Rachael Blackmore retires as a boundary pusher and racing great but it could have been so different if not for one phone call, writes DOMINIC KING

• Rachael Blackmore, 35, retired on Monday after a glittering career in the saddle 
• The Irishwoman became first female jockey to win the Grand National in 2021 

Through it all, she never forgot the phone call. Rachael Blackmore never revealed who was on the other end of the line but their response, at a time of great need, was career defining.

There will be much time to discuss the days when she took the history books and cleared the pages to write her own chapters but, as this glorious journey ends, it is crucial to go back to the start and appreciate how the doors threatened to slide.

‘When you start out, you try to make yourself known and get yourself seen,’ she told Mail Sport December 2023. ‘You want people to give you rides but there are always challenges. I remember ringing up a trainer — I won’t say who it was — when I was an amateur.

‘I was a 7lb claimer, looking to ride in a fillies’ bumper; the weights were quite light. I just decided this day to chance it, to see if they needed someone. I got through. “Hi, it’s Rachael Blackmore here. Are you fixed up for the bumper on Sunday?”

‘They said: “Oh, hi Rachael, how are you? Who do you have again?”’ They thought I was an agent. So I said: “No, no. It’s just me. I’m just trying to get a ride.” But they said: “No, it’s all ok. We’re fixed up.” They were the knocks. I’d just put the phone down and know I’d have to start again.’

Thank heavens she did. Athletes make it when they are simply known by their first name and, though she may blush, ‘Rachael’ made it. Life, she realised, changed when she drove through her home village of Killenaule, Count Tipperary in April 2021 and saw giant posters of herself on walls but she made it change.

Rachael Blackmore, who retired on Monday, celebrates her Grand National triumph in 2021

Blackmore's achievements projected racing onto the front pages and into news bulletins

The 2021 BBC World Sport Star of the Year recorded 34 Grade One wins in the UK and Ireland

From that first winner in Thurles — Stowaway Pearl for Shark Hanlon — back in February 2011, Blackmore wouldn’t let anyone tell her it couldn’t be done and she went on a journey that took her from obscurity to wonderland, the zenith arriving in spring four years ago.

Cast your mind back to think how miserable that period was, as the pandemic raged. Through it all, racing kept going and nobody went better than Blackmore, who pushed boundaries and invited little girls to think anything was possible.

From Cheltenham in March, where six winners enabled her to become the first female to be crowned the Festival’s leading rider, on she went to Liverpool and steered Minella Times to victory in the Randox Grand National. It was, in its own way, a tragedy nobody was there to cheer her home.

Instead, that success — the kind which puts racing on the front pages and leads TV news bulletins — was memorable to those on course for how her screams echoed off those cavernous empty stands, the realisation that something truly staggering was happening.

‘God bless her, Rachael is wonderful,’ JP McManus, the owner of Minella Times, told this correspondent a year later, when the pair returned to Aintree for their title defence and that is precisely what everyone who went to see her ride felt.

When crowds were allowed back through the gates, courses found that attendances were increasing, significantly so, if Blackmore had rides booked; bookmakers would always be wary of her mounts in big races as she had ‘The Frankie Factor’, the popularity to lead a horse’s price to collapse.

Her weighing room colleagues had realised they had to have their wits about them if she went off in front — Blackmore had a beautiful way of playing rope-a-dope, stringing a field along then kicking away — but she could ride any type of race, the kind of jockey who retained everyone’s confidence.

‘Her first winner for us was Poker Party at Naas in January 2019,’ said Brian Acheson, whose horses run under the banner of Robcour. ‘She has been a constant with the team, right until the end. She has given our family so many highs, such as guiding Bob Olinger to win four times at Cheltenham.

Perhaps Blackmore's greatest feat is her 18 wins Cheltenham Festival between 2019 and 2025

That record includes becoming the first woman to lift win the Gold Cup on A Plus Tard in 2022

Blackmore has an affinity for Aintree in particular and Liverpool in general and is a regular visitor to the city's Alder Hey Children's Hospital

‘Rachael, as a jockey and a person, will always be remembered as one of a kind. Stylish and graceful yet determined and tenacious. She has been consistently one of the top talents in National Hunt racing in Ireland and Britain over the last five years and will be missed by us all.’

There is no question, for the sport in general, that losing Blackmore from the track is a blow. She was an ambassador in a helmet and a pair of breeches, someone who would never say ‘no’ if there was an engagement to visit a hospital or see schoolchildren before a major festival.

She loves engaging with the next generation and was once left speechless when fan mail addressed to “Rachael Blackmore, Ireland” arrived at her home, the consequence of a youngster with dreams having seen her conquer Aintree.

This, arguably, is her greatest legacy. Winning 18 races at The Festival, striking up an alliance with the wonder mare Honeysuckle, lifting the Gold Cup on A Plus Tard in 2022 — it was all huge but that remarkable day at Aintree carried so much more.

Blackmore sent out the message to everyone young and old, as she bounded clear on Minella Times, that magic can happen if you are prepared to never give up. The easy thing to do would have been to pursue a career in equine science, which she has a degree in, but nothing good comes easy.

Instead, she took the blows and the rejections put her head down and formed an alliance with Henry de Bromhead that, in her words, 'changed her life' — how appropriate that her 574th and final success should be for him on Ma Belle Etoille at Cork last Saturday.

With good reason, she wanted to end her career on her terms and who could blame her, particularly after suffering a significant neck injury in a fall at Downpatrick last September, and now she has gone from the track. Just like that phone call, we won’t forget her.