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First at-bat in the Majors. First shift in the NHL. First ride as a professional jockey. Nerves jangle. Heart rates soar.
Rachel Slevinsky made her first starts as a jockey this past Saturday at Century Mile on Cuvee Tee in the sixth.
Slevinsky was thrilled. “I was very excited. I was chomping at the bit for a whole week since I first learned that I was going to ride last Saturday.”
She wasn’t, however, happy with the start when her mount Cuvee Tee hopped out of the starting gate and also ended up fifth.
Slevinsky is a graduates of the Olds College Professional Racetrack Exercise Rider Program that has produced many jockeys that have competed in Alberta and Ontario.
“The Olds College was amazing to be honest. It was fun to be there and it taught me a lot of stuff I didn’t know,”
Slevinsky “I learned all the basic stuff: how to wrap a horse’s legs, how to clean out stalls, massaging horses, bathing horses, walking horses, how to pick a horse’s feet, how to check their tendons and then how to gallop. I would definitely recommend that people join if they want to get into this industry. “They throw a lot of information at you. The Program really gets you ready,” said Slevinsky, 23, who graduated from Olds College in 2019 but had to wait until this past weekend to get her first opportunity in a real race.
“I learned from a former jockey, Nancy Jumpsen,” Slevinsky said of the former Sovereign Award winning apprentice rider. “She still keeps tabs on me. It’s a close community and Nancy took me under her wing.”
While still very young, Slevinsky has been around horse racing for many years. Slevinsky has been at the track since she was 16 – starting out as a groom for trainer Jerri Robertson and galloping horses in the mornings for the last three years.
As a result she said her debut “wasn’t that big of a jump for me. “I usually gallop for Anderson Ward so it was nice to get a ride for him,” Slevinsky said of the trainer, who sent out Cuvee Tee.
“But I’ll gallop for anyone who needs help,” she said of also freelancing for Alberta trainers like Dale Greenwood and Jim Brown.
Being a top jockey is certainly Slevinsky’s dream. “My goal is to get a lot better and go somewhere even bigger,” she said. “I’m aiming to be one of the best female jocks of my time. I’m recognized for my hard work. This was just the first step.”
“We’ve had several others too,” said Sealy, an instructor at Olds College, of Scott Williams and Sheena Ryan, who have also won Sovereign Awards as Canada’s champion apprentice jockeys, Kayla Richardson, who was runner-up in Sovereign Award balloting, and Corrine Andros, who is riding here now.
“There is no training like this anywhere else in Canada. “You learn about horse racing from the ground up. How to look after the horse. The physiology of the horse, how to leg up, how to handle and manage a horse, how to make a cross… Everything about race riding,” said Sealy, who is also the manager of backstretch programs for Horse Racing Alberta.
“It’s a tough course. It’s not easy. You start with five weeks at our indoor arena and then you go to the track at Century Mile. If they can’t handle this then they can’t handle their job. When we started out it was a struggle to get trainers to employ our students. But within a year or too they were asking ‘When are the students coming out?’ We have them prepared to work in their barns and be a contributing member of the team. It’s very valuable.”
