Aamilah Aswat: Grand National the dream for first black female British jockey to win jumps race

Aswat started driving aged 5 at St James Metropolis Farm – an inner-city stables in Gloucester – earlier than linking up with trainers Kim Bailey and Mat Nicholls.She was hooked by the game after racing a pony at Cheltenham.Her win earlier this month got here in simply her fourth skilled journey after taking out her jockey’s license in autumn 2025.”All of the racing neighborhood have been very supportive and nothing has held me again,” Aswat mentioned. “Each time I’d go to Cheltenham I would not see individuals the identical color as me, so in that sense it was daunting.”Bailey might see Aswat’s “pure expertise” right away.”I take images of horses education the entire time for my house owners and I’ve by no means had {a photograph} of her being misplaced – that is fairly a novel factor,” Bailey instructed BBC Sport. “It’s extremely, very arduous for [conditional jockeys] to get going – 90% of the jockeys now are both sons of trainers or sons of homeowners who put some huge cash into the enterprise. “I ring up an proprietor and say ‘I’ve received this actually good younger black woman who desires to journey. Will you allow them to journey your horse?’ Properly, I imply, frankly, you are paying the identical for her as you’d do for [reigning champion jockey] Sean Bowen or anyone else. It is fairly a tough one.”She’s received to be robust sufficient to take all that and I am fairly assured she is going to have the ability to deal with the extra consideration, together with potential social media abuse.”She is going to at all times be a task mannequin.”



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