 'Will I be back here next season?'" Blackmore told Betfair in an exclusive interview.
"It was the first time that thought had ever crept into my head. I didn't know. Part of me thought I would be back, part of me thought I wouldn't.
"I just said to myself leave it [the decision] until June and get to the jockey's break. I'd think about it all then."
The Tipperary native, who became the first female jockey to land the Aintree Grand National aboard Minella Times in 2021, didn't even get to June with a winner aboard Ma Belle Etoile at Cork expediting her decision.
When you know, you know and Blackmore reckoned that the time to hang up her saddle had arrived.
"I was going to Cork the other day and I thought, 'If this one wins then maybe that's the time to call it'. She won and, the following morning, I fully decided that was it," she said.
Blackmore forged a bond with equine stars like Honeysuckle, A Plus Tard, Bob Olinger and Captain Guinness and her association with Henry de Bromhead brought her to racing's pinnacle.
"I love horses. They have given me the best days of my life and I have been so lucky to be involved with some of the best ones," the Killenaule native said.
"You can really want to ride a Cheltenham winner but you are not going to do it if you don't get on horses that are capable of doing that."
As for the next chapter, Blackmore has already penned a children's book but she will take time out before deciding what lies ahead.
"Even though retiring was probably a feeling inside me that I had kind of dampened down, it wasn't part of a massive plan to retire," she said.
"There is nothing set up but I am very lucky that I can take a few weeks and decide what might be next. It will be a very different life to the one I had previously."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- Irish Times
Blindboy comes out on his phone at All Together Now 2025: ‘I'm showing my mum this many people actually showed up'
Festivalgoers are being kind to themselves on the final day of All Together Now after burning the candle at both ends on Friday and Saturday at the Curraghmore Estate, in Co Waterford. Part of that means charging their phones despite an €8 fee, as well as an almost half-hour wait to reach the top of the queue – the price, it seems, of staying in contact with tentmates and the outside world. Loud huffing and puffing is coming from one not-so-happy camper towards the front of the line, who tells The Irish Times that his battery was on 15 per cent when he joined the wait and is now down to 3 per cent. 'It's a bit of an oxymoron' to call it a phone-charging queue, he says. Campers are also flocking to the showers after perhaps not washing for two or three days; others are buying breakfast burritos and iced coffees in a pavilion that, only a few hours earlier, was thumping with beats provided by Groove Armada. READ MORE At noon, as the comedian and podcaster Blindboy takes to the festival's second-biggest stage, in the Something Kind of Wonderful tent, he apologises to the crowd for being on his phone as he came out. 'I'm showing my mum that this many people actually showed up,' he tells the thousands of people sitting in front of him. It's impressive when any act draws such a large crowd, but particularly so when the artist is first up on the day's time sheet and will be talking about social issues such as inequality and the effects of toxic masculinity. He earns chuckles by asking the crowd if they have 'sore heads and sore bums' before reading them his short story I'll Give You Barcelona. The audience are listening to his every word. All Together Now 2025: Blindboy in the Something Kind of Wonderful Tent. Photograph: Stephen Conneely Nelly Furtado , the Canadian singer whose first big song was I'm Like a Bird, in 2000, which she followed up with a string of other hits, will be on the main stage on Sunday night to close out the final day of All Together Now 2025. When she was in Ireland last year, she ended her set at the Forbidden Fruit festival with a mash-up of her song Say It Right with Glue, by Bicep , the Belfast-born, London-based techno duo who headlined Saturday night at All Together Now with strong plays of Glue and other hits, such as Water and Apricots. It was their Chroma line-up – an audiovisual series that harmonises heavy techno with an intense light show – that really stood out. On Sunday afternoon, All Together Now campers are both hoping that Furtado will repeat her remix and eagerly awaiting their chance to scream 2000s hits at the top of their lungs.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
London Grammar at All Together Now 2025: A surprise duet and a rapturous ending from Saturday's headliners
London Grammar Main stage, Saturday ★★★★☆ London Grammar 's dreamy electropop has the quality of a lullaby performed at a rave, a combination of gently blissful melodies and blitzing beats that proves the perfect mix on night two of All Together Now . A lot has changed for the band since their last Irish festival performance, three years ago. Most notably, Hannah Reid , the band's singer, and her Irish partner have had a son, an experience that informed London Grammar's 2024 LP, The Greatest Love. That album was a not wholly successful attempt to push into new territory: the songs were slower and leaned more on Reid's powerful voice. There was lots to admire, but it lacked the rush of feeling that characterised formative hits such as the harrowing Wasting My Young Years. Tasteful and sometimes tedious, the record was not the stuff of thrilling festival sets, and in their Saturday headline slot London Grammar wisely focus on their older songs, beginning with the woozy double whammy of Hey Now and Californian Soil. READ MORE Reid, who has experienced stage fright, isn't a natural attention seeker. But she has a slowly fizzing charisma on the urgent How Does It Feel, a meditation from 2021 on the dark side of the music business. A charge sometimes directed at London Grammar is that their music is mannered to a fault. But no such accusation could be made against this gripping set. As well as their cover of Nightcall, by the noirish French producer Kavinsky – a hypnotic banger made to be listened to cruising down a motorway at 3am, and perhaps best known for soundtracking the opening credits to Nicolas Winding Refn's film Drive – the night features a surprise and moving duet between Reid and the Co Kildare singer Gemma Cox. It ends with the rapturous fade out of Lose Your Head, a chunk of sublime electronica that the band work into a techno belter. It's lapped up by an enthusiastic main-stage crowd. As the second night of All Together Now draws to a close, it's clear that London Grammar are speaking the audience's language.
