“Here is the perception: female jockeys can’t ride. They’re too weak. They don’t have the fight in them. They can’t close – not like men, anyway. Down the stretch, you need a jockey to carry the horse to the end, rally the winded animal and squeeze speed out of weary legs. Female jockeys can’t do that. Or so goes the explanation for why, almost 50 years after women first fought legal battles to become jockeys, there are so few top jockeys who are women.

“Then there’s Rosie Napravnik.”

Napravnik would be the sixth woman to jockey in the Kentucky Derby’s 139 year history. Her mount: Mylute.