Henry de Bromhead on Rachael Blackmore: 'She'll be amazing at whatever she does'

Trainer Henry de Bromhead has revealed the role a conversation in the back of a taxi played in Rachael Blackmore becoming his most trusted ally, with the pair's fortunes rising in tandem to achieve stratospheric levels of success.
On Monday, Blackmore announced her retirement from the saddle at the age of 35 after a remarkable career.
The Tipperary woman's feats have often been framed in the context of female jockeys, with Blackmore becoming the first of her sex to win the Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in 2021 on board Honeysuckle, a meeting where she was also crowned leading rider, and going on to claim the Grand National weeks later on Minella Times in an annus mirabilis.
Blackmore's success on Bob Olinger in this season's Stayers' Hurdle saw her complete a Cheltenham Festival grand slam of championship races, joining Ruby Walsh and Barry Geraghty as the only jockeys to have booted him the winners of the Champion Hurdle, the Champion Chase, the Stayers' Hurdle and the Gold Cup during their illustrious careers.
Her 18th and final Festival success on Bob Olinger (above) also elevated her to joint-ninth, alongside Richard Dunwoody, in the all-time winners record at the meeting.
Reflecting on the news of Blackmore's retirement from his Knockeen base in County Waterford, De Bromhead told listeners of Tuesday's Morning Ireland on RTÉ: "It was a bit of a surprise yesterday when she came in and said it to me.
"I know it wasn't an easy decision for her, but I'm delighted for her. She seems really happy about it.
"As is the norm with Rachael, her timing is incredible. It's probably when everyone least expected it.
"It's the end of one chapter of her life and she's got so much more to do, but I've no doubt she'll be amazing at whatever she does."
In the nascent stages of her career, there was little to suggest the success Blackmore would go on to enjoy.
In the past, the rider herself has been self-effacing on her early efforts in the saddle, with her first winner under Rules coming at the comparatively late age of 21 on the Shark Hanlon-trained Stowaway Pearl at Thurles in 2011.
However, the association with Hanlon (above) gave Blackmore the literal and figurative leg up that was to prove the catalyst in her career, even if her success story was to prove far from an overnight one.
With the backing and encouragement of Hanlon, Blackmore turned professional on St Patrick's Day in 2015. It had been 25 years since a female rider had featured in the paid ranks in Ireland, with Maria Cullen the last woman to ride as a pro.
The move followed a barren spell where Blackmore hadn't ridden a winner in six months and her first success as a professional didn't arrive until Most Honourable prevailed at Clonmel in September of that year.
However, her career finally exploded into life during the 2016-17 season and she was crowned champion conditional rider at the age of 27 after booting home 32 winners.
Blackmore rode her first winner in the maroon and white silks of Gigginstown House Stud in 2017 and Eddie O'Leary of the organisation extolled her virtues as he shared a taxi with De Bromhead to Aintree's Grand National meeting in 2018.
"We had no stable jockey and we were just using the best available, and Eddie suggested trying Rachael. She'd ridden a good bit for them," De Bromhead explained.
"She had one or two rides for me, but she'd ridden a good bit for Gigginstown and she'd just been champion conditional and said we'd give it a go – I really liked her profile and obviously had seen her riding all these winners.
"There was no fixed job or anything. She just started riding for us and she just kept winning. Everyone wanted her after that and it went from strength to strength from there.
"I don't think either of us ever thought that we'd achieve what we did together.
"We've had some amazing times, but she's so much more to us – me and my family – than a jockey.
"She is an amazing person and I'm delighted to see her go out on her terms."
The trainer tragically lost his 13-year-old son, Jack, in a pony racing accident in September 2022.
Six months later, Honeysuckle's (above) illustrious career came to a fairytale conclusion at Prestbury Park as the two-time Champion Hurdle winner bowed out with an emotional success in the Mares' Hurdle.
"That was a big day for all of us, including her," De Bromhead admitted. "There was a lot of pressure and it was the mare's last run.
"Personally and professionally it had been a really tough time, and it was amazing how she pulled it off with Honeysuckle.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Irish Daily Mirror

