Racing: Move to professional ranks pays off for Rachael McDonald

The jump jockey has already ridden four winners but the most significant event of the last few months for the 25 year-old was her decision to turn professional.

This season has been McDonald’s most successful to date and she knew that the next logical step was to take the step from amateur to pro.

She was granted her conditional licence earlier in the year and despite expectations being heightened due to her newly-found professional status, McDonald has hit the ground running, claiming wins in Musselburgh and Newcastle in recent weeks.

“I decided to go pro because I was starting to get more rides and more opportunities so I thought that I should give it a shot and so far, so good,” the Selkirk jockey says.

“I don’t think going pro has changed my mindset too much although from a riding point of view, if I did something wrong as an amateur then people could excuse it but as a pro, you need to tighten up on things. But when I’m riding, I’ve not been feeling too much more pressure.”

There is one significant change for McDonald since she made the jump up the ranks though; she is now able to take home her prize money.

“As an amateur, it was pretty frustrating when I’d do well and I couldn’t take a singe penny of the money home,” she says.

“I’d try not to think that but at the end of the day, you want to make money and so when I’d ride a winner, I couldn’t help but look at what I would have been due. So it’s really nice that now, I’ve got something to show for doing well.”

It has taken a considerable amount of hard work and commitment for McDonald to arrive at this point whereby she is earning a living from her sport.

As a young child, she describes herself and “constantly zooming around the countryside on ponies” and spent much of her spare time riding out at a yard not far from her home.

As a teenager, she got a job at renowned trainer Lucinda Russell’s yard in Kinross and there McDonald really began to make waves.

“I got a full-time job at Lucinda’s yard and so I was there every day,” she says. “I’d go to the races with the horses and you really become addicted to the feeling you get when a horse wins.

“And Lucinda was really good to me – she gave me horses to ride and everything started to build from there.”

McDonald’s progression to becoming a professional rider was far from a foregone conclusion though. As a female jockey, she is significantly outnumbered by her male counterparts but she has earned their respect and is now treated no differently to anyone else.

“I really find it OK being a female in such a male dominated sport,” she says. “All the riders get on great and I don’t feel out of place because I’m a girl.

“Even though we all want to win, we’re all good friends and I haven’t ever felt that any of the male jockeys have ever looked at me any differently just because I’m a girl.”

McDonald may feel that she is on a par with her male peers these days but there have been times when she was not always treated as an equal. Particularly when she was coming through the ranks, there were times when her gender saw her lose out on opportunities.

“When I first started riding, trainers would sometimes say that they didn’t want to use me because they didn’t like using girls,” she says.

“There was more than one occasion that I didn’t get a ride because trainers didn’t want to use a girl and that was pretty frustrating because they weren’t even giving me a chance.

“So it was great when I did start to do well because I was proving that I was good enough and now, a few owners are starting to show faith in me.

“That’s brilliant because unless you’re continually riding, you can’t get any better. I think those sexist attitudes are changing now though and I really believe that if you work hard, it will pay off.”

McDonald’s recent results mean that she is likely to be given countless opportunities to prove her ability in the coming seasons.

“I’ve got a group of horses that I’ve been riding this year and there’s one young horse in particular who I think has a really exciting future so I can’t wait to ride him again next season,” she says.

“Everyone needs a good horse to give them their break so hopefully he’ll do that for me. I just want to keep riding winners and I’d love to become a full professional.

“That’s not easy to do and you need the right horses but I’ll just keep working hard and hopefully I’ll continue to progress.”