Racing Right-Back (Katie Webb, She Kicks In Two Sports)

Katie Webb plays right-back for Newmarket Town on a Sunday afternoon and spends every other day at Racefield Stables, and a week before this interview she rode her first winner as a professional jockey – Global Melody, the 16:20 at Leicester, on her seventh ride. She still has the grin. Asked whether it makes scoring a goal feel average, she pauses, and then admits that it does. She found the job through a cousin during a gap year, meant to go to university, and realised she could not sit in a lecture hall for five hours a day; three years on she starts at half past six and works six or seven days a week. On being a woman in racing she is matter-of-fact: the old-fashioned views appear on social media rather than in the yard.