Jockey of the Year

Not too many 50-year-old riders have emulated the inaugural winner in 1967, Doug Smith, but this category has a most star-studded roll of honour across all the annual racing awards.

On the Flat, in the 1970s names of the winners include Pat Eddery, Joe Mercer and Willie Carson and the following decade begun with a three-year winning streak for the great Lester Piggott. The brilliance of Steve Cauthen in the 1980s helped him pick up a hat-trick and while Carson and Piggott shared four titles apiece it took a great Italian to come dominate the winners’ list.

A teenage Frankie Dettori begun his supremacy at the start of the following decade and by 1996, the year of his iconic ‘Magnificent Seven’, he had already equalled Carson and Piggott’s tally. Kevin Darley and Kieren Fallon enjoyed a double in that period and each made it three in the new millennium.

On the jumps, it took ten years and a history-making ride on Red Rum in 1977 for a jockey to land this prestigious award for a second time. Tommy Stack is one of many legends to feature on the jumps jockeys’ roll of honour which would later include Jonjo O’Neill and Bob Champion.

Between 1983 and 1991 only Chris Grant could deny the prize heading to either Peter Scudamore and John Francome but the more dominant figure in the category would first appear in 1996, with Sir Anthony McCoy enjoying the first of 14 victories. He is the winningmost person across all of the categories at the Derby awards with only Ruby Walsh prying the award away up until 2011.

McCoy also won again when the jumps and flat category merged for six years – and he remains the only jumps rider to win in that period – but recently it has been the girls who have triumphed with Bryony Frost and Rachael Blackmore landing the honour.

The flat and jumps categories were merged between 2012 and 2016 but it was no surprise to see Dettori’s name back on the list when it was restored to its original format. In 2020 history-making Hollie Doyle became the first female rider to win the prize and Oisin Murphy won it back in its merged format.

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