
So that's today - and I might end up by adding to my observations on why female jockeys find it hard to establish themselves in the higher echelons of the sport. What one might term as a significant ownership demographic (not that that phrase comes from a lexicon which I generally favour) is one factor which pundits analysing the subject generally ignore, while another major factor which is never mentioned is the matter of parenthood. To get established in the top tiers of the jockeys' ranks generally takes years of interrupted toil. For male jockeys the question of parenthood is not an issue as they can become fathers without interrupting their careers. For example, Frankie Dettori and Ryan Moore both have large broods of children, but the fathering of them did not create any noticeable hiatus in their riding careers.
For a female jockey, however, becoming the parent of even one child, never mind several, would be to create a hiatus in her career which would be likely to prove insuperable. A jockey needs to be very well established to be able to take, say, a year off and then find it feasible to pick up where he/she had left off. So the next time you hear a pundit agonising about the supposed mystery of why female jockeys in the UK find it hard to graduate to the higher tiers of the profession, turn the TV off if he/she does not focus on the points which I have made. And on past form, these points will be ignored (presumably because raising them is somehow deemed to be 'politically incorrect', which of course doesn't bother me as I have no desire to rise higher up the political ladder than the inconsequential parochial rungs which I have already scaled).
No comments:
Post a Comment