A chance meeting with Davy Russell helped kickstart Rachael Blackmore's record-breaking career.
The first female jockey to lift the Grand National trophy and ride the most winners at the Cheltenham Festival, Blackmore is now one of the biggest names in the sport.
But the 32-year-old's adventure had a low key beginning, with a little help from her very successful weighing room colleague.
Blackmore, 21 at the time, was backed by Russell when she put in a request to ride one of John 'The Shark' Hanlon's horses.
She previously revealed to the thejockeyclub.co.uk how it all played out – and began her journey to Grand National greatness.
“I was 21 and my first ride for Shark was at Thurles on Stowaway Pearl," she told interviewer and former jockey Katie Walsh.
"I’d never met him before and I was riding out for Pat Doyle at the time. I was at college at Limerick at this stage and I was very good friends with Pat’s daughter so I’d ride out at the yard whenever I could.
“Davy Russell happened to be there a good bit at the time and there was a ladies’ race coming up and he said to me that if I ever needed a hand to give him a ring.
"I was out hunting one day with Liz Lawlor and she had just come off to the phone to Shark who was asking her to ride in this ladies race, she couldn’t so told me to give Shark a ring.
"I rang him straight away and got the usual answer a trainer gives when an unknown person calls: “thanks, I’m fixed up”.
“I got onto Davy and asked if he could give him a ring, so he rang him and got the ride for me.
"That’s just the way it is, it’s all about the people you know and I was lucky to be able to ask someone whose opinion Shark trusted to get me on the horse.
“My first ride was my first winner on Stowaway Pearl – and I think you (Katie Walsh) were back in second!”
Blackmore, who made a successful return from injury earlier this week, rode in point-to-points until she was 25.
She made more than 170 appearances before opting to turn conditional.
Blackmore had her first winners in a bumper, hurdle and chase for Hanlon, who praised her dedication and hardiness for the job.
“I found she was unreal at getting horses to jump. That was one of her big, big pluses for me and I’d say for everyone else now," he told The Guardian.
Two years into her professional career, Blackmore became the first woman to scoop the Irish conditional riders' championship.
Before her career took off, Hanlon, speaking to the same publication, said some owners needed persuading to book a female rider.
“When I told people I was wanting to give her a ride on this horse or that,” he said.
"They didn’t go against me, but they mightn’t have been very happy."
Building on the achievements of Katie Walsh and Nina Carberry, who rode as amateurs, Blackmore went from strength to strength.
In 2019 she celebrated her first Grade 1 success in 2019 on future Gold Cup hero Minella Indo in the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle.
Two years on and Blackmore, who grew up in Tipperary and once thought about becoming a vet, would makes headlines at Cheltenham and Aintree.
She won six races to become top jockey at The Festival – and one of her horses Honeysuckle is favourite to back-to-back renewals of the Champion Hurdle in 2022.
Blackmore added the Grand National to her record haul a month later.
"You need so much to go right and things went right for me today," she said after her Aintree heroics.
"I feel so incredibly lucky. It is unbelievable I’m just so thrilled.”
