Jenny Pitman: The Autobiography

Known throughout the equine world as the first woman of racing, Mrs Pitman--now Mrs Stait after marrying her long-time partner David Stait in early 1998--is still having to bang her head against the brick wall that is sex discrimination. She tells how, after entering a fitness regime at the beginning of 1998 and looking and feeling better than she had for years, a male colleague asked whether or not her sex life had improved as she appeared so fit and healthy!

But racing has been Jenny Pitman's life and the book is a no-holds barred account of a truly remarkable career. After telling of her happy childhood as the middle child of seven spent on a Leicestershire farm run by her parents, she describes the happiness she felt at her teenage marriage to jockey Richard Pitman. That joy was to turn to tears 10 years later when her first husband, and father of Jenny's two boys Mark and Paul, twice walked out on her. However, the outwardly tough-as-teak Jenny gritted her teeth and got on with the job of training racehorses.

Jenny has achieved success in the world's toughest races and she fully describes the joy and heartbreak of landing two (it should have been three but Esha Ness's success came in the 1993 void race) Grand Nationals. Then there were the other Grand Nationals, the Scottish, Welsh and finally to complete the set, Irish versions of the event. In 1984 she became the only woman to train a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner and followed that up when the same horse, Burrough Hill Lad, became the first trained by a woman to land the coveted Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup. That was a record which stood until Venetia Williams took 1998's running.

It is a frank book which covers and fully explains her run-ins with officialdom, press and even jockeys. The lead-up to her spat with Jamie Osborne is fully explained, as are the reasons behind her famous letter to Aintree officials over the state of the ground at 1998's Grand National. All in all, an enjoyable and informative read in which Mrs Pitman, as usual, pulls no punches.