A busy Saturday at Leopardstown races with Mary Carty, one of the few female bookmakers in the country.
Bookmaking may be a male dominated occupation, but a dearth of female colleagues in her chosen career is not an issue for Kells woman Mary Carty. Bitten by the bug at the age of twelve when she attended her first race meeting.Currently she is the only female bookmaker operating at Leopardstown Racecourse.
Preparation is vital, and an average working day for her starts with a perusal of the Irish Racing Post and The Irish Field newspapers,
It's like a puzzle, you read up the form of the horses.
Mary’s mother was also a bookmaker, running betting offices in the 1960s. When her family came along she went into training greyhounds, before returning to the racecourse in 1979, the first woman bookmaker in modern times to stand up in an all-male dominated sport. So it is not by chance that this Meath woman is where she is today,
I'd say I've inherited it.
The buzz of the racecourse is one of the job’s positives, and the Carty stand in Leopardstown which Mary runs with brothers Donal and Padraig is very much a team effort in a business which is as fast and competitive as it gets,
Some days you win, some days you lose.
This episode of 'Capital D’ was broadcast on 21 September 2006. The reporter is Anne Cassin.
‘Capital D’ was a weekly magazine series which put Dubliners and their lives in the spotlight. Presented by Anne Cassin, it was first broadcast on 29 September 2005 and ran until December 2012.
