Barbara Borden, 55, spent her childhood in the Cleveland suburb of Mentor, Ohio, participating in 4-H and showing horses with her sister, Deb. Her brother, Dave Borden, was a jockey. He introduced his sisters to the racetrack at Thistledown. Both were hotwalkers and grooms. Barb ponied horses and then became an exercise rider. Later, she was a chart-taker for the Daily Racing Form, worked in the licensing office and test barn, and eventually became horse identifier at Turfway Park. She was an associate steward at Ellis Park in Henderson, Kentucky, and a steward at Bluegrass Downs in Paducah before being appointed Kentucky's chief state steward in 2012.

What Emma Stone’s character says in Birdman could be what fans are saying to the powers that be in horseracing: Things are happening in a place that you willfully ignore, a place that has already forgotten you. I mean, who are you? You hate bloggers. You make fun of Twitter. You don’t even have a Facebook page. You’re the one who doesn’t exist!

In winning the Vodacom Durban July, the 28-year-old Zulu became the first black jockey in history to win South Africa’s most famous race. The timing could not have been better. As the 20 runners headed down towards the ten-furlong start, the minds of the 55,000-strong Greyville crowd were far from a last-minute flutter on this prestigious Group 1 contest.

The very nature of horse racing makes it the most dangerous land sport on Earth. Jockeys must control a pack of stampeding animals ten times their size, while precariously balanced atop them as the horses race at speeds approaching 40 mph.