Kathy O'Hara and her homebred Ziva on cross country at the Sydney Eventing Summer Fundraiser
Only six women have ridden in the iconic Melbourne Cup race and 31 year old Kathy O’Hara is one of that elite group
On Tuesday 7th November Kathy piloted the small mare Single Gaze to 17th place in the race that stops a nation then on Sunday 12th she was competing in the EvA80 class at the Sydney Summer Eventing Fundraiser.
Amazingly, it was the eventing class that she was more nervous about!
“It’s not so much nerves but I definitely get anxious about doing my eventing! It’s only because of my pride and I want to do well”
Eventing was Kathy’s first love and the fact she rode her horse too fast everywhere prompted her mum to get in touch with local racehorse trainers, resulting in Kathy taking up track work at an early age. From there she has risen to be one of the elite group of top jockeys but she has never given up eventing
She has four horses at home and the homebred six year old Ziva is one she hopes will take her up through the grades in eventing although she doesn’t have a great deal of time and the money in racing is far better!
“Obviously from a financial point of view the racing is fairly profitable when you’re successful so at the moment I’ll stick with the racing but I would love to event professionally one day. You never know what can happen!”
