MotoGP want more British riders. I want more British women says Two Wheels chief Andrea Coleman

“The glass ceiling is shattered,” trumpeted the headline as horse racing history was created by Rachel Blackmore, a 31-year-old Irish farmer’s daughter from Tipperary, on winning the Grand National, one of the world’s most famous horse races.

The story went on: “It was a win that rendered gender irrelevant in horse racing. There will not be male jockeys and female jockeys anymore - just jockeys and one of the great landmarks for female athletes in quickening the quest for respect and equality.”

The horse, by the way, was Minella Times, priced at 11-1 which, in an event which was said to have attracted £100m in bets, must have made someone a bob or two.

It is not many years since women jockeys were not taken at all seriously and even this year regarded with a degree of scorn by the male of the species. Rather like motorbike racing. Not any more, since jockeys like Blackmore (six winners at Cheltenham) and Briony Frost, winner of the King George VI at Kempton, but taken to hospital after a fall at Aintree, hit the headlines.

Is man handling a two-ton horse at Aintree less difficult or less dangerous than piloting a Superbike round Silverstone? Whatever your answer it does beg another question: Why are women jockeys capable of beating men in a sport where there are as many, if not more, broken bones than in motorbike racing?

And in other sports such as rugby, football, cricket and even boxing where women are being taken seriously and attracting big audiences, why has this not happened in motorsport, both two wheels and four?

Andrea Coleman, founder and CEO of the charity Two Wheels for Life, and winner of the Women of the Year award, was born into a motorcycle racing family. Her father was Jack Williams, designer and