Jockey

Bryony Frost is, of course, the daughter of Grand National-winning jockey Jimmy Frost and has made a habit of making her own headlines since riding her first winner under Rules, Current Event, trained by Rose Loxton, in a hunters’ chase at Musselburgh on February 1, 2015. Two years later she turned professional and, on March 14, 2019, won the Ryanair Chase on Frodon, trained by Paul Nicholls, thereby becoming the first female jockey to ride a Grade 1 winner, over hurdles or fences, at the Chelteham Festival. On December 26, 2020, she won the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park on the same horse, therby becoming the first feamle jockey to win that race, too.

Champion conditional jockey in 2018/19, Frost rode 50 winners from 307 rides that campaign and amassed £988,839 in total prize money, making it the most successful, numerically and financially, so far. More recently, her riding career has been interrupted by a high-profile disciplinary case, which eventually saw fellow jockey Robbie Dunne banned for ten months for bullying and intimidation and a serious back injury sustained in a fall at Aintree in April 2022, which kept her sidelined for six months. The 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons yielded just 29 and 26 winners, from 177 and 183 rides, respectively, and her last Graded winner was Knappers Hill in the Grade 2 Select Hurdle at Sandown Park in April 2023.

Born in Nottingham on January 3, Hayley Turner has blazed a trail for female jockeys more or less ever since riding her first winner, Generate, in a lowly Class F apprentice series handicap at Pontefract on June 4, 2000. Joint champion apprentice, alongside Saleem Golam, in 2005, she rode out her claim later in that campaign and, in 2008, became the first female jockey to ride 100 winners in a calendar year, courtesy of Mullitovermaurice in a claiming stakes race at Wolverhampton on December 30 that year.

On July 9, 2011, Turner won the July Cup at Newmarket on Dream Ahead, trained by David Simcock, thereby becoming the first female jockey in history to win a Group 1 race outright. She retired from race-riding in 2015 and joined ITV Racing in 2017, but was back in the saddle in 2008. Indeed, Turner made history again when, on November 21, 2023, she reached the milestone of 1,000 winners – making her the first British female jockey to do so – on Tradesman, also trained by Simcock, in a handicap at Chelmsford. Aside from Dream Ahead, she also has a further two Group 1 or Grade 1 wins to her name, and half a dozen Group wins in total.

Born in Ivington, near Leominster, Herefordshire on October 11, 1996, Hollie Doyle rode her first winner under Rules, the Mongoose, in a lady amateur riders’ handicap at Salisbury on May 5, 2013, while still at school. Fast forward a decade or so and the ‘Pocket Rocket’, as Doyle is affectionately known, is firmly established at the top of her profession.

One of the strongest, most reliable and hardest-working jockeys in the weighing room, Doyle has made a habit of breaking records during her career. In 2019, for example, she rode 116 winners, thereby beating the previous record for winners in a calendar year by a British female jockey, 106, set by Josephine Gordon two years previously. Doyle beat her won record in 2020, with 150 winners and again in 2021, with 172.

Officially stable to jockey to Archie Watson in Upper Lambourn, with a retainer for Imad Al Sagar, Doyle nonetheless receives plenty of support from elsewhere, not least from Alan King and Richard Spencer, and remains a bona fide for the 2024 British Flat Jockeys’ Championship. In 2023, she finished fifth, behind William Buick, Oisin Murphy, Rossa Ryan and her husband, Tom Marquand (whom she married in March 2022), with 89 winners.

Rachael Blackmore will, of course, always be best remembered as the first female jockey to win the Grand National, which she did in the famous green and gold colours of John P. McManus, aboard Minella Times, trained by Henry De Bromhead, on April 10, 2021. However, while the Oscar gelding may have given her what she later described as ‘the best day in racing I’ve had’, winning the world famous steeplechase was just the latest in a series of notable achievements for the Killenaule native. Indeed, just weeks earlier she had won the Champion Hurdle, on Honeysuckle, also trained by De Bromhead, and the Ruby Walsh Trophy, awarded to the leading jockey at the Cheltenham Festival, making her the first of her sex to do either.

Blackmore rode her first winner under Rules, Stowaway Pearl, in a lady riders’ handicap at Thurles on February 10, 2011, but turned professional in 2015 and, in 2016/17, became the first female jockey to win the conditional jockeys’ title in her native Ireland. On home soil, she enjoyed here most successful season in 2021/22, when she rode 92 winners and amassed €1,937,170 in prize money. Thus far, she has a total of 32 Grade 1 wins to her name, the most recent of which was the Queen Mother Champion Chase at the Cheltenham Festival on Captain Guinness, also trained by De Bromhead, on March 13, 2024.

Joint champion apprentice, alongside David Probert, as long ago as 2008, Norwegian-born William Buick subsequently became stable jockey to now five-time champion trainer John Gosden between 2010 and 2014, before being offered a lucrative retainer with the powerful Godolphin organisation, under the auspices of Sheikh Mohammed, in 2015. A first jockey to top Godolphin trainer Charlie Appleby, who is based at Moulton Paddocks in Newmarket, Buick won the British Flat Jockeys’ Championship for the first time in 2022 and retained his title in 2023.

Indeed, his 2022 total of 157 winners – in the ‘window’ between the Guineas Festival at Newmarket in early May and British Champions Day at Ascot in October, on which the championship is nowadays decided – left him fully 60 winners ahead of his nearest rival. His 2023 total, of 135 winners in the same period, has not gone unnoticed by the bookmakers either and, at the time of writing, the 35-year-old is a top-priced 8/13 to win his third jockeys’ title in a row.

Again at the time of writing, Buick has a total of 78 Group 1 victories, worldwide, to his name. He has ridden four British Classic winners, namely Arctic Cosmos, Masked Marvel and Hurricane Lane in the St. Leger in 2010, 2011 and 2021 respectively and Masar in the Derby in 2018.