Has a jockey ever won BBC Sports Personality of the Year?

Taking place every December, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award highlights those at the height of sporting achievement that year. All sports are eligible though the recipient has to be either British or for their sport to be mostly played in this country. A short list of contenders is drawn up and the general public vote for the eventual winner. A who’s who of sports greats have won the competition – which first took place in 1954 – over the years. Stirling Moss, Henry Cooper, Lennox Lewis, Andy Murrow, the list goes on.

So how has the sport of horse racing fared over this period of time? Well, if we extend the classification to horse / equine sports in general, in the early years of BBC Sports Personality, Show Jumping did especially well. In the very first year it was held, Showjumper Pat Smythe came third and in 1960, Welshman David Broome, another Showjumper won the award.

Horse racing waited the longest time to receive Sports Personality recognition. It wasn’t until 1996 that jockey Frankie Dettori came third in the competition (due to his astonishing achievement of riding all seven winners at Ascot – now known as Frankie’s Magnificent Seven). In 2002 fellow jockey Tony Mccoy joined Frankie by grabbing third spot that year. In 2010, off the back of winning the Grand National riding Don’t Push It, he then went two steps better and became the first and only jockey to have won the Sports Personality of the Year award. In 2013 he against featured, this time placing third again.

With such a stellar career it’s no surprise Tony McCoy received recognition on a national level by sports and especially horse racing fans. The Irishman rode over 4000 winners over the course of his career and he was the British jump racing Champion Jockey a staggering 20 years in a row. Grand National aside, he’s also won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, King George VI Chase, Queen Mother Champion Chase and countless other high profile races. In 2016 Mccoy was knighted, making him Sir Anthony Peter McCoy.

In 2021, jockey Rachael Blackmore became the first woman to ever win the Aintree Grand National on Minella Times (shamefully it wasn’t until the late 70s that the first female jockey even took part in the Grand National) . This was fresh from winning the Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. Rachael does most of her racing in Ireland and looks a certainty to win the RTÉ Sports Person of the Year (the Irish version of Sports Personality). Unfortunatel Rachael Blackmore was ineligible for consideration for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2021 accolade.

Fast forwarding to 2024 and jockeys are not exactly at the front of the pack for the title, with Hollie Doyle seem as a very remote possibility at 100-1. Currently favourite is, understandably really, young darts supremo Luke Littler. Another recently thrown into the mix too is ‘Hardest Geezer’ Russ Cook who completed a 10k mile trek across the length of Africa.