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In a riding career spanning five decades, Lester Piggott had the distinction of becoming Champion Jockey 11 times and is, quite rightly, regarded as one of the greatest jockeys in the history of British Flat racing. Piggott became an overnight sensation when, in 1954, as an 18-year-old, he became the youngest jockey ever to win the Derby, on Never Say Die, trained by Joe Lawson. A reckless boy wonder, he was suspended for the rest of the season after riding the same horse to finish fourth in the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot but, on his return, succeeded Sir Gordon Richards as first jockey to Noel Murless.

 

Piggott was Champion Jockey for the first time in 1960, the year in which he won the Derby for a third time – and the second time for Murless, after Crepello in 1957 – on St. Paddy, and partnered 170 winners in total. The Murless-Piggott partnership continued – with further jockeys’ titles for Piggott in 1964 and 1965 – until, in 1966, the 30-year-old champion insisted on riding the eventual winner, Valoris, trained by Vincent O’Brien, in the Oaks. The decision left Murless adamant that, in future, he would look elsewhere for a partner for his horses, while Piggott announced, in typically laconic style, that he would ride as a freelance jockey.

 

Nevertheless, the ‘Long Fellow’, as Piggott was affectionately known, enjoyed the most successful of his career, numerically, in 1966, with 190 winners. Unsurprisingly, he became Champion Jockey for the third year running, and the fourth time in all, and didn’t relinquish his position at the top of the jockeys’ table until 1972, when he finished fourth behind Willie Carson, Tony Murray and Edward Hide, with 103 winners. In 1968, Piggott completed the 2,000 Guineas-Derby double on Sir Ivor, trained by Vincent O’Brien, and won the St. Leger on Ribero, trained by Fulke Johnson Houghton. However, two years later, he partnered Nijinksy, also trained by O’Brien, to victory in the 2,000 Guineas, Derby and St. Leger, making him the first horse since Bayram, in 1935, to win the Triple Crown. Nearly five decades later, the feat has yet to be repeated.

 

Piggott rode two more Derby winners for Vincent O’Brien – Roberto in 1972 and The Minstrel in 1977 – before the pair parted company in 1979, but wouldn’t be Champion Jockey again until 1981. By that time, he’d replaced the retired Joe Mercer as stable jockey at Warren Place, Newmarket, now in the hands of Noel Murless’ son-in-law, Henry Cecil. Piggott won the 1,000 Guineas on Fairy Footsteps, trained by Cecil, and the Oaks on Blue Wind, trained by Dermot Weld and took the jockeys’ title with 179 winners, 65 more than his nearest rival, Willie Carson. He retained the title in 1982, too, with 188 winners.

 

Piggott retired from the saddle, for the first time, at the end of the 1985 season, at the age of 50 but, after an abortive spell in the training ranks and a year detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure for tax evasion – which cost him the OBE he’d been awarded in 1975, and possibly a knighthood – he unexpectedly returned to race riding in 1990. He retired for the second, and final, time in 1995, with 4,493 winners to his name in Britain alone.

Tipperary-born Jamie Spencer has the distinction of having been Champion Jockey on both sides of the Irish Sea. Indeed, despite being a relative latecomer to racing, Spencer quickly proved himself a naturally gifted horseman with a quiet, but highly effective, riding style.

 

In 1998, while still apprenticed to Liam Browne at the Curragh, Co. Kildare, and a month shy of his eighteenth birthday, he rode Tarascon, trained by Tommy Stack, to victory in the Irish 1,000 Guineas, thereby becoming the youngest jockey ever to win a Classic. The following year, Spencer rode 46 winners to become Champion Apprentice in Ireland and, five years later, after replacing Mick Kinane as stable jockey to Aidan O’Brien at Ballydoyle, became Champion Jockey in Ireland with 93 winners.

 

After a less-than-stellar year, which included the disqualification of Arlington Million winner, Powerscourt, for interference, his appointment with the perennial Champion Trainer in Ireland lasted only until 2005, when he was replaced as stable jockey by Kieren Fallon. Undaunted, Spencer moved to Britain and joined Luca Cumani in Newmarket, where his riding career continued to flourish. In fact, in his debut season in his adopted country, he racked up 180 winners and over £2.3 million in prize money to become Champion Jockey at his first attempt.

 

By the end of June, he’d already won nine Listed or Pattern races on both sides of the Irish Sea, including the Greenham Stakes at Newbury, the Classic Trial at Sandown, the Duke of York Stakes at York and the Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot. The second half of the season was equally productive, with ten more Listed or Pattern race victories in Britain, including Group 1 wins on Goodricke, trained by David Loder, in the Sprint Cup at Haydock and David Junior, trained by Brian Meehan, in the Champion Stakes at Ascot.

 

Spencer was Champion Jockey again, at least jointly, in 2007. However, on that occasion, despite riding 190 winners – the average for the previous decade, which included his own previous title-winning year, was 182 winners – he had to wait until the very last race of the season to draw level with Seb Sanders in the race for the jockeys’ title. Even so, Spencer described the dead-heat as ‘the best result that could have happened for racing’. Aside from his final win on Inchnadamph, who surged clear in the closing stages to win by 8 lengths, his seasonal highlights also included a couple of ‘textbook’ Spencer rides, one on Red Evie in the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury and another on Zidane in the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood.

