The world of horse racing is perhaps the ideal one to see casual sexism in play. There is theoretically no reason why men would be considered to do better than women in the sport, regardless of whether you’re talking about riding or training horses.
Yet the facts show that male jockeys get more rides than their female equivalents, whilst female trainers often don’t get to work with the same level of horse as male ones. Rebecca Menzies is a trainer who has looked to buck the trend, working with horses at her Howe Hills Stables in County Durham, near Newcastle upon Tyne.
About
Rebecca Menzies Racing moved into their Howe Hill Stables in the north-east of England back in 2013. From that moment on, it was a dual-purpose yard that has boasted a dedicated team that is determined to ensure an attention to detail and to work closely with the likes of nutritionists and veterinarians in order to ensure the best life possible for the horses in their care. The desire of everyone who works under Menzies is to offer the horses the best possible lives, reaching the maximum of their potential whenever they take to the turf, working with physiotherapists both before and after racing.
For her part, Rebecca Menzies hasn’t gone about things the easy way. Whereas some people get a start in the industry thanks to the fact that a parent or sibling already worked in the world of horse racing, Menzies took on numerous different roles within horse racing in order to climb up to the position that she now boasts. She was Britain’s youngest trainer when she began her career, but within a decade had passed the 200 career wins mark, putting the work that she did with Ferdy Murphy, the Cheltenham Festival winning trainer, to good use when she took on the challenge of being a trainer.
Major Successes
Given the fact that Rebecca Menzies began her solo professional life as such a young trainer, it isn’t too much of a surprise that the number of ‘major’ successes that she has saddled in the years since she launched her training base haven’t been all that numerous. This is a girl whose association with horse racing began when she was eight or nine years old and put a note through the door of Walter Gott offering her services without knowing that he was quite a big owner of horses at the time. When she was an 18-year-old, she gained her HGV licence so as to be able to take the horses up and down the country.
It was six years later that she went it alone, training horses ever since. Once she realised that training is as much about rubbing shoulders with the right people as it was to do with the actual work done with the horses, she began to get more and more horses heading to her yard. The fact that she trains horses on both the flat and National Hunt circuits allows her to win more races than if she had chosen to concentrate on just one of the disciplines. From almost the moment that she launched herself as a trainer, Menzies has enjoyed numerous wins in some of the smaller competitions.
These include the following:
- Memorial Handicap Chase
- Newcastle Flooring Handicap Chase
- British EBF Fillies’ Novice Stakes
- Ability FM Handicap Chase
- Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle
Horses Trained
🏆WINNER🏆
Ocean Legacy wins @cartmelraces
A brilliant ride by Nathan Moscrop.
Congratulations to owner Christie Thompson.
Another winner fed on @bluegrasshorsefeed #poweredbybluegrass #winner #racehorse #fedonbluegrass #horseracing #racehorsetrainer #rebeccamenzies… pic.twitter.com/5hADkAUMC3— Rebecca Menzies Racing (@RebeccaEMenzies) August 23, 2025
Just as the number of major races won by Rebecca Menzies is limited in scope, so too has the trainer struggled to work with the kind of horses that would make headlines. In part, this is owing to the fact that she often works with horses owned by syndicates rather than those owned by some of the big names in the sport. Even so, just because she hasn’t seen winners of races like the Grand National or the Gold Cup make their way through her yard doesn’t mean that she hasn’t worked with some noteworthy horses. Whilst they might mainly be known for personal reasons, they are still good enough to talk about.
Pistol Basc
That sense of a horse that only really has meaning to the trainer herself might best be summed up by Pistol Basc. Having wondered what to do with herself when her mentor, Ferdy Murphy, decided to leave for France, Menzies ended up taking over the yard of Peter Beaumont. She had six horses in her care and was full of self-doubt, but became the youngest ever female trainer in the UK to saddle a winner when Pistol Basc took to the course at Sedgefield and won the sponsored Memorial Handicap Chase that was run there. It was the start of a solid career for her.
Stormy Girl
Pistol Basc provided Menzies with her first victory as a trainer, but that wasn’t to be her last. She had increased her yard to around 25 horses by 2016, at which point she took over Howe Hills Stables in County Durham. There, she took over the training of the horses that had previously been trained under John Wade, meaning she suddenly had a much bigger roster. By 2020, she was working with talented horses such as Stormy Girl, who won her first Listed race on the flat, having already won the British EBF Fillies’ Novice Stakes at Carlisle a year earlier.
Return Ticket
Return Ticket as a horse hasn’t always been trained by Rebecca Menzies. In fact, the horse’s first outing under the traineeship of J. M. Jefferson resulted in a healthy third-place finish, which indicated how well the horse was likely to do in the future. Although only three horses took part in the Novices’ Chase that Return Ticket won under Menzies at Sedgefield in 2020, she wasn’t going to complain. Especially because that turned out to be the first of seven wins that the pair enjoyed together prior to his retirement at the end of the 2023 flat racing season, having worked well with Sean Quinlan in the saddle.
