Tag: jockeys

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.

 

 

Who is the most successful female jockey in Britain?

In short, the most successful female jockey in Britain is Hayley Turner OBE who, at the last count, had ridden 834 winners. Turner rode her first winner on Generate, trained by Mark Polglase, in an apprentice handicap at Pontefract on June 4, 2000. Five years later, at the age of 22, Turner became the first female Champion Apprentice, albeit jointly with Saleem Golam; her grand total of 60 winners was more than enough to see her past the 95 required to ride out her claim.

Thereafter, Turner has recorded several notable ‘firsts’ in her long, illustrious career. In 2008, she became the first female jockey to ride a hundred winners in a season. Three years later, she became the first female jockey to ride a Group One winner, when partnering Dream Ahead, trained by David Simcock, to victory in the Darley July Cup at Newmarket in July, 2011. Turner retired from riding at the end of the 2015 season but, shortly after being awarded an OBE for services to horse racing in June, 2016, briefly returned to the saddle to ride for the ‘Girls’ team in the Shergar Cup at Ascot.

Thereafter, Turner pursued an abortive career as a television presenter before returning to riding, full-time, in 2018, at the age of 35. In 2019, she became just the second female jockey, and the first for 32 years, to win a race at Royal Ascot.

On 10th April 2021, Rachael Blackmore won the Aintree Grand National on Minella Times; the first female jockey to ever do so. This was off the back of a Champions Hurdle win at the Cheltenham Festival (also becoming the first woman to win the Ruby Trophy for leading Cheltenham jockey in the process). As such Rachael Blackmore certainly has a claim to be called the most successful female jockey in Britain.

How many times has Ryan Moore won the Derby?

Ryan Moore was crowned Champion Jockey in 2006, 2008 and 2009 and would surely have won the jockeys’ title in 2007, too, but for a broken right arm, sustained in a fall at Lingfield in March that year, which kept him out of action for three months. Nevertheless, Moore still finished third in the jockeys’ championship and, that November, became stable jockey to Sir Michael Stoute.

Indeed, three years later, in 2010, Ryan Moore rode his first Derby winner, Workforce, owned by Prince Khalid Abdullah and trained by Stoute. Sent off at 6/1 joint-third favourite for the Epsom Classic, the King’s Best colt made short work of the opposition, winning by seven lengths and, in so doing, beating the previous track record set by Lammtarra fifteen years earlier.

Workforce went on to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp but, in 2011, Moore was widely expected to become stable jockey to Aidan O’Brien at Balldoyle, County Tipperary, Ireland. That move failed to materialise as anticipated, but Moore continued his informal, but nonetheless effective, association with O’Brien, which would yield numerous Group One and Grade One victories in Britain, Ireland and the United States. Indeed, O’Brien supplied Moore with his second Derby winner, Ruler Of The World, who maintained his unbeaten record by defeating eleven rivals, including better-fancied stable companion Battle Of Marengo, in the 2013 renewal.

How many winners did Brian Hughes ride in 2019/20?

In Britain, the 2019/20 National Hunt season was originally due to end on April 25, but concluded prematurely, on March 18, when the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) announced that all horse racing would be suspended until the end of April, at the earliest, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, Brian Hughes, who is based in Cleveland in North East England, rode 141 winners, 19 more than his nearest rival, Richard Johnson, to win the Jump Jockeys’ Championship for the first time. Indeed, Hughes became the first jockey other than Johnson or Sir Anthony McCoy to win the title since 1995/96 and the first northern-based jockey to do so since Jonjo O’Neill in 1979/80.

Originally from County Armagh, Northern Ireland, Hughes, 34, was Champion Conditional Jockey in 2007/08, but achieved his best seasonal tally as a fully-fledged professional in 2018/19, when he rode 146 winners. However, even in the abbreviated 2019/20 season, Hughes only fell five short of that total and, while Richard Johnson was sidelined for nearly six weeks in January and February with a broken arm, few could deny that the newly-crowned champion fully deserved his success. In fact, Hughes was already three winners ahead when Johnson sustained the injury – he was unseated from his mount, Westend Story, in a novices’ chase at Exeter on January 21 and subsequently kicked by a rival – and, with a career-best strike rate of 20%, his title win was hardly a fluke.

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