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.

It would be fair to say that Killarney native Oisin Murphy has experienced his fair share of trials and tribulations since attracting the attention of the wider racing public on September 21, 2013. Having just turned 18, and still an apprentice, claiming 5lb, he rode a high-profile four-timer on Ayr Gold Cup Day and has continued to make headlines, for one reason or another, ever since.

Champion apprentice in 2014, under the tutelage of Andrew Balding, Murphy became retained rider for one of the most powerful owners in the sport, Qatar Racing, in 2016. The following year, he recorded the first of his 23 Group 1 victories worldwide, the Prix de la Foret at Chantilly on Aclaim, trained by Martyn Meade. Back in Britain, he went on to become champion jockey three years running, in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

However, despite his talent in the saddle, Murphy has repeatedly fallen foul of the governing body, the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), for disciplinary offences. Most recently, in December 2021, he voluntarily handed in his licence in the face of five charges, two of which related to failed breath tests, brought by the BHA and ultimately served a 14-month ban until February 2023.

Of course, John Francome and Peter Scudamore were legendary jockeys who, between them, dominated the National Hunt Jockeys’ Championship between the late seventies and the early nineties. Indeed, between 1975/76 and 1991/92, apart from Tommy Stack, in 1976/77, and Jonjo O’Neill twice, in 1977/78 and 1979/80, one or the other of them won the jockeys’ title.

Francome was employed, for the whole of his riding career, by another luminary of the sport, Fred Winter, at Uplands Stables, in Upper Lambourn, Berkshire. Having succeeded Richard Pitman as stable jockey in 1972, he became Champion Jockey for the first time in 1975/76 and went on to win six more titles, in 1978/79, 1980/81, 1981/82 (jointly, with Scudamore), 1982/83, 1983/84 and 1984/85. Francome never won the Grand National, and the Cheltenham Gold Cup just once, on Midnight Court, trained by Winter, in 1978. Nevertheless, he surpassed the previous record for career winners, 1,035, set by Stan Mellor, in May 1984 and, at the time of his retirement, the following April, had amassed a total of 1,138 winners.

Peter Scudamore rode his first winner under National Hunt Rules, as an amateur, in August, 1978, but turned professional shortly afterwards. Reflecting on his illustrious career, during which he became stable jockey to David Nicholson, Fred Winter and Martin Pipe, he once said, ‘He [Francome] made the rest of us feel inadequate’. Nevertheless, any such feeing did not stop Scudamore from becoming Champion Jockey eight times – the aforemention joint-title plus seven in a row between 1985/86 and 1991/92, after Francome retired – and amassing a record 1,678 career winners.