Born in Heywood, Preston on May 11, 1957, Jimmy Bleasdale did not come from a racing background, but harboured the ambition to become a jockey from an early age. As a 16-year-old, he became apprenticed to Sam Hall at Spigot Lodge in Middleham, North Yorkshire – on the recommendation of neighbouring trainer Tommy Fairhurst – and, after attending the Levy Board Apprentice School, duly made a winning racecourse debut on Croisette at Redcar on April 24, 1975.

After riding three winners from 24 rides in his first season and 17 from 99 in his second, Bleasdale rode 67 winners in 1977, including the Ebor Handicap at York – arguably the highest-profile victory of his career – on Move Over, trained by Jack Calvert, on his way to becoming champion apprentice. Sam Hall died that year and Bleasdale opted to remain loyal to his successor, Chris Thornton, at Spigot Lodge, rather than heading south to further his career.

However, Bleasdale never really fulfilled his earlier potential. The combination of a virus at Spigot Lodge and a series of falls, including a particularly serious one at Haydock Park in 1981, which would ultimately sound the death knell for his competitive riding career, limited his opportunities. In what he later described as a ‘horrible experience’, his mount, Bally Seal, fell fatally and, in so doing, threw head first into a concrete post, putting him out of action for four months. Bleasdale recovered sufficiently to continue riding for another decade, with no little success, including back-to-back victories in the Singapore Derby at Bukit Timah on Andermatt in 1983 and Win-Em-All in 1984.

In 1991, the onset of epilepsy, as a result of brain damage suffered in his earlier fall, meant that Bleasdale was not longer allowed to ride competitively. At the time of his retirement, he had ridden 414 winners.

Born in Old Chesterton, Cambridgeshire on September 24, 1837, George Fordham was a force majeure in British Flat racing in the second half of the nineteenth century. All told, he was Champion Jockey 14 times in the 17-year period between 1855 and 1871, including the final title that he shared with Charlie Maidment in 1871. When he retired from the saddle, for the second and final time, in 1884, he had ridden a total of 2,587 winners, including 14 British Classic winners.

Indeed, over a century and a quarter after his death, on October 12, 1887, Fordham remains the most successful jockey in the history of the 1,000 Guineas, having won the first fillies’ Classic of the season a total of seven times, on Mayonnaise (1859), Nemesis (1861), Siberia (1865), Formosa (1868), Scottish Queen (1869), Thebais (1881) and Hauteur (1883). He also won the Oaks five times, the 2,000 Guineas three times and, famously, his one and only Derby – having recovered from alcoholism and near bankruptcy – on St Bevys, owned by Lionel de Rothschild, in 1879, at the age of 41.

Fordham had just turned 14 when he rode his first winner, Hampton, for Lewes-based trainer Richard Drewitt, in the Trial Stakes at Brighton in October 1851. However, he first received wider attention when, in 1853, he rode Little David to a wide-margin victory in the Cambridgeshire Handicap at Newmarket. The following season, Fordham won the Chester Cup, or the Chester Tradesman’s Cup, as the race was known at the time, on Epaminondas, owned by Captain Douglas Lane, and the one after that, 1855, won his first jockeys’ title with a relativelylow seasonal total of 70 winners.

Popularly known as ‘Demon’ because of his success, Fordham was, nonetheless, a handsome, modest and good-natured, renowned for his scrupulous honesty and aversion to gambling. Failing health forced his first retirement in 1875, but he returned to the saddle to win the sforementioned Derby in 1879 and rode the best part of another 500 winners vefore hanging up his boots for good.

Born in Shottesbrook, near Maidenhead, Berkshire on November 21, 1917, Douglas ‘Doug’ Smith was one of the finest jockeys of the twentieth century, although his achievements were overshadowed, to some extent, by his illustrious contemporaries Sir Gordon Richards and Lester Piggott. Nevertheless, having finished runner-up behind Richards in the Flat Jockeys’ Championship seven times, he won his first jockeys’ title in 1954, following Richards’ retirement, and proceeded to win four more in the next five years, a sequence interrupted only by Arthur ‘Scobie’ Breasley in 1957.

Smith retired at the end of the 1967 Flat season, with a total of 3,112 winners to his name. His career tally included four British Classic winners, namely Hypericum, owned by King George VI, in the 1,000 Guineas, in 1946, Our Babu and Pall Mall, owned by Queen Elizabeth II, in the 2,000 Guineas in 1955 and 1958, respectively, and Petite Etoile in the 1,000 Guineas, again, in 1959. In 1949, he also had the distinction of winning the Stayers’ Triple Crown – that is, the Gold Cup at Ascot, Goodwood Cup and Doncaster Cup – on Alciydon, owned by the Earl of Derby. Smith also remains the most successful jockey in the history the Cesarewitch Handicap at Newmarket, having won what is now the second leg of the traditional ‘Autumn Double’ half a dozen times between 1939 and 1966.

Following his retirement from the saddle, Smith turned to training, famously saddling the 1969 Oaks winner, Sleeping Partner, owned by Lord Derby. However, his life subsequently descended into chronic alcoholism, which led to him giving up training a decade later. On April 11, 1989, having been unable to cure the disease, despite repeated hospital stays, Smith committed suicide by drowning himself in the swimming pool at his home in Newmarket. He was 71 years old.

Born in Spennymoor, County Durham on August 11, 1994, Connor Beasley is, frankly, lucky to be alive, never mind riding 53 winners in 2024, so far, after a horrific incident at Wolverhampton on July 7, 2015. On that occasion, his mount, Cumbrianna, clipped heels and fell, fatally, two furlongs from home in a six-furlong handicap at Dunstall Park, catapulting him into the ground. Knocked unconscious, Beasley was airlifted to Royal Stoke University Hospital, where he was found to have suffered a fractured skull, fractured vertebrae and a brain haemorrhage. Following a 10-hour operation and an extended period of rehabilitation, he made a remarkable recovery resumed his riding career on March 26, 2016, less than nine months later.

Beasley is the grandson of Bobby Beasley, who, as assistant trainer to Arthur Stephenson, ran a satellite yard at Leasingthorne, near Bishop Auckland, and whom the jockey cited as ‘one of the main reasons I got into racing’. After a spell with local trainer Tracy Waggott, in early 2012, Beasley joined Michael Dods in Denton, near Darlington, and rode his first winner for the yard, the prophetically-named Osteopathic Remedy, in a handicap at Ayr on September 21, 2012.

All told, Beasely rode two, 34 and 61 winners in his first three seasons, riding out his claim on Major Rowan, trained by Brian Smart, in a low-grade handicap at Southwell on December 13, 2014, before disaster struck in his first season as a fully-fledged professional. Nevertheless, on his return to action, he rode as series of ‘black type’ winners, courtesy of Alpha Delphini, Alicante Dawn and Nameitwhatyoulike, all trained by Smart, in August and September 2016. In 2019 and 2020, Beasley recorded five high-profile victories on Dakota Gold, trained by Dods, and more recently, in 2021 and 2022, won back-to-back renewals of the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood on stabel companion Commanche Falls.