Genevieve Michel
Nothing puts horseracing into the mainstream media spotlight like the Vodacom Durban July. Throw in a first win by a black jockey, and we suddenly become the flavour of the month.
July winning trainer Sean Tarry probably hit the nail on the head when he observed that S’manga Khumalo’s great victory on Heavy Metal had nothing at all to do with quotas and BEE, but rather everything to do with God given ability and simply being the right man for the job. That can only be a winner and a huge plus for horseracing.
The inestimable public relations value of Khumalo’s victorious pose astride his majestic partner on the front pages of the Sunday papers for this often maligned and much misunderstood game, has been balanced rather soberly by controversy and questions on other fronts.
Khumalo’s alma mater, the SA Jockey Academy, was in fact under the spotlight just last month when an article appeared in the Daily News detailing allegations of assault by an 18-year-old Mauritian student.
The apprentice jockey alleged that he and two other students were assaulted by a teacher and that they were regularly called to a teacher’s office and forced to watch pornography.
The Sunday Times also ran a piece on SA women jockeys in their Lifestyle Magazine supplement just hours after the running of the July. The rather dramatic editorial is accompanied by the headline quote, ‘He punched me in the ribs…so I broke his nose’. If sex sells, then we must assume that so does sensation.
And can we deny fact, if it is in fact, true? The article observes, correctly in this instance, that no woman jockey has ever ridden in the Durban July. One top class rider, daughter of former Cape heavyweight jockey Ken Michel, Genevieve Michel, was the first woman to be accepted into the SA Jockey Academy.
In 2001 Michel landed on her head when thrown from her horse, suffering severe injuries. Her father spoke to the media afterwards:
“Because the horses have been restricted from exercise by the bad weather, they were very fresh and Genevieve’s horse pig-rooted and bucked, sending her over the top, high into the air. She landed on her head and broke her neck. She fused a vertebrae, broke a couple of ribs, the sternum, an arm…It was just one of those things. She landed very badly and that did the damage.”
Michel was the first lady to ride in the J&B Met. She rode King Shore for Geoff Woodruff when Horse Chestnut won the 1999 Met. Genevieve Michel’s comment on Facebook, sums up her thoughts: “So there was an article written in The Sunday times about female jockeys! I thought it was very well written, but there was some incorrect wording used on my behalf! Uhmm! Some things that were slightly exaggerated! But maybe Leigh-Anne (Hunter) mixed up some of my wording with another!”
Michel is quoted in the article as saying: “You pick up horse shit with your hands. You run from stable to stable until the last horse is finished. Then you do it again the next day. It was in my blood being a jockey. You have to want it. This isn’t about pretty horses. It’s hard labour. It is a man’s world. Out there you grow a pair of balls. I was sure the jocks wanted to do me in. I was pissing on their territory, trying to do something that had never been done before. ”
Today Genevieve is happily married and living in Namibia. She has nothing to do with horseracing. The Cape Jockey Academy master Terrance Welch, himself a former jockey, says that most ladies don’t stay long, ‘they have babies.’ The SA Jockey Academy Marketing Manager Charles Grey, also has his say: “There’s no time for hairdo’s, make up or falling pregnant. You will be bitten, kicked, bucked off and hurt, whether you like it or not,” he suggests.
Tex Lerena manager of the SA Jockeys Association says :” They can’t perform for a full 30 days because of their ‘womanly thing’. Put a woman and a man in a boxing ring and the guy will have the edge. That’s just how it is. No man wants his daughter on a racehorse.” The article also speaks of some women quoting trainers: “ I’ll give you a ride if you ride me.”
“You can keep your bloody ride”, was one woman’s reply, it says. Misleading, chauvinistic, sexist, offensive? Or just plain reality? And should the sport not be fighting back? Whatever your opinion, we need to look after and promote the new age heroes like S’manga Khumalo.
