Randwick double makes more history for female jockeys
Saturday’s Randwick feature meeting provided another milestone for the achievements of female jockeys in Australia. By The Numbers looks at how their success in Group 1 races has grown over the past 20 years.
When Rachel King willed favourite Just Fine (Sea The Stars) home in Saturday’s Metropolitan (Gr 1, 2400m), it not only represented the 32nd victory by a female jockey in an Australian Group 1 race, but the first time there had been two such victories in a day.
King’s fourth career Group 1 came hot on the heels of Kathy O’Hara’s third elite-level career success, aboard Rediener (Redoute’s Choice) in the Epsom Handicap (Gr 1, 1600m). Those two famous Sydney races have more than 300 years of combined history, yet it was the first time a female jockey had won either.
The success of top female riders has become commonplace in recent times in Australia, to the point where that every success is no longer categorised as ‘historic’ and ‘ground–breaking’ and the fact that, unlike any other sport in the world, genders compete on even terms, seems no big deal.
Yet Racing Australia still adds a ‘Ms’ in front of their names, as an ongoing reminder of a different time, not so long ago, when female jockeys were a rarity and considered in a different category to their male counterparts. Opportunities at the top level were rare then and still remain relatively scarce in 2023.
It was 1982 when Kiwi Diane Moseley became the first female jockey to win a Group 1 race in Australia, claiming the Doomben Cup (Gr 1, 2200m) on Double You Em (Double Nearco).
Five months later, Maree Lyndon created the same history in New Zealand, and would add an Australian Group 1 to her resume in 1987 thanks to Lord Reims’ (Zamazaan) victory in the Adelaide Cup (Gr 1, 3200m). Later that year, Lyndon became the first female jockey to ride in a Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m).
Leading female Group 1-winning jockeys in Australia
| Jockey | G1 wins |
| Jamie Kah | 9 |
| Michelle Payne | 5 |
| Clare Lindop | 4 |
| Rachel King | 4 |
| Kathy O’Hara | 3 |
| Linda Meech | 2 |
| Nikita Beriman | 1 |
| Lauren Stojakovic | 1 |
| Katelyn Mallyon | 1 |
| Maree Lyndon | 1 |
| Diane Moseley | 1 |
While Moseley and Lyndon had broken barriers in the 1980s, it wouldn’t be until 2006 that an Australian female jockey would win a Group 1 race. Clare Lindop, who in 2003 became the first Australian woman to ride in the Melbourne Cup and was then Adelaide’s premier jockey in 2004-05, claimed her first top-level success aboard Exalted Time (Bellotto) in the Adelaide Cup (Gr 1, 3200m).
Two years later, she won the Victoria Derby (Gr 1, 2500m) aboard rank outsider Rebel Raider (Reset), the first female jockey to win that race in its then 153-year history. But she wasn’t the first woman to ride a Group 1 winner at Flemington. That honour belonged to Nikita Beriman, who orchestrated an upset of her own when Tears I Cry (Lacryma Cristi) won the 2007 Emirates Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m).
Michelle Payne blazed her own trail, while joining her brother Patrick as a Group 1-winning jockey, when Allez Wonder (Redoute’s Choice) won the 2009 Toorak Handicap (Gr 1, 1600m), the first of her five Group 1 wins. Her most famous success, of course, would come in 2015, when Prince Of Penzance (Pentire) won the Melbourne Cup.
O’Hara wrote her own chapter of history in 2012 when she became the first woman to win a Sydney Group 1 race, with OfcourseIcan (Mossman) victorious in the Coolmore Classic (Gr 1, 1500m). In an interesting twist, O’Hara had to survive a protest from Payne, who was aboard the fourth placegetter, before correct weight was declared. Her other Group 1 win before Saturday came aboard Single Gaze (Not A Single Doubt) in the Vinery Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) in 2016.
Lauren Stojakovic’s riding career only featured 169 wins in total, but one of those provided one of the great moments in the long history of the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m), when Miracles Of Life (Not A Single Doubt) won the race in 2013.
Linda Meech has long been regarded as one of the best jockeys in country Victoria, with 1841 wins to her credit. But her opportunities in big races have been relatively limited, with just 38 of those victories at stakes level. Her Group 1 moments came in 2015, when Plucky Belle (Mossman) won the Coolmore Classic, and in 2020 aboard Pippie (Written Tycoon) in the Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m).
As a fourth-generation rider, Katelyn Mallyon carried a jockey’s pedigree and hit the ground running, becoming champion Victorian apprentice at age 17, but her road to eventual Group 1 glory was far from easy as injuries slowed her rapid ascent.
