Lizzie Kelly added her name to the short list of female jockeys to have won a significant jumps race when she hacked up on Tea For Two in the Lanzarote Hurdle, which could be a breakthrough success for this industrious 21-year-old. She was still giving interviews as the next race here at Kempton finished, shivering in her silks in the winner’s enclosure, and will be asked to do a lot more if her mount is committed to the Cheltenham Festival in March.
Whether or not that will happen depends on Kelly’s mother, Jane Williams, the trainer of Tea For Two, who has something of an aversion to Cheltenham. The stable has never fielded a Festival winner and Williams’s inclination is to aim the horse at some spring races in France, where the prize money is reliably excellent and the ground reliably soft.
From the perspective of the ordinary British racing fan, that outcome would seem a terrible pity and not just because female jockeys are still sufficiently rare in major jump races as to receive support just for being female. With this success, achieved by 16 lengths over what had seemed a competitive field, Tea For Two revealed himself as a major talent, one who certainly belongs at the best race meetings. This is a detail that will have been borne in on Williams when she returned to her Devon base to watch a replay. She could not bring herself to look at the Lanzarote as it happened. “I was up there somewhere,” she said, waving at the back of the grandstand, “under some steps. I had my fingers in my ears. You can’t, can you, because it all matters. I’m doing this for my daughter as well.
“This was the plan. There is no plan after this. I would prefer to duck out of the Cheltenham Festival. It’s not my racecourse, really, I think it’s very fast.”
Williams has until the middle of the week to make an entry for the Festival’s World Hurdle, the championship race for staying hurdlers, and, despite Tea For Two’s status as an inexperienced novice, she is prepared to consider it. “In something like the World Hurdle, you haven’t got to cope with the hustle and bustle of a huge field. I’ve got lots of options and I’m quite an academic person, so I just go round and think about all the options and I wouldn’t like to make a call at the moment.”
So, at least until Wednesday, Kelly’s growing band of followers can anticipate the idea of her lining up for one of jumping’s biggest prizes, a prospect she described as “absolutely amazing”. She has had one ride at a previous Festival and found the giddy atmosphere of the event made her “feel quite sick”.
“The Cheltenham Festival is not the be all and end all. We’re perfectly happy to go off to France or go elsewhere because a lot of people have broken their horses by getting a bit too overexcited and running them at the Festival.”
Kelly, who recently landed a job with the Wiltshire trainer Neil King, now hopes to have a five or 10-year career in the saddle, which rather runs counter to comments she made in the Daily Mail last year. “The girls aren’t as good as the lads and that’s it,” she was quoted as saying.
She now admits to “possibly” regretting those words. “Girls have got to prove themselves. I’m trying to ride to the best of my ability in the hope that I’m as good as the likes in there [the weighing room] and better. As long as girls know that it’s not going to come easily ... I’ve put in so much work and I know that I still have so much left to put in.”
Judgement of pace is one of her strong points, Kelly said. Asked to identify an area for improvement, she added: “I’d love to improve my finish, that’s a massive thing. That’s what makes you stand out against the lads, sometimes. You can spot an unpolished rider from a mile off.”
