Born in Dublin on September 24, 1970, Joseph ‘Joe’ Fanning has the dubious distinction of being the most prolific jockey never to have won the Flat Jockeys’ Championship. On September 23, 2023, he rode Capital Theory, trained by Charlie Johnston, to victory at Ayr, thereby taking his career tally to 2,811 winners. In so doing, he moved ahead of Joe Mercer, into seventh place, on the all-time list, on which he is preceded by Sir Gordon Richards, Pat Eddery, Lester Piggott, Willie Carson, Doug Smith and Frankie Dettori, who collectively won 61 jockeys’ titles.
A graduate of the Racing Academy and Centre of Education (RACE) at the Curragh, Co. Kildare, Fanning moved from Ireland to Britain in 1988, becoming apprenticed to Tommy ‘Squeak’ Fairhurst in Middleham, North Yorkshire. Originally a National Hunt jockey, he rode his first winner on British soil, Holdenby, in a handicap hurdle at Sedgefield on November 14, 1989. However, two fractured vertebrae sustained in a first-flight fall from Pansong in a selling hurdle at Newcastle on March 19. 1990 prompted a change of heart. Fanning stayed with Fairhurst for the better part of four years, but, in 1990, began an association with another Middleham trainer, Mark Johnston, who had moved to Kingsley Park in 1988.
The association with Johnston would become formalised in 1995, but it was not until 1999 that Fanning managed to ride over 50 winners in a season and not until 2006 that he managed over 100 winners. Nvevertheless, he has remained at Kingsley Park for nearly three decades and remains stable jockey to Charlie Johnston, who now holds the licence outright, having previously shared it with his father. Fanning enjoyed his most successful season, numerically, in 2012, when he rode 188 winners, and he has three Group 1 winners to his name, the most significant of which was Subjectivist in the Gold Cup at Ascot on June 17, 2021.
