Which Jockeys Have Won the Most British Champion Jockey Titles?

AP McCoy
AP McCoy (Credit Citrus Zest via Wikipedia)

Each year British racing dishes out two awards, one for the jump racing Champion Jockey and another for the flat racing Champion Jockey. The winner of each title is whoever obtains the most wins in British racing over the course of the season, in the respective discipline.

Both awards have been won by some true legends of the sport over the years. This is little surprise as not only are the best jockeys likely to win more often than their rivals, but winning riders are always in high demand. Trainers want to utilise the talents of a top jockey as much as possible so the best never find themselves short of available rides, and typically very good ones at that.

British Jump Racing Champion Jockey

There has officially been a Champion Jockey for jump racing since 1900. From then until 1925, it was the jockey who won the most jump races in the calendar year who scooped the award. From 1926 though, it changed to the rider that landed the most wins during the National Hunt season and this remains the case today.

Despite it being a tough award to win, it has historically not paid out anything in prize money. It was only starting in the 2015/16 season that the champion landed themselves a cash reward of £15,000. There were also smaller prizes available, totalling £25k, for riders that finished second to fifth in the rankings.

Most Jump Racing Champion Jockey Titles

  1. AP McCoy close-up
    AP McCoy (Credit Sinn Féin via Flickr)

    AP McCoy (20 wins)

  2. Peter Scuadmore (8 wins)
  3. John Francome / Gerry Wilson (7 wins each)

Seeing the top three list shows you just how dominant Sir Tony ‘AP’ McCoy really was on the National Hunt circuit. Nobody else comes close to matching McCoy’s total of 20 titles, which were all secured consecutively between 1995 and 2015. The sensational run only ended due to retirement, not the fact that someone had finally managed to beat the Northern Irishman. Needless to say, Richard Johnson would have been grateful for the retirement after finishing runner-up to McCoy on no fewer than 16 occasions.

The legendary McCoy also holds the record for the most wins in one season, this being the 289 victories he managed during the 2001/02 campaign. In fact, he is responsible for each of the top four highest numbers of wins recorded by a jockey in a National Hunt season (289, 258, 253, 245). The 2010 Sports Personality of the Year winner ended his career with a massive 4,348 British and Irish jump wins, which at the time was over 1,500 more than the nearest challenger.

British Flat Racing Champion Jockey

Established in 1840, this is the older of the two British Champion Jockey titles. For most of its history, it has covered the traditional flat racing season, running between the Lincoln Handicap and the November Handicap. Major changes were announced in 2015 though which not only saw the award receive a £25,000 prize fund but also saw the qualification period shortened by around eight weeks. Now, only wins between the Guineas Meeting in May and British Champions Day in October count.

For this reason, we are very unlikely to see 200+ wins in one season again as we did with Richard Hughes (208 in 2013) and Kieren Fallon (207 in 2003). Although it seems unusual not to count particular victories, the decision was made to make the championship more attractive. This is because either end of the season sees few big meetings and top jockeys are not keen on chasing low-grade wins just for the sake of an award.

Most Flat Racing Champion Jockey Titles

    1. Gordon Richards
      Gordon Richards (Credit Wikipedia)

      Gordon Richards (20 wins)

    2. Nat Flatman/George Fordham (14 wins)
    3. Fred Archer (13 wins)

The competition for the all-time leading Flat Racing Champion Jockey is rather more competitive with seven riders in total enjoying a double-digit total. That said, we may have to wait several decades for a rider to match Gordon Richards’ record of 20 wins. Often regarded as one of, if not the greatest jockey of all time, Richards claimed his first Champion Jockey title in 1925 and the last in 1953. The Telford-born rider’s most prolific season came in 1947, a year he recorded 269 wins – a mark no jockey has managed to beat.

Richards is the only flat jockey ever to receive a knighthood and his overall career record of 4870 wins remains a British record. He does not, however, hold the record for most consecutive flat Champion Jockey titles. Nat Flatman and Fred Archer share this title between them having recorded 13 consecutive wins. Flatman landed the first-ever award with just 50 wins and this highlights just how much busier the modern horse racing schedule is.