The Irish Country Magazine cover star chats about how her childhood informed her first book and why it’s better to take things at your own pace
It’s been a busy time for Irish jockey Rachael Blackmore but rather than being exhausted after launching her first book and announcing her retirement, she is excited about the future and keen to share what she has learned from her impressive 16-year-career.
In a revealing interview with Irish Country Magazine, she talks about the highlights that stick out in her memory, her love for A Plus Tard – the horse she rode to victory in the historic Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2022 – and Granny National, the children’s novel she co-authored with Rachel Pierce, that was released earlier this year.
While it is fiction, the book was definitely inspired by Rachael’s ‘fantastic childhood’ where she grew up on a farm and developed a love for being outside with the animals.
However, one plot twist is that the 11-year-old character of Rachael in the book doesn’t ride in the Grand National. Instead, her Granny gets to realise a long-held dream after Rachael and her friends hatch a plan to get her into a local race.
As a result, a central theme of the book is that you’re never too old to chase your dreams. This is close to Rachael’s heart as she didn’t begin her horse-riding career until the age of 19 and had to learn the value of patience. But she didn’t initially set out to write about that topic at all.
“I thought it’d be more fun to have Granny in the race,” she explains, “and then I was thinking back to my experience at becoming a jockey – I wasn’t Granny’s age – but I was slow to get going.
“So I was trying to get across the message that things happen for people at different stages. People progress at different speeds and just because a person the same age as you has shot off and gone ahead of you in life, you will be able to catch up and by the end of it all, you’ll probably have balanced out.”
It’s an important message, not just for children, but for all of us who can find ourselves in a spiral of comparison when we don’t hit particular milestones by a certain age – be they personal, professional or financial.
That being said, the book is predominantly about fun and adventure and seizing the moment when it comes your way. Rachael also didn’t back down from introducing a slightly darker character in the form of ‘Grandad’ and admits that a well-known children’s villain was in her mind when writing him.
“He was definitely a bit inspired by Snape in Harry Potter,” she said. “The whole way through those books you don’t like him and then it actually turns out he was a good guy. So that was my little inspiration for ‘Grandad’. There are people like that in every walk of life, who maybe don’t know how to express things the same way as other people do. I thought it was more interesting to have someone like that in the book, to make it more fun to read.”
