When Rosie Napravnik won the Breeder’s Cup Distaff in November 2014, not many people would have predicted that a decade down the line no other woman jockey would have emerged with a single win at the two-day, 14-race event. This year, Hollie Doyle and Rachel King will attempt to end that long run of outs.
For King, the Australian-based Brit, it’s her first time at the Breeders’ Cup and she will ride Satono Carnaval in Friday’s G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf for Japanese trainer Noriyuki Hori. Fellow Englishwoman Doyle has been to the event before, in 2020 and 2022, and will ride her old pal Bradsell in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint on Saturday.
Doyle was the 10th woman to ride at the Breeders’ Cup since its inception in 1984 and King will be the 12th. The first was the brilliant Julie Krone, back in 1988, and her 2003 G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies victory on Halfbridled was the breakthrough that had long been looked for at the event: it took nine years for Napravnik to nail the second win for a woman, on Shanghai Bobby in the 2012 G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.
When Napravnik struck again two years later in the Distaff with Untapable, it seemed that the gender gap was narrowing more rapidly than has actually been the case in some ways. Between 1988 and 2014, eight women had Breeders’ Cup debuts; since 2014, three women have debuted. The rate of one woman debuting about every three-and-a-quarter years has not changed in the past 10 years.
The absence of a top female North American rider is glaring. But in Doyle and King, world racing has two women with international profiles who, like Krone and Napravnik, are riding at a high level consistently and have several Group 1 wins in the locker. So, while the number of women riding at the very top level is still a small minority, the change for the good has been that they are getting winning opportunities in top-flight races.
So much so that neither Doyle, nor King, gives much thought to the paucity of female Breeders’ Cup-winning jockeys.
“It’s not really on my mind anymore,” Doyle told Idol Horse prior to riding trackwork on Bradsell at Del Mar on Wednesday morning. “But obviously it’s quite special, winning at the Breeders’ Cup, and it’s something I want to do as a jockey. It might look like a big deal from the outside looking in but to me it’s just my job and what I want to do.”
King took a similar line, emphasising that she is a jockey, a professional athlete going about her work, just like all the other riders she races against, male or female, and being a woman on the cusp of writing another line in the history books does not enter into her thought processes when preparing for any race.
“I wouldn’t think about it,” she said. “I think nearly every Group 1 race I’ve won I’d be the first female to win it, so it’s not something I notice or know about before the race and not something I think about. I’m just pleased to be here riding and to be a part of it. I wouldn’t ignore it if it does happen, but it’s not something I’d be aware of before the race.”
King has had a couple of sits on Satono Carnaval this week and has been pleased with the colt, who followed an impressive debut win with success in the G3 Hakodate Nisai Stakes in mid-July.
“He’s been super, this morning, that’s the second time I’ve sat on him this week now, he’s doing everything right, he’s settled in really well, he’s travelled over here well so he’s ready to go for Friday,” King said.
The booking came as a surprise to many watchers of Japanese racing, but it came about as a result of King’s successful short-term licence in Japan at the beginning of this year when she bagged 16 wins.
“I was associated with Mr. Hori and rode predominantly for him, so when he was bringing a horse over, travelling … he likes to stick with jockeys he knows, even though I hadn’t ridden the horse before, he’d rather stick with jockeys he knows, so that opportunity came up then,” King said.
Meanwhile, Doyle is excited to ride Bradsell in the Turf Sprint, aiming for a fourth Group 1 together, and she is also keen on the three-year-old filly Kathmandu which goes in the G3 Goldikova Stakes on Saturday’s undercard.
“She’s a filly I really like, actually,” she said. “She looks quite tractable for a two-turn mile, she was only just beaten in the French 1,000 Guineas, so hopefully she’ll run well.”
Following the Breeders’ Cup weekend, Doyle and King will both jet to Australia to ride in the Melbourne Cup after the former picked up a late booking on Sea King for trainer Harry Eustace after that contender gained an automatic berth with his G3 Bendigo Cup win on Wednesday.
“I expect he’s going to carry a very light weight, hence why Harry booked me as soon as he crossed the line,” Doyle said. “I was looking for a ride in the Cup and kind of wrote it off really a few days ago because I didn’t think there was anything left for me to get on, but this has come about, so, you never know. You’ve got to be in it to win it.
“I rode Future History last year for Ciaron Maher so that was really good. I just think the more you can ride in these big races, you never know, one day a live chance might come up and you’re on the list because you’ve got the experience, so that’s what I’m trying to do.”
King, also a lightweight, will ride The Map, while Jamie Kah on Okita Soushi looks like being the third female jockey in the field of 24. Michelle Payne, successful in 2015, is the only woman to have ridden a Melbourne Cup winner.
After the Flemington race, Doyle will head to Japan for a short contract through November and most of December, and King will follow suit with another short-term licence in Japan in January and February.
That schedule in itself shows that the sport has made some important strides when it comes to opportunities, at least for elite women jockeys being measured by ability and success on the same scale as men, but really, another Breeders’ Cup win for a female rider is long overdue ∎