4 hours ago

• Irish Daily Mirror

Emotional Graham Lee on the brutal reality of his life since being paralysed

Irish jockey Graham Lee has given an emotional insight into how challenging his life now is following life-changing injuries in a racecourse fall. The 49-year-old from Galway city was a hugely successful rider, winning both the Grand National and Ascot Gold Cup, but was left paralysed from the neck down after an incident at Newcastle in 2023. Lee sustained a cervical fracture which damaged his spinal cord when he came off his horse exiting the stalls and has needed 24 hour care since. He spent many weeks in intensive care before being moved to a spinal unit and is also a regular visitor to Jack Berry House in Yorkshire, the Injured Jockeys' Fund rehab facility. Lee, who rode Amberleigh House to win the 2004 Grand National and Trip To Paris to win the Gold Cup in 2015, told the Racing Post: "Don't get me wrong, I know there are people worse off than me, but with my injury, every day is groundhog day. "Racing can be a very lonely place," he added. "As a jockey, you're permanently hungry, you're doing loads of miles and you have to deal with defeat every day. 'Racing can be tough but when you get something like what happened to me, it comes together like no other sport. I've been humbled by the support and love I've received. I've been blown away by it, to be honest." Lee revealed he is holding on to a 'glimmer of light' that could put an end to the brutal reality of his life since his horrific fall. "You think, how am I going to get through today? You see no light at the end of the tunnel. No matter how small the tunnel is, you don't see a glimmer, but then Becks (Lee's wife) found something on Facebook the other day about an operation you can have in China. "After Jack (Berry) read about it, he said, 'It looks like we're going to China, then'. I wouldn't think it will happen but it's a glimmer of light, a little bit of hope." Funds are also being raised for the ex-jockey through The Graham Lee Racing Club whose horse We've Got This won for the first time at Redcar on Friday. Lee rode almost 2,000 winners in a career that saw him transfer from the jumps to the flat but overcame many challenges in the early part of his journey as a jockey. "I was a very moderate rider who was told, 'You can't and you won't,' but yet I did," says Lee. "I had lots of broken bones and plenty of head injuries along the way but my body always overcame the obstacles. It always healed. This ain't healing. "That makes me angry at my body, which is probably very unfair because my body is okay, it's just the spinal cord that is broken. I'm angry because in the past my body collapsed but then came back. At the minute, there is no coming back. "When you're a jockey, you always dream of getting on that one horse who will take you to the next level. My situation is the same. I'm hoping and I'm dreaming. That's what keeps us going. I'm just hoping that somewhere, some day, there will be that glimmer of light." "I am the luckiest man in the world to have the most amazing wife," he said. "Excuse my language but she is my f***ing rock. In Amy and Robbie, I've got two amazing children who are happy, healthy and make me feel incredibly proud and fortunate. Yes, I have to get Becks to scratch my nose or itch my ear, and I probably do her head in, but I'm so lucky to have her." "I was lucky to have a very good career but, at the end of the day, it means nothing," said Lee. "People say to me, 'Wow, you won the Grand National, you won the Gold Cup.' So what? It means nothing. "I would give up every winner I ever rode to walk out of this room. If the TV was switched on and I saw Amberleigh House winning the Grand National or Trip To Paris winning the Gold Cup, it would be like watching a totally different person, even though I know it was me. "I'll be forever thankful for what racing has given us as a family, but at the minute I can't forgive racing for what it has taken away from me. Maybe that's because it's still raw."

Irish Independent

6 hours ago

• Irish Independent

Eamonn Sweeney: It's lonely in RTÉ's ivory tower, they should stop lecturing people forced to live in the real world

We need to talk about RTÉ. It teamed up with the GAA to set up an unpopular pay-per-view platform, helping them to ultimately reduce the number of free-to-air big matches, while turning its own Gaelic games punditry into a pale shadow of its former self.

