We’re bringing down the curtain on Racing Home 2022 with a pair of absolutely cracking women today, as we discuss navigating your role in life, whether that’s as a mother, a wife, a single parent or someone without kids, someone who works or someone who doesn’t, and how you find satisfaction in the life that you’ve carved out.
How do you tread the path that others expect of you, and that you expect of yourself? In the case of my two guests today, part of that role is as “the wife” (or “the bloody wife” as Alice neatly calls it) to a successful man.
Alice Plunkett will need no introduction to most of you, as she graces our television sets most weekends through the winter as part of the team at ITV Racing. Al remains the only woman to have ridden round Badminton Horse Trials and the national fences at Aintree, and she has 4 children aged 8, 10, 16 and 17. Her husband is a guy who in her words is “really good at jumping jumps” – that’s Olympic three day eventer William Fox Pitt – and they’ve got 28 boxes at home, with youngstock, ponies, hunters and top class eventers on the farm, as well as a farming business, holiday lets and working pupils from across the globe living on site.
Leanne Pipe has worked in racing for almost thirty years and is a prominent part of the operation at Pond House in Somerset, the home of previous winners of the Grand National, Paddy Power Gold Cup, the Hennessy Gold Cup and multiple races at the Cheltenham festival. Leanne is married to trainer David Pipe, and together they have 3 children aged 6, 10 and 12, as well as around 90 horses in training and 45 staff in their team. It’s busy.
Alice recently went down to Pond House with a camera crew from ITV Racing to feature Leanne and the team there, particularly highlighting the work of the brilliant women who’ve been at the yard for 20 years or more. Watch the video here!
Listen via Apple Podcasts:
Listen via Spotify:
Follow Alice on Twitter, and the ITV Racing team
Follow Leanne and David on Twitter
Check out the Racing Home website here (there’s LOADS of useful info there)
Read the Women in Racing and Oxford Brookes research on working mothers in horseracing here
And finally, the Women in Racing website is here too!