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
All Together Now 2025: After Fontaines DC wowed the masses on Friday, CMAT is set to follow suit
Thousands of festivalgoers woke up in their tents at Curraghmore Estate, Co Waterford, on Saturday morning with sore limbs and even sorer heads, faced with a quick turnaround to get their second day at All Together Now under way. Some had called it a night soon after Fontaines DC's headline set on the main stage on Friday. The hillside of fans hooked on their every lyric – many in Bohemian FC's Fontaines tops – grew loudest when Grian Chatten, the band's frontman, declared 'f**k the far right' and 'free Palestine'. [ Fontaines DC at All Together Now 2025: Ferocious highs at all-conquering homecoming gig Opens in new window ] Others took that energy to the midnight techno set of the DJ Nia Archives, on the Lovely Days stage, and to electronic acts playing into the small hours. Those different approaches on Friday night might help explain why, on Saturday morning, you tended to see two types of people: those walking around with iced coffees and those walking around with cans. (Although we shouldn't forget the families who are here – fair play to the parents pulling their children around the hilly festival site in trolleys.) READ MORE Fans enjoying the Wet Leg set at All Together Now. Photograph: Dan Dennison Passing the big yellow Something Kind of Wonderful tent, where Tommy Tiernan is performing, the sizeable crowd is bellowing every second line of an a-cappella rendition of the Eurythmics track Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). At the Bandstand, the audience sing Happy Birthday to a young girl called Emily who Tiernan's fellow comedian Tony Cantwell has brought up on stage. Then she shows us some of her karate moves. In Imro's Flourish tent, Bonya, a folk-infused acoustic group from Waterford, are catching the attention of everyone walking by. Everyone agrees on how well they sound. Chloe Walsh from Co Cork soaking in the festival vibe. Photograph: Dan Dennison People at day one of All Together Now at Curraghmore Estate, Co Waterford. Photograph: Photograph: Dan Dennison This year's All Together festival features headliners like Fontaines DC, Primal Scream and Wet Leg. Photograph: Dan Dennison Up at the boutique campsite, no expense is being spared. The Sculpted by Aimee booth, in the Beauty Garden, is booked out for makeup on Saturday. That kind of glamour might be the exception rather than the rule. As people began to emerge from their sleeping bags on Saturday, they had formed dazed but vaguely orderly queues outside portaloos across the campsites. Early risers had remarked on how surprisingly clean the facilities were. The sheer number of people heading to use them dashed any hopes that they might stay that way for long. At least there's music to provide a distraction. One of the acts you hear people playing most around the campsites is CMAT, the Meath singer who's appearing on the main stage on Saturday, just a few weeks before the release of Euro-Country, her highly anticipated third album. Its song Take a Sexy Picture of Me and the album's title track have gone viral thanks to their catchy hooks decrying misogyny and lamenting the legacy of the crash of 2008. Sophie McAlpin, from Glasnevin in Dublin, is looking forward to the crowd joining CMAT in blaming 'all the big boys, all the Berties', for the financial meltdown that followed the boom years. Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg on the main stage at All Together Now. Photograph: Dan Dennison Lara, from Co Kildare, attends day one of All Together Now. Photograph: Dan Dennison All Together Now festival is also popular with families. Photograph: Dan Dennison She hopes they'll react to CMAT's lyrics as strongly as they did on Friday when Fontaines DC asked, in the line from their song I Love You, 'Is their mammy Fine Gael and is their daddy Fianna Fáil?'. 'I'm looking forward to her country roots, too, like Aw Shoot and I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby! I know there'll be a good buzz in the crowd for that,' says McAlpin, who first saw CMAT perform when she opened for Florence & the Machine at Malahide Castle in Dublin two summers ago. 'I saw her last year at Electric Picnic and didn't know who she was before it,' another festivalgoer says. 'She was easily the best act of the weekend.' With CMAT's sets at this year's Primavera and Glastonbury festivals having already shown how good she is at commanding a big crowd, her fans at All Together Now are in for a treat tonight.
