This Side Up: First Among Equals

They talk about the glass ceiling, though back in 1992 Shelley Riley ran into something more like a glass wall. For a few strides, it looked as though she was going to make history as she watched Casual Lies–a Lear Fan colt she had found as a short yearling for $7,500–lead into the stretch with most of the Kentucky Derby field in trouble. But then that invisible barrier came down, and Lil E. Tee ran by to win by a length.

Her reward? Later that year, somebody claiming to represent a movie star approached Riley offering to buy into the horse, in the same breath mentioning the gentleman whose barn Casual Lies would then be joining. Naturally, the horse stayed where he was. And, whatever the progress meanwhile made by wider society, so did horse racing.

As has been pretty universally recognized, our community could not have been more fortunate in where fate finally found a female trainer to win a Triple Crown race. Jena Antonucci knows that her gender should be as irrelevant to everyone else as it is to Arcangelo (Arrogate), and it feels somewhat disrespectful that she should be constantly required to interpret such a momentous personal milestone as though she has arrived in our midst as some kind of gender token. But she has generously reconciled herself to that particular indignity, in order to help articulate and address those shared by all women.

And while it's embarrassing that the American sport had to wait until 2023 for this moment, actually the situation is still more flagrant in my homeland. With the likes of Criquette Head-Maarek and Jessica Harrington having won so many big races in Europe, guess how many women currently feature among the top 30 of the British trainers' championship? Two, maybe? (As is the case, thanks to Linda Rice and Brittany Russell, in the American standings.) Surely not just one?

Well, close, but the answer is one fewer than that.

That deplorable state of affairs suggests that the people investing in British stables, along with their management teams, are an even more stubborn crew than the handicappers. For the latter have grasped that Rachel Blackmore, who has raised the bar so high in jump racing, is not just the best female jockey but the best jockey, period.

If I had to confess to a candidly sexist generalization, simply from the demographics prevailing in a particular culture in a particular time, it would be that women, if anything, might have a more natural engagement with horses. Be that as it may, it would plainly be impossible for anyone to maintain the slightest coherence in proposing that they might, in any way, be less qualified to train racehorses.

Historically, admittedly, women trainers may have had to meet additional challenges, in terms of asserting the kind of authority they were chronically denied in so many other workplaces. And it is not as though those battles have been definitively won elsewhere, for instance in politics or business. But their current profile in this profession suggests a culpable failure, in our community, to match even such progress as has been painfully achieved in other walks of life.

Arcangelo-Robert-Mallari-Jena-Antonucci-06-09-2023-BELMONT23-SA6_5196-PRINT-Sarah-Andrew-1024x745.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="745" /> Jena Antonucci with Arcangelo the day before the Belmont S. | Sarah Andrew

So much so, that arguably it should be incumbent on those in a position to influence behaviors to exercise some positive discrimination. Given the gender ratio among licensees, after all, that's nothing like as tough as it should be. But perhaps these billionaires should be saying to themselves: “Right, my team is about to hit the sales. At the end, I'm going to ensure that at least [for instance] two of my eight new yearlings go to female trainers.” Is that so much to ask in a world containing, say, Josie Carroll and Cherie DeVaux?

We know the chicken-and-egg element in any trainer's reputation: get some good material, win some good races, get better material. Of course, I'm not saying that all trainers would do equally well with the same material. But if we truly believe in merit, then the only way for the training profession to become a true meritocracy-and to achieve the requisite volume of female entry-is for the role models to have proper respect and opportunity. As it is, Antonucci had to seize her moment with a $35,000 yearling, hardly an exponential leap from the $7,500 Casual Lies.

Out of nowhere, and in its hour of need, Antonucci has stepped up to the plate not just for her sex but also for her sport. This is a person who had already shown exemplary ambition in terms of a more holistic, acorn-to-oak approach to the Thoroughbred's career. But even her uninhibited exhibition of excitement and joy, during the race last Saturday, offered us something valuable. This was not female joy; it was human joy. It was something that anybody would aspire to share.

A year before a woman named Jena found her platform in the Belmont, the same race had allowed one named Jana to share her experiences in a world dominated by men. Jana Barbe and her husband Roy had raised a Belmont contender, We the People (Constitution), despite being relative newcomers to the game.

She acknowledged the Turf to have proved a conservative environment, in need of more diversity in every way. But this is a corporate highflier who used to come home from work “picking shards out of my head” from that notorious glass ceiling. When she graduated law school, in 1987, the percentage of female equity partners at big law firms was 15 to 18 percent, and the goal was 20 percent. The goal today? Still 20 percent.

So, what Jena did last Saturday was what Jana urged last year, when discussing the only way to achieve change. “One person at a time, one foot in front of the other, and being really smart in how we go about it,” she said. “We will get there. Because we have to. In the end the sport will become integrated because it can't not.”