24 October 2023 , 12:18
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The first woman to ride a winner at Royal Ascot has had her story made into a stage play.
‘Horse Play’ was inspired by Gay Kelleway’s victory on Sprowston Boy in the Queen Alexandra Stakes in 1987. It will also tackle the sexual harassment she experienced which Kelleway first went public with in 2017 during the height of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
Kelleway, now a successful trainer, told at the time how she had been pinned against the wall by a famous jockey who told her, “You know you want it”.
She also detailed incidents in which a naked male rider approached her in a sauna, unsolicited night-time hotel visits from two trainers, and how she felt “safer” travelling to races in the horse box, rather than accept lifts and face unwanted advances.
Kelleway has provided a lot of the dialogue for the script written by Katie-anna Whiting whose grandfather Geoff, from Sprowston in Norwich, owned Sprowston Boy.
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“I was looking for local Norfolk stories to tell and was aware my grandad had had this success story and when I started researching it I found stories about Gey when she talked about harassment in the industry.." said Whiting.
“The more I read into her, the more I realised she was the first woman to win at Ascot. It wasn’t just a rags-to-riches, working class man owns racehorse and wins lots of money story. It’s also a female interest story. It’s got it all. I interviewed Gay and she has been really involved ever since. I have used the words from her interview to create a lot of the script. And built the rest around that.”
Gay Kelleway makes history on Sprowston Boy (Selwyn George)Whiting secured funding for ‘Horse Play’, which will have it first performance at the Garage theatre in Norwich on November 3, from the Arts Council and the National Horse Racing Museum in Newmarket where it will be staged on November 25.
An all-female cast will play all the characters, including Whiting.
“We play with the attitudes of the time," she said. "We have created some 1987-style TV pundits who are comedy characters in the show who we hope people will stop to question why they are laughing at them.
“We have also created a jockey that didn’t exist but who gives Gay a bit of an extra-hard time which is based on some of the experiences that she had.”