RTÉ News​

12 hours ago

• RTÉ News​

How Joe Duffy changed Irish radio forever

Back in 2007, I interviewed Joe Duffy in the seafront house in Clontarf, where he still lives with his wife, June, and where they raised their triplets, Ellen, Sean, and Ronan. The broadcaster, who will step down as host of Liveline next Friday after 27 years, was then 51 years of age, and he was his usual very good company. He yarned and cracked jokes ("Isn't it funny how Gay Byrne only became a household name when he retired?") but he was also very passionate about his radio show, a mix of the deadly serious, the light-hearted and the plain odd that embraced all human life. However, as soon as I clicked my tape recorder off, Joe put on a show of mock indignation and said: "I'm annoyed that you didn't come to look at my fire engines..." And there they were, ranging from the vintage to the modern, and taking up two shelves in his living room - Joe Duffy's collection of model fire brigades. "This one cost a ton," he said, lapsing into Dublinese and picking up a cute little red number that might have caught his attention when he was a child growing up in Ballyfermot. Fire engines, eh? The metaphor was almost too clunky to mention, but impossible to ignore as Joe Duffy has been putting out fires and starting a few of his own as host of Liveline over the past 27 years. And now it's all coming to an end next Friday when Duffy (who is now 69) will hang up the phone, but maybe not the mic for the last time. Politicians, publicans, bankers, TV producers (take that, Normal People!) and just about anyone who has provoked the ire of the great Irish public is not safe or sacred on a show that truly cuts to the heart of public access radio and public service broadcasting. In its soon-to-depart host's own words, Liveline was "a brilliant weathervane for subterranean Ireland". It is a phone-in show that is never phoney, and with Joe at the helm, it really became the sound of a nation talking to itself. Duffy was the everyman at the end of the phone who could cut to the heart of a story with journalistic rigour and an avuncular approachability. His empathetic sigh punctuated many an afternoon, and his slowly, slowly, catchy monkey approach to teasing out the heart of a story and giving all sides their say made him a brilliant listener, but with antennae tuned to the right questions to ask. He uncovered harrowing stories of institutional abuse, medical scandals, and helped right wrongs for consumers left out of pocket. Scammers were scorned, and politicians were all but banned from Liveline under Joe's watch. As he often said, "I am disliked equally by the banks, the powerbrokers, the newspapers and RTÉ itself." If people couldn't get a reply from a company, a TD, or a minister, they would call Joe. Liveline also became the place to tell the stories Ireland wasn't always ready to hear. From survivors of abuse, institutional neglect and discrimination, Joe gave them a place to talk openly and without fear of judgement in a country that is often too quick to judge. Just last Tuesday, Liveline lit up with discussions about the Israel-Iran war, organ donations, and, well, a pregnant Irish woman's craving for Erin's mushroom soup in Zimbabwe in 1988. Liveline was a lifeline for the dispossessed and the plain pissed-off, and it made Joe Duffy a household name. This was a show that could go anywhere and often did. Sob stories, incredibly sad stories, mad stories and bad stories – all guided by Duffy's journalistic rigour and keen ear for a human interest story. Anyone who worked on the show over the years will tell you that they wouldn't have a clue what was going to happen seconds before they went on air. That or they didn't have anything to talk about. But this is Ireland, so that never lasted very long. As he said on The Late Late Show in May, "I go into the studio with an idea of how it might start, but no idea how it will end. It could end in laughter; it could end in tears." How did he do it all these long years? You'd need the patience of a saint, not to mention an industrial bulls*** detector. "I come out of the show every day kicking myself," he said during that 2007 interview. "I miss myself when I do try to kick myself. I come out every day thinking, 'why didn't I say this, why didn't I move to that quicker?'" But he was always on the side of the caller and not some remote figure up in Montrose, despite being the highest-paid person in RTÉ over the past few years. The former student activist and prison social worker was the perfect host for Liveline. Then again, he had an accent you didn't hear very often on the radio, least of all from the host of the second most listened-to programme in the country. Neither was Joe given to slick patter or the kind of aimless musings that fill up too much airtime. Joe, who always wore his intelligence and love of culture lightly, was never the story. Liveline is about giving ordinary people the power to break stories, vent frustrations and speak their truth in real time. He let the nation do the talking - the now semi-mythologised "woman from Clontarf" has long since become the Irish equivalent of the man on the Clapham omnibus. Now the "most curious boy in the class", as one of his school teachers used to call him, is bowing out. It's no exaggeration to say that he changed Irish radio and helped change the actual country forever and for the better. The show celebrates 40 years on air this year, and Joe can depart the hot seat in the knowledge that it is still the second most listened-to radio programme in Ireland. Speaking live on air the day he announced his retirement last May, he said, "People felt they could pick up the phone, ring Liveline, and share their lives, problems, stories - sad, bad, sometimes mad and funny, their struggles, and their victories. I never took that for granted, not for a single minute." The triplets are now 30 and making their own way in the world, and Joe is 69. It's time for a change of gear for Duffy, but there is a quip from his late mother Mabel that he always circles back to and one that never gets old. "My mother always had a great line," Duffy said. "She was down at the shops in Ballyer years ago and someone who had just returned to the area after a few years said to her, 'Mabel, I hear your Joseph is working in RTÉ - what's he doing?' And she said, 'He answers the phones.'"