Chinchilla Race Clubs' committee made up entirely of women ahead of exciting 2024 season

A western Queensland race club is leading the way for women in the racing industry with an all-female committee for the first time in its history. Meet them all here.

More women are getting involved in racing across all roles. Chinchilla Cup Day 2016.

In a field often dominated by men, for the first time in its history the Chinchilla Race Club committee is made up entirely of women.

In a committee of seven people the roles of president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, venue co-ordinator, bar co-ordinator and kitchen co-ordinator are all held by women.

Treasurer Kim Merritt said it was amazing to see more women getting involved in racing across all roles.

“When I started working in the racing industry it was less common but recently it is really good to see more females being involved from jockey to trainers, we even had female trainers and jockeys win at the recent race,” she said.

“Our old committee was pretty evenly split between men and women and was mostly made up of couples.

“I don't think the shift has just occurred in racing, I think it is the whole world wanting to be more accepting and understanding that women can do anything men can do.

“I was part of an acceleration program for track riding and typically they used to have more males than females but when I was there 12 out of 12 participants were women.”

L-R Kimberly Merritt, Michelle Gittoes, Col Aspinal, Sandi Suey, Jo Raynor, Christine Merritt, Tracey Handley, Kylie Hindle

The club are coming off their successful first race meet of the year and Ms Merritt said the committee was working well together and looking forward to putting on more exciting events.

“It’s been amazing it has been fair bit of work to get everything back to square one but it is really starting to come together and we have a good team,” she said.

Club president Jo Rayner previously said the new committee were working strong and working to improve the club.

“We are a fairly new committee started in February, and it has been a big learning curve but the team we have now is going to be a progressive and happy committee,” she said.

“The new committee is keen to do new improvements at the track, general maintenance and we are looking to spend some money on the track by putting in new sprinklers.”

Ms Merritt said they were still looking for more people to get involved and help promote racing in the region.

“We are always looking for more woman as well as younger people to get involved, we don’t just want older people we want some younger people with some fresh ideas from 18 all the way up to 80,” she said.

“While we are all women at the moment we are appointing a male caretaker tonight and he will take over from our long term caretaker Col who is retiring.”

The next race meeting will be held on Monday May 20.

Originally published as Chinchilla Race Clubs' committee made up entirely of women ahead of exciting 2024 season