Australian Group 1 wins by female jockeys per season
| Season | G1 wins | Jockeys |
| 1981-82 | 1 | Diane Moseley |
| 1986-87 | 1 | Maree Lyndon |
| 2005-06 | 1 | Clare Lindop |
| 2007-08 | 1 | Nikita Beriman |
| 2008-09 | 2 | Clare Lindop 2 |
| 2009-10 | 2 | Michelle Payne |
| 2010-11 | 3 | Michelle Payne 2, Clare Lindop |
| 2011-12 | 1 | Kathy O’Hara |
| 2012-13 | 1 | Lauren Stojakovic |
| 2013-14 | 0 | |
| 2014-15 | 1 | Linda Meech |
| 2015-16 | 2 | Kathy O’Hara, Michelle Payne |
| 2016-17 | 1 | Katelyn Mallyon |
| 2017-18 | 0 | |
| 2018-19 | 2 | Rachel King, Jamie Kah |
| 2019-20 | 2 | Linda Meech, Jamie Kah |
| 2020-21 | 4 | Jamie Kah 4 |
| 2021-22 | 1 | Rachel King |
| 2022-23 | 4 | Jamie Kah 3, Rachel King |
| 2023-24 | 2 | Rachel King, Kathy O’Hara |
In 2017, her seventh season of riding, she won the William Reid Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) on Silent Sedition (War Chant), but less than 12 months later, at age 24, she had her last ride, opting to pursue a career in racing media.
Like Lindop, Jamie Kah had built her considerable reputation in Adelaide, winning the jockeys’ premiership three times before moving to Melbourne in 2019. She made an immediate mark from her new base when winning the 2019 Australian Cup (Gr 1, 2000m) on Harlem (Champs Elysees). By the end of the 2020-21 season, she had surpassed Payne as Australia’s most successful Group 1-winning female jockey and has since built her total to nine Group 1 wins.
In 2020-21, Kah became the first jockey to ride more than 100 Melbourne metropolitan winners in a season, in the process becoming the first female winner of the Melbourne premiership. While injury and suspensions have halted her momentum somewhat, she remains one of the most prominent riders in the land.
King has trodden a slightly different path. The English-born jockey, who began her career in National Hunt races in her homeland, arrived in Australia in 2015. Just over three years later, she had her first Group 1 win when Maid Of Heaven (Smart Missile) won the Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m).
In 2022, she rode her second Group 1 winner aboard Knights’ Order (So You Think) in the Sydney Cup (Gr 1, 3200m). It was also significant as it was the first time in Australia that a female jockey had ridden a top-level winner for a female trainer, in this case, Gai Waterhouse, who co-trains with Adrian Bott. On Saturday, she linked up with Waterhouse and Bott again for her victory aboard Just Fine, a horse that could take her to even greater heights this spring.
Waterhouse stands alone as the greatest influence of any woman in Australian racing, having trained 134 Group 1 winners under her own name and a further 23 in partnership with Bott. Of those 157 Group 1 winners, just two have been ridden by women, both by King.
It’s a story told across the leading trainers. Rediener’s Epsom success was Chris Waller’s 152nd Group 1 win but also just the second with a female jockey, O’Hara, in the saddle. Of Bart Cummings’ 246 record-equalling Group 1 wins, just one featured a female jockey – Payne on Allez Wonder.
Opportunities at Group 1 level for female jockeys are still low when compared to their male counterparts. Since Lindop’s landmark first Group 1 win in 2006, there have been 1,235 Group 1 races run in Australia and of that total, only 2.4 per cent, 30, have been won by female jockeys.
Even this season, of 117 Group 1 runners in Australia so far in 2023-24, just 12 per cent of them have been ridden by women.
That’s a surprisingly low stat when you consider that 44 of the Top 200 jockeys (22 per cent) in Australia so far this season (by winners) are women. Those women represent 19.6 per cent of all race rides by those top 200 jockeys, and they have won 19.2 per cent of the races.
Trainers with Australian Group 1 winners ridden by women since 2006
| Trainer (s) | G1 wins |
| Stuart Webb | 3 |
| Gai Waterhouse/Adrian Bott | 2 |
| Chris Waller | 2 |
| Leon Macdonald | 2 |
| Ciaron Maher and David Eustace | 2 |
| Bjorn Baker | 1 |
| Jim Smith | 1 |
| Bart Cummings | 1 |
| Robert Smerdon | 1 |
| Darren Weir | 1 |
| Ron Quinton | 1 |
| Daniel Clarken | 1 |
| Peter Moody | 1 |
| Nick Olive | 1 |
| Andrew Noblet | 1 |
| Mark Newnham | 1 |
| David Hayes, Ben Hayes and Tom Dabernig | 1 |
| John and Chris Meagher | 1 |
| Darren McAulliffe | 1 |
| Annabel Neasham | 1 |
| Phillip Stokes | 1 |
| James Cummings | 1 |
| Tony Gollan | 1 |
| Bjorn Baker | 1 |