Lizzie Kelly is looking forward. But then, she always has. “I was the only person in my group of friends at university who had a job,” she says. “Rather than wasting my time bumming around in the summer, I went to Ireland and found different jobs. I was riding out for people and I didn’t need to. I didn’t think I was going to be a jockey so why was I doing it? I could have been getting absolutely hammered on a Thursday night and staying in bed until midday on Friday. But I wasn’t. I was always working towards something, even if I didn’t think it was going to happen.”
Now it has. Next Friday, Kelly will become the first female jockey for 33 years to ride in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the first with any realistic hope of making the frame. Tea For Two is a 66-1 shot but he beat Native River, the 4-1 second-favourite for the Gold Cup, last season when Kelly became the first woman to ride the winner of a Grade One jumps race in Britain.
Tea For Two was also just a short-head plus a head behind Cue Card, the 7-2 Gold Cup favourite, in the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day. Stretch out your hands as wide as you can and the distance from one to the other is more than Tea For Two and his young jockey may need to find at the end of three and a quarter miles.
The 23-year-old is still a conditional jockey rather than a fully fledged professional, though the Gold Cup – like the King George – has such prestige that she will not be able to claim her normal 3lb allowance. Her entire career stretches to just under 300 rides and fewer than 50 winners.
It is almost as unusual for a conditional to ride in the Gold Cup as it is a woman, but Kelly, who is the stable jockey for her stepfather, Nick Williams, Tea For Two’s trainer, knows that it is her gender rather than her relative inexperience that will attract most of the attention next week.
“I don’t think about it any more,” she says. “I don’t think about the fact that I’m a girl. It doesn’t register with me. Then people make a big deal out of it, and you think: ‘If I’m not thinking about it, why is everybody else?’ I’m in a lovely position with the job I’ve got but the way I view it is that I’ve put in just as much hard work and effort as everybody else and I don’t feel as though I deserve more attention based purely on the fact that I’m a girl. There are plenty of other people out there who work just as hard as me for not as much attention.
“But I definitely think if he was trained by someone in the top 10 of the trainers’ table and ridden by one of the top 10 jockeys, he’d probably be a bit shorter in the betting. My parents are very shrewd, they wouldn’t have entered him if they didn’t think he was capable of running very well.
“He’s not just there for media attention. We’ve every right to line up and that gives my career a lot more substance. I’m not just flouncing around.”
Kelly has some idea of what to expect before the biggest race of the Cheltenham Festival, as tension steadily builds around the weighing room. “You can sense it, it’s amazing,” she says. “I remember when I rode in the Foxhunter [the race after the Gold Cup] in 2012, I thought it was my nerves because it was my first ride at the Festival, but once the Gold Cup was over it just evaporated. Then I realised it was the tension from the Gold Cup.
“But I’ve got some really good valets who know when to push me and when to make a joke. They’re great on big days like that. I remember back at Newbury when I first started, it’s quite a big girls’ changing room there and I’d just sit there staring at the walls until I started to lose my mind, it was horrendous. Now normally [I sit near] the valets’ table, I just sit there all day and chat away. I embrace all of it, even the tension. That only shows how important it is to the jockeys.”
Kelly hopes to have three or four rides next week in the run-up to the Gold Cup and will also be part of the BBC Radio 5 Live team at the Festival. But she still sees herself as a full-time jockey for the long haul, taking inspiration from Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh, who have ridden Festival winners in recent years.
“The importance of longevity is massive,” she says. “All the experience now is only going to help me further down the line.
“I’m sure I’ll sit in an office one day, when I get old and have babies, but for now I’m living the dream and it’s very exciting. I can do that in 20 years’ time, I can’t be a jockey in 20 years’ time. Nina and Katie have created careers that have spanned a long time and that’s the way I’m looking at it now.
“I don’t need to be a flash in the pan, and I never wanted to be a flash in the pan. I think I’m better than that.”
Chris Cook’s Saturday tips
Ayr 2.10 Progress Drive 2.45 Pistol Park 3.20 No No Mac 3.55 One For Harry 4.30 Alizee De Janeiro 5.05 The Bishop 5.35 McGowan’s Pass
Chelmsford 5.45 Randall’s Alannah 6.15 Himalayan Queen 6.45 Muqaatil 7.15 Dreaming Time 7.45 Dubai Waves 8.15 General Hazard 8.45 Hannington 9.15 Muzaahim
Hereford 1.40 Golden Investment 2.15 Never Learn 2.50 Crown Hill 3.25 Yalltari 4.00 Plaisir D’Amour 4.35 Arden Denis 5.10 Lovenormoney
Sandown 1.20 Hygrove Percy 1.50 Lithic (nap) 2.25 Upswing 3.00 London Prize 3.35 Martello Park (nb) 4.10 Willie Boy 4.45 Twenty Eight Guns
Wolverhampton 1.30 Summerinthecity 2.05 Nimr 2.40 Boost 3.15 Yuften 3.50 First Moon 4.25 Bowson Fred 5.00 Tartan Bute
