Friday just gets better

[Thanksforthatamazingpost]

Three women jockeys in the Grand National and Mary Beard on telly.

All good

Oh really? That's great news! I was only talking to my dh the other day about why there aren't more successful women jockies (not that I follow horse racing) but I was thinking their bodies don't disadvantage them, surely?

Good piece in the Telegraph about this - one of the reasons is that women jockeys up till very recently haven't got access to decent horses. Someone did some quite careful research (because you can use the form books and handicapping system to come up with a fairly accurate objective assessment of how good a horse is), and worked out that once you corrected for the quality of the horse, male and female jockeys performed equally well.

The great thing about tomorrow's women jockeys is that all three of them are on decent horses. (Of course the bad thing is that the National has a huge field, there are always loads of horses falling/running loose - it's an animal welfare disaster - and thus the form book goes out the window to a large extent.)