Sue Leslie is the owner and head trainer of Sue Leslie Stables at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto. She was photographed at the track on April 29, 2011 for a story about some of the most powerful women in Canadian sport. (Photo by Peter Power/The Globe and Mail)Peter Power/The Globe and Mail
Sue Leslie is queen of all she surveys in her office on the Woodbine Racetrack backstretch, where an old fridge shudders occasionally, and the e-mails never stop.
It's the e-mails that tell the tale of the woman.
They come from everywhere and they suggest that Leslie is an intelligent, powerful force in the racing industry, wearing half a dozen important hats in a world that was at one time a domain of men. It is, after all, called the sport of kings.
Not any more.
There was a time 40 years ago when male jockeys would boycott races if women tried to ride against them and women weren't allowed on the backstretch after dark. There was a time not really all that long ago when female trainers couldn't attract clients, despite good records.
Saturday, Anna Rose (Rosie) Napravnik is to became just the sixth female jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby. Emma Jayne Wilson became the first female jockey to win the Queen's Plate only four years ago, the same year that Catharine Day Phillips became the first female trainer to win the Arlington Million in Chicago. Josie Carroll became the first female trainer to win the Queen's Plate only five years ago, and shrugged off the fact that she was a woman.
"To play the gender card, I think, is taking away from the other trainers in the race who work equally hard and are very talented," she said. When Carroll signed up for an equine studies program at Toronto-based Humber College in 1975, there were just four female trainers with licences in Ontario. Carroll said she's always been treated as an equal.
In her roles as president of the Ontario Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (a horsemen's group), and president of the Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association (an industry lobby group), Leslie has dealt with government, racetrack operators, a fractious horse industry, and veterinarians who give her bad news at the barn. She trains horses for former NHL star Curtis Joseph. Her shedrow is getting smaller as her industry duties become larger.
"I've just at a stage in my life that I don't have any strong outside commitments, outside of my job," Leslie said. "I live on my own, and this industry being what it is, it is very hard to have hobbies like golf, or travel. So it's just the right time and place for me, the stage of my life that I can make the commitment to the industry. It takes a lot of time. I don't begrudge the time."
Leslie said women bring "a softer side" to issues: how they handle staff, their sentiments toward the horses, and perhaps bring "a calming voice into the boardroom, to issues that are sensitive."
"I think women are a little more willing to take on the sensitive issues that sometimes men would just as soon not talk about," she said.
Jane Holmes, now vice-president of corporate affairs for Woodbine, made a major mark in the racing industry as the founding executive director of OHRIA. She helped engineer a $50-million tax break on wagers for racetracks, and she also helped bring slots in, too.
When she started with OHRIA, the civil servants and politicians referred to the OHRIA group as "the men in racing" because they'd never met women in that group. But she agrees that women have a different way of working than men at the executive level. "We tend to read people's personalities more so than men do," she said. "We watch body language."
Wilson cherishes her historic win in the Queen's Plate, but prefaces her feelings with, "Anyone close to me knows that I don't like getting hung up on the whole female-in-racing thing."
She objects to the feeling that because she's a female rider, her best talents are her finesse as a rider, and the lightness of touch. "I take pride in the fact that I'm one of the most aggressive, strongest riders down the lane out there," the former rugby player said.
"But I can also switch gears as well, and show finesse and be light when it's called for. That's what makes a good jock, is being able to jump between the skills," she said.
In Canada, at least, female jockeys are not a big deal any more, Wilson said. "Been there. Done that." She's currently second in the jockey's standings at Woodbine and hungry for more.