The Racing Home podcast is back! Next week marks the start of the Cheltenham Festival 2025 so in advance of that, we're here with the first episode of a new season of the podcast.

Our guests this week will be familiar to many of you: Lucy Gurney is the current chair of Women in Racing and, alongside Tallulah, is one of the rocks on which Racing Home is built. Tallulah Wilson, Susannah Gill and Eleanor Boden have all joined Naomi on the podcast previously before they had children (Susannah was in fact pregnant at the time of her first appearance!), and if you haven't listened to those then it's well worth checking out Episodes 1, 7 and 11.

All of our guests this week have had babies relatively recently and have now got little people in their lives between the ages of 5 months and 2 years.

Eleanor Boden is Education, Development and Careers Programme Lead for the Horseracing Industry People Board and has a 6 month old son called Angus. She returned to work 10 weeks after having him and changed jobs whilst she was heavily pregnant.

Lucy Gurney is Community Engagement Manager at Racing Together, and, as mentioned, is also the chair of Women in Racing. Her daughter Francesca is just over a year old but was born 6 weeks prematurely. Lucy came back to work recently, just before Fran’s 1st birthday.

Tallulah Wilson is Head of International Partnerships at UK Tote Group and was chair of Women in Racing before Lucy, so she’s also been heavily involved in Racing Home. Her daughter, Otillie, is 9 months old and Tallulah is returning to work right about now.

Susannah Gill also works at the UK Tote Group, where she is Communications and Corporate Affairs Director. As she put it, she has "kept Johnny alive for just over 2 years" but he’s been - again, as Suz put it - in the safe hands of nursery since he was 4 months old, when she returned to work.

These four joined Naomi to discuss what motherhood is REALLY like: having a premature baby, changing jobs whilst heavily pregnant, judgement around the length of your mat leave, and the things that people don't tell you in advance of giving birth.

This was a long conversation so we've split it in two, and Part 2 will be out in a couple of weeks!

Useful links

Check out the Racing Home website here (there's LOADS of useful info there)

Read the Women in Racing and Oxford Brookes research on working mothers in horseracing here

And finally, the Women in Racing website is here too!

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