“Why can’t a woman behave like a man?

If I was a woman who’d been to a ball

Been hailed as a princess by one and by all;

Would I start weeping like a bathtub overflowing?

And carry on as if my home were in a tree?

Would I run off and never tell me where I’m going?

Why can’t a woman be like me?”

THE lyrics of Henry Higgins’s A Hymn To Him, as delivered by Rex Harrison’s character in the 1964 movie My Fair Lady are dripping with misogyny, and the theme of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, on which the movie is based, is the folly of trying to create the perfect woman.

The song, of course, reveals more about the defects in the controlling and arrogant Higgins than they do about his protégé, who has – incidentally – just landed him a hefty bet.

And yet here we are in 2019, and our collective attitude to the growing band of successful female jockeys is either to obsess about them constantly, put them on a pedestal of imagined perfection, or to patronise them for their perceived glamour.

The trade newspaper in Britain has received criticism for presenting every headline of the past month through the prism of Bryony-worship, so to redress the balance, last weekend’s BetVictor Gold Cup was offered up as nothing more than Lizzie Kelly’s comeback race.

“What about Rachael?” was a popular response from Irish fans, but the problem here isn’t an English bias, it’s an inability of the media to handle women riders as something other than a novelty. The subjects aren’t to blame for this, but a misplaced focus on specific female participation can see the sport presented in a lopsided way.

Hollie Doyle on Thursday achieved the important feat for a flat jockey of riding 100 winners in a calendar year, making her the third female rider to achieve the feat.

Of more importance, perhaps, is that she will almost certainly finish 2019 in the top 10 of the jockeys’ table by wins achieved over the year, and such landmarks need to be celebrated.

Patronage

Doyle, rather appropriately, gained her 100th win on a juvenile trained by Archie Watson, and the upwardly mobile Upper Lambourn handler has provided over 40 of the jockey’s winners this year. It’s easy, and trite, to suggest her success is down to the patronage of Watson, but the truth is that he is one of 39 trainers she has ridden winners for in 2019, and if it wasn’t him, it would be someone else.

I had an interest in a later race at Chelmsford, watching in embarrassment as the rider on my nap gave up the chance of an uninterrupted passage by trying to squeeze through an impossible gap in the rail.

In contrast, Doyle, who could have been forgiven for relaxing a little in light of her achievement, rode a superb race to win on Lady Dancealot. Held up in rear in a strongly run race, she made an aggressive move coming out of the home bend to get to the outside of the field, and as the pace collapsed, her clear run was enough to see her finish comfortably on top.

Thinker

Like others around her in the jockeys’ table, Doyle is fit, strong, and a quick thinker in a race, and that has seen her ride many winners she might otherwise have been beaten on. She’s also a woman, but her gender is not one of the attributes which makes her successful as a jockey.

Given the sport remains dominated by men in the saddle, her achievements are notable by dint of her gender, but she should be championed as a potential contender for champion jockey honours, and not as some marketing whizz’s would-be Eliza Doolittle.

Doyle’s success is a victory for talent and industry, not for diversity or inclusiveness, and while a greater share of success for female jockeys would be welcome, that is not a game for others to play. The only thing required for talent to blossom is the removal of impediments to entry, and that should remain the sport’s focus in this area.