Katie Walsh and Nina Carberry prove women are no longer passengers.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

Cheltenham's view of women can fall on the teeth-grinding side of quaint. Only this month the course made an award to Venetia Williams, last year's Grand National-winning trainer, for "The Outstanding Contribution made by a Lady to Jump Racing". But there was no condescension in the suspensions meted out to Katie Walsh and Nina Carberry for excessive use of the whip after the two sisters of top male riders had thwacked their mounts past the post in the opening National Hunt Chase.

To see women jockeys finishing first and second in a Cheltenham Festival race (even one confined to amateur riders) felt like a riposte to the head-patting chauvinism they sometimes have to endure on the Turf. …