At the time of writing, Callum Rodriguez currently lies tenth in the 2024 Flat Jockeys’ Championship, having ridden 39 winners from 199 rides at a strike rate of 20%. It would be fair to say that the 27-year-old, who rode a a career-best 76 winners in 2021, following by 49 in 2022 and 52 in 2023, has successfully rebuilt his career after testing positive for cocaine at Southwell in February 2019. He was suspended pending an investigation by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) and subsequently banned for six months, such that his season tally for 2019 was limited to just 27 winners.
Born in Newcastle, but raised in Heysham, near Lancaster, Lancashire, Rodriguez fought at national schoolboy level as a boxer, but, at the age of 16, opted to hang up his gloves and focus on a career in horse racing. A graduate of the Northern Racing College (now the National Horseracing College) in Doncaster, he joined Richard Ford, at Lancashire Racing Stables near Garstang, for whom he rode his first winner, Insolenceofsilence, in an apprentice handicap at Hamilton on June 4, 2015. After riding just five and eight winners in his first two seasons, in March 2017, Rodriquez joined Michael Dods in Denton, near Darlington, County Durham. That season he upped his seasonal tally to 39 winners, including Nakeeta, trained by Iain Jardine, in the Ebor Handicap at York.
In 2018, Rodriguez rode 68 winners, reaching the milestone of 95 career wins – and thereby riding out his claim – on Mustaqbal, trained by Dods, in a handicap at Carlisle on September 12, 2018. However, the lack of a weight allowance proved no obstacle to his career; his very next winner, Intense Romance, also trained by Dods, in the Listed Arran Scottish Fillies’ Sprint Stakes at Ayr nine days later, was the first ‘black type’ success of his career. He has since added 10 more, notably including the Group 1 Sprint Cup at Haydock on Regional, trained by Edward Bethell, on Sptember 9, 2023.