The late Patrick James John “Pat” Eddery, who died in 2015, at the premature age of 63, after a long period of ill health, was the second most successful jockey, numerically, in the history of British horse racing. Between 1969 and 2003, Eddery rode 4,633 domestic winners, placing him behind only Sir Gordon Richards (4,870) in the all-time list, and ahead of Lester Piggot (4,493); like Piggott, he was Champion Jockey 11 times.

 

In 1966, on his fourteenth birthday, Eddery was formally apprenticed to one of the legendary names of the Irish turf, Seamus McGrath, at Glencairn, near Leopardstown racecourse. His first ride in public, at the Curragh in August, 1967, finished last of seven but, following a move to Herbert ‘Frenchie’ Nicholson – a successful trainer renowned for his ‘academy’ of young riders, but a notoriously hard taskmaster – at Cheltenham, Eddery eventually rode his first winner, Alvaro, at Epsom in April, 1969.

 

Nevertheless, Eddery became Champion Apprentice in 1971 with 71 winners and, in 1972, was offered the position of stable jockey with Peter Walwyn at Seven Barrows in Lambourn, Berkshire.In 1974, Eddery rode 148 winners, including his first British Classic winner, Polygamy, trained by Walwyn, in the Oaks at Epsom, to become Champion Jockey for the first time. At the age of 22, he was, in fact, the youngest Champion Jockey since Sir Gordon Richards won the first of his 26 jockeys’ titles in 1925.

 

The Walwyn-Eddery partnership, which lasted for eight years, yielded three more jockeys’ titles in a row for Eddery, in 1975, 1976 and 1977. The best horse Walwyn trained in that period was Grundy who, in 1975, won the Derby, the Irish Derby and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes and was named British Horse of the Year. The latter race, in which Grundy, ridden by Eddery, was involved in a thrilling, head-to-head duel with Bustino, ridden by Joe Mercer, up the straight, eventually winning by half a length, was justifiably dubbed ‘The Race of the Century’.

 

Eddery did not become Champion Jockey again until 1986, the year in which he replaced Greville Starkey as the jockey of Dancing Brave, owned by Prince Khalid Abdullah and trained by Guy Harwood. In the absence of the injured Starkey, Eddery rode Dancing Brave to victory in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes and kept the ride in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe later that season. In the latter contest, Eddery produced a magnificent riding performance; one that would, ultimately, define his career. Employing exaggerated waiting tactics, Eddery was virtually last entering the straight but, having made up ground from a seemingly impossible position, challenged widest, and latest, of all, to win by 1½ lengths in record time.

 

The following season, 1987, Eddery accepted a retainer from Prince Khalid Abdullah and their partnership, which lasted until 1994, yielded five more jockeys’ titles, in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1993. In fact, in 1990, Eddery recorded his highest ever seasonal aggregate, of 209 winners, making him the first jockey since Sir Gordon Richards in 1952 to ride over 200 winners in a season. Highlights of his time in the familiar green, pink and white silks included Quest For Fame, who won the Derby in 1990 and Zafonic, who won the 2,000 Guineas in 1993.

 

Eddery was Champion Jockey, as a freelance, for the eleventh, and final, time in 1996. That year he won 1,000 Guineas on Bosra Sham and the Oaks on Lady Carla, both trained by the late Sir Henry Cecil.

Seb Sanders rode his first winner, Band On The Run, trained by Brian McMahon, in 1990 and was Champion Apprentice in 1995, with 61 winners. However, despite riding out his claim that year and reaching the landmark of a hundred winners in a season for the first time in 1997 – the year in which he also partnered his first Group 1 winner, Compton Place, in the July Cup at Newmarket – Sanders had to wait until 2007 before becoming Champion Jockey for the one and only time.

 

Even then, winning the jockeys’ title was a bittersweet experience because, having started the final day of the turf campaign, November Handicap Day at Doncaster, a single winner ahead of Jamie Spencer, who’d been Champion Jockey in 2005, his younger, more illustrious rival steered the favourite, Inchnadamph, to a ready, 8-length win in the very last race of the season, to tie their seasonal totals at 190 winners each. So, for the first time since 1923, when Steve Donoghue shared the jockeys’ title with Charlie Elliott, there was a dead-heat in the race to become Champion Jockey.

 

Sanders may not have won the jockeys’ title outright, but 2007 was, far and away, the most successful season, numerically, of his riding career, with 213 winners in the calendar year as a whole and over £1.5 million in prize money. His previous best yearly total had been 165 in 2004, the year in which he succeeded George Duffield as stable jockey to Sir Mark Prescott and his subsequent best was 106, in both 2008 and 2009.

 

All in all, Sanders rode over 2,000 winners, reaching a hundred winners in Britain every year between 2002 and 2010 inclusive. The latter years of his riding career were dogged by weight problems, forcing him to ride without boots, of any description, on many occasions. He last rode in Britain at Newmarket in the summer of 2015 and, although he also rode in Qatar in the 2015/16 season, quit the saddle for good in early 2017, opting instead for a role as work rider to Godolphin trainer Charlie Appleby at Moulton Paddocks in Newmarket.