Category: Jockeys

It’s often stated that the history of Royal Ascot dates back over 300 years but, in all that time, just three female jockeys have ridden a winner at the Royal meeting. Back in the days when, as she put it, ‘it was particularly snobby…and a woman riding at Royal Ascot was unheard of’, Gay Kelleway was the first to do so. In 1987, she took advantage of testing conditions by adopting catch-me-if-you-can tactics on confirmed mudlark Sprowston Boy, trained by her late father, Paul, to win the Queen Alexandra Stakes.

Remarkably, though, it was not until 2019 that Hayley Turner partnered the aptly-named Thanks Be to a narrow victory in the Sandringham Stakes to join Gay Kelleway on the Royal Ascot roll of honour. Lo and behold, the following year she won the same race again on Onassis, who was trained, like Thanks Be, by Charlie Fellowes. The following day, in the style of ‘London buses’, rising star Hollie Doyle partnered Scarlet Dragon, trained by Alan King, to victory in the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes, thereby becoming the third female jockey in history to ride a Royal Ascot winner.

‘Greatest’ is obviously a subjective term, but few would disagree that Sir Gordon Richards was one of the greatest jockeys and, arguably, the greatest jockey, of all time. Born in Shropshire in 1904, Richards was the first jockey to ride 4,000 winners and, upon his retirement in 1954, his career total of 4,870 winners was, at the time, a world record and remains a British record. Indeed, in the 1947 season alone, Richards rode 269 winners, thereby setting another record, which would stand until 2002, when broken by Sir Anthony McCoy.

McCoy, who rode 289 winners in the 2001/02 National Hunt season, later reflected on his career, saying, ‘Breaking Sir Gordon Richards’ record will always be my greatest achievement, nothing is even close.’

All told, Richards rode for 34 seasons, between 1921 and 1954, and became Champion Jockey on a record 26 occasions. In 1953, he was knighted in recognition of his services to horse racing – making him the first jockey to be conferred such an honour – and celebrated by winning the Derby for the one and only time, after 27 previous attempts, on Pinza. Lester Piggott, one of the few jockeys worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Sir Gordon Richards, rode the first of his record nine Derby winners, Never Say Die, the following year.

When she made a winning racecourse debut, as a 16-year-old amateur, in a lowly 0-65 lady riders’ handicap at Salisbury on May 5, 2013, few could have predicted that, eight years later, Hollie Doyle would be quoted at a top-priced 5/1 to win the 2021 Flat Jockeys’ Championship. However, Doyle who stands just 5′ tall and can ride at the minimum weight of 8st 0lb – hence her nickname, ‘The Pocket Rocket’ – has enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top of her profession.

In November, 2017, Doyle rode the 95^th winner of her career, thereby riding out her claim. Two seasons later, in 2019, she became just the third female jockey, after Hayley Turner and Josephine Gordon, to ride a hundred winners in a calendar year, setting a new record with 116 wins. The following October she broke her own record and went on to rack up a total of 151 winners in 2020 as a whole; between the Guineas Festival at Newmarket and British Champions Day at Ascot, she rode 94 winners, finishing fourth in the Flat Jockeys’ Championship.

In July, 2020, Doyle rode her first Group winner and was offered a retainer by owner Imad Al Sagar. In August that year, she rode five winners on the same card at Windsor and, having ridden her first Group One winner on British Champions Day in October, did so again at Kempton in March, 2021. With 53 winners, so far, in 2021, Hollie Doyle must have every chance of becoming the first female Champion Jockey.

Obviously, horse racing takes place in numerous jurisdictions worldwide and, as such, it can be difficult to keep track of which jockeys have ridden how many winners on a single day down the years. However, the world record for the most winners on a single day, on a single racecourse, is believed to be held by Panamanian-born jockey Eddie Castro. On June 4, 2005 at Calder, Florida, Castro rode nine winners on a 13-race card; in so doing, he equalled the feat achieved by Chris Cantley on October 31, 1987, but Cantley rode five winners at Aqueduct, New York in the afternoon and four at Meadowlands, New Jersey in the evening for his total of nine.

Elsewhere in the world, on September 6, 2013, Brazilian-born jockey Joao Moreira rode eight winners from as many rides on a nine-race card at Kranji, Singapore; he was ineligible for the remaining race on the card, an apprentices’ event. In Britain, Italian-born Lanfranco ‘Frankie’ Dettori hit the headlines when, on September 28, 1996, he rode all seven winners on the ‘Festival of British Racing’ card at Ascot. More recently, on October 15, 2012, Richard Hughes also rode seven winners, albeit from eight rides, at Windsor.