LADY JOCKEYS IN JAPAN
With Sophie wanting to be a jockey - despite advice against it from a jockey friend! - I couldn't help wondering how many ladies there were racing in Japan (in both JRA and NAR circles), as this is hardly England or America, where the idea of a lady jockey is a lot less novel. Indeed, I remember when Princess Anne won her first race way back in 1986 - she was far from the first to fight the men head-on in Britain, and many ladies have followed in her footsteps since, to the point where we now have female G1 race winners in the UK. And in the States, professional lady jockeys have been around since the late-1960s.

As it happens, there's just one lady registered as a JRA jockey at the moment - Yukiko Masuzawa, or Yukiko Makihara as she was known before she was married. Attached to the Kikuzawa Stable, she has won 34 races so far. Notwithstanding, there are quite a few ladies currently riding at NAR tracks, although none in the Minami-Kanto region, which is probably why my image of Japanese racing being a man-only world exists.

The Nagoya-based Akane Yamamoto (pictured here) caught my attention straight away - she has a fine racing record (a remarkable 270 wins in NAR), recently having completed a successful spell riding in Korea and Malaysia, in addition to a couple of years in New Zealand before that. One thing's for sure, the 29-year old can certainly add another fan to her collection. Ganbatte, Akane!

Meanwhile, Minori Sasaki and Rui Shimomura ride in Hokkaido (with Maya Takegahara in the specialist Ban-ei Tockachi arena), Mai Beppu and Mika Morii are based at Kochi, and Chiaki Iwanaga and Sachika Oyama (a promising youngster featured on TV a bit back when she was making her debut) hail from the Saga track.

Names from the not-so-distant past, when the ladies-only 'LJS' series existed in Japan, include Mayumi Minagawa, Yumiko Gobo, Maki Hirayama, Hitomi Miyashita, Noriko Ikemoto, and Rena Nishihara (ex-JRA). It's not easy to get a jockey licence whether you're a man, woman, or somewhere in-between for that matter, but these ladies have proved that with a bit of hard work you can get one, and compete. Thanks to these trailblazers, Sophie has every chance...