Rachael Blackmore Inducted as Grand National Legend
Rachael Blackmore will return to Aintree on Thursday not as the daring pioneer in the saddle, but as part of the race’s permanent story. The first woman to win the Grand National is to be inducted as a Grand National Legend, a title that confirms what her ride on Minella Times in 2021 already told the world: she has changed this race forever.
That day three years ago, Blackmore didn’t just win a steeplechase. She broke a barrier that had stood untouched through generations of mud, roar and mythology. Minella Times carried her past the elbow and into history, and now Aintree is carving her name into its own walls.
The honour places the 36-year-old among rare company. Grand National Legends is not a broad church. It is a tight, fiercely guarded club that includes trainers like Ginger McCain, the architect of Red Rum’s immortality, and Jenny Pitman, the first woman to train a National winner. It features owner JP McManus and horses that have come to define the race itself: Red Rum, Tiger Roll, Aldaniti. On Thursday, Blackmore joins them.
Each of these names will be marked with a plaque at Aintree, unveiled during a special ceremony on the opening day of the Randox Grand National Festival.
It is the sort of moment that usually arrives at the end of a career, when the riding boots are long hung up and the big days live only in the memory. Blackmore is still very much in the thick of it, yet the course has decided it cannot wait.
She knows exactly what this place means. “Winning the Randox Grand National at Aintree on Minella Times is a moment in my life I will never forget,” she said, reflecting on the recognition. For all the trophies and headlines that have followed, that afternoon remains the fixed point.
Now her name is etched alongside the race’s giants. “Seeing my name now included on the list of Grand National Legends is such an honour, I feel very lucky to be part of that history,” she said. There is no false modesty in that, just a clear understanding of the company she is keeping.
Aintree is not stopping at the plaque.
The ceremony will unfold at a venue that carries her name: Blackmore’s Bar, a newly renamed, alcohol-free facility on the racecourse that she will officially open. It is a striking pairing – the most brutal, chaotic race in jump racing, and a calm, dry space bearing the name of its most famous modern trailblazer.
Blackmore herself admits it is not a sentence she ever expected to utter. “I’m also looking forward to opening Blackmore’s Bar at the racecourse, something I definitely thought I would never be saying! It’s a cool idea and something a bit different that people can hopefully enjoy during the week,” she said.
The bar will serve Lavazza coffee, fresh bakes and snacks, alongside a range of alcohol-free drinks. To mark the opening, the first 100 coffees poured on Thursday will be free – a small gesture, but one that underlines Aintree’s attempt to offer a different type of race-day experience.
For The Jockey Club, the decision to elevate Blackmore so swiftly felt inevitable. Dickon White, its north west regional director, made the case plainly. “Rachael’s outstanding achievement in the Randox Grand National speaks for itself and it seems only right that she has been made a Grand National Legend at the earliest opportunity,” he said.
The bar, too, is a response to changing habits on the racecourse. “As an alcohol-free space, it’s a facility that will offer something different and one that our feedback has shown would be welcomed by a number of our racegoers,” White added.
So Aintree opens its gates again, the festival builds, and the stories start to gather. Some will be written over the fences in the coming days. One, though, is already fixed: the rider who shattered the Grand National’s glass ceiling now stands among its legends, her name set in metal just a few strides from the course where she rewrote what was possible.
