Woman Trainer Wins Struggle

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31215, 12 November 1966, Page 2

Woman Trainer Wins Struggle

To keep an argument going for 20 years, one needs to be either very obstinate —or very sure of the justice of one’s case.

Mrs Florence Nagle had no doubts at all about the justice of the case she fought through the years with one of Britain’s organisations, the Jockey Club—the controlling body of British racing, with an unwritten rule that they would not register a woman trainer. But Mrs Nagle would not give up and has now won her fight to become the first woman registered as a racehorse trainer in Britain. The five women racehorse trainers in Britain, most of them elderly (the eldest is 83) are delighted that the last barrier of masculine prejudic in racing circles has been broken down. Mrs Nagle lives on a 200acre estate at Graffham in Sussex and has 16 horses under training, nine of theml her own. Up to now each one has had to be raced under | 1

the name of her head lad, William Stickley, as trainer. Mrs Nagle, a quietly dressed grey-haired great-grandmother appears mild and unassuming until she begins to talk about her struggle with the male members of the Jockey Club. “My two passions in life are dogs and horses,” she said. “The only prize I ever won at school was for riding when I was 14. I also longed to own a really big dog. The day I left school my father gave me an Irish wolfhound which was exactly what I wanted.” Mrs Nagle has bred Irish wolfhounds ever since, with tremendous international success. Her dogs have been world champions in their class both at Crufts, the English dog show, and in the United States and Europe. But horses come first. “Just after I was married I went into a racing stable,” she said. “1 was only 23 and I was mad keen on horses. Of course I thought I knew it all and that is where I came unstuck. I gambled and lost. “The jungle of horseracing I ■

| gave me such a shock that I pulled out It was 10 years before I came back to it Then I was an older and more wary woman," she says. It was a happy life with her horses and dogs, but for the anti-female attitude of the all-male, all-powerful Jockey Club which refused her a trainer’s licence. “Every year I asked them nicely if I could be registered as a trainer,” she said, sitting beneath framed photographs of champion dogs and racehorses she had trained. “And every year they turned me down. Mostly they did not even bother to give me a reason.

“I became more and more annoyed with their attitude,” she added, “especially when the last time they refused me they did give a reason—‘it would not be in the best interests of the sport to admit me.’ This decided me to test the matter in a court. “The general idea was that women were no good with racehorses, but I have owned racehorses for more thadt 40

years. Yet for more than 20 years I had to hide behind my head lad’s label. He is the best head lad I have had, but I taught him everything.” At the first two hearings the court turned her down, agreeing with the Jockey Club. She took the case to the Court of Appeal, where three of England’s most eminent judges gave her the verdict. In their judgment they said: “The Jockey Club’s behaviour has been arbitrary and capricious. Their attitude towards this matter is as unintelligible as forbidding a man to train racehorses because he has red hair.”

Even after this judgment, the Jockey Club still fought back. It sought permission to take the case to the highest tribunal in the land—the House of Lords—but the judges refused to grant it “I admit I am a rebel and a feminist,” she said. “This is not a glamorous profession for a woman and there are more kicks than halfpence but I was fighting for a principle.”