Josephine Gordon, 31, hails from Chittlehampton, Devon and rode her first winner, Chester’slittlegem, trained by Jo Hughes, in an apprentice training series handicap at Bath on September 4, 2013. However, she faced a protracted wait for her second, Shamrock Sheila, trained by Stan Moore (to whom she was apprenticed) in a handicap at the same venue on June 24, 2015.
After riding 16 winners in 2015 as a whole, Gordon rode 87 winners in 2016, including 50 in the qualifying period for the apprentices’ championship. Thus, she became just the third female jockey, after Hayley Turner, who tied with Saleem Golam in 2005, and Amy Ryan in 2012, to win the apprentices’ title. In 2017, Gordon fared better still, riding 106 winners – of which 33 were trained by her principal employer, Hugo Palmer – to become the second female jockey, again after Turner, who rode exactly 100 winners in 2008, to reach a century in a single season.
In 2018, notwithstanding breaking a bone in her left hand in a stalls incident at Ayr in late June, which kept her put of action for nearly a month, her seasonal tally dropped to 56 winners and the following February Gordon left Palmer to go freelance. She has not hit the same heights since, but has over 400 winners to her name, including eight Listed and two Group race winners. Her biggest single payday, though, came during her record-breaking season in 2017, when she won the Victoria Cup at Ascot on Fastnet Tempest, trained by William Haggas.
