No matter where you go in the world to watch horse racing, from Punchestown in Ireland to Melbourne in Australia, there is one constant. Every runner has to have a rider.
Some jockeys become legends, household names even, while others seem to fade out of the zeitgeist, having never really tasted glory, despite their very best efforts.
If I look back on the 2026 Grand National, I could just about name all 34 horses who ran. Admittedly, that’s because I have a vested interest in knowing everything about them. But would I be able to name all 34 riders? Maybe, at a push, but the reality is that some only ever get one shot at those Aintree fences.
Others, however, return year after year, chasing that life-changing win, and as is the case with modern racing, some will succeed, the majority will not.
So just who are the men and women that have shaped racing as we know it? Well, it depends on where you look.
George Stevens – The Grand National Specialist
When it comes to the Grand National, George Stevens still holds a record nobody has managed to match. He won the race five times, more than any other jockey in history, with victories in 1856, 1863, 1864, 1869, and 1870.
Those wins came on four different horses: Freetrader, Emblem, Emblematic, and The Colonel, with The Colonel giving him back‑to‑back successes at the end of his Aintree career.
Riding in the mid‑19th century, Stevens was competing in a very different version of the National from the one we know today. There were fewer runners, a smaller crowd, and while odds were available, they were nothing like the wall‑to‑wall prices, offers, and markets we can trawl through now, the sort you see if you review the bonus selection on a modern betting platform.
With his repeat wins, including two separate spells of back‑to‑back victories, George Stevens demonstrated that winning the Grand National was not just a matter of luck but a race where experience and a cool head over the fences really mattered. And no Grand National jockey has matched him since.
Ruby Walsh – Cheltenham’s King
If Aintree showcased George Stevens’s nerve, Cheltenham displayed Ruby Walsh’s complete dominance of jump racing’s championship stage. He is the most successful jockey in Cheltenham Festival history, with 59 winners, and he claimed the leading jockey award at the meeting a record 11 times between 2004 and 2017.
Walsh partnered some of the era’s greatest jump horses for trainers Willie Mullins and Paul Nicholls, winning all four of the Festival’s main championship races multiple times, including memorable Cheltenham Gold Cup victories on Kauto Star.
His knack for delivering big-race rides on demand helped turn the Festival into a must-watch event for mainstream sports fans, and it set a benchmark for how a top jockey can dominate a meeting over many years.
Bill Shoemaker – The American Icon
In the United States, Bill Shoemaker became the standard by which modern jockeys were measured.
Over a career spanning four decades, he rode 8,833 winners and held the world record for career victories for 29 years, a mark that defined consistency and longevity at the top level.
Shoemaker was a big-race natural, winning 11 US Triple Crown races across the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes, including four Derby wins, the first of which was on Swaps in 1955, and five Belmont successes.
What makes his story even more remarkable is the fact that he was born weighing just over 1kg and was not expected to survive. But survive he did, and at age 54, became the oldest jockey ever to win the Kentucky Derby aboard the 18-1 outsider Ferdinand in 1986.
Frankie Dettori – The Global Superstar
Frankie Dettori is arguably the face of modern international racing. Famous for his flying dismounts and charismatic interviews, he has also compiled a serious record in the world’s biggest races, winning many of the top Group 1 events in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America.
Dettori has been crowned Longines World’s Best Jockey three times, in 2015, 2018, and 2019, reflecting his haul of Group and Grade 1 wins across multiple jurisdictions.
His “Magnificent Seven” at Ascot, when he won all seven races on a single card, helped drag racing into the wider sporting conversation and showed how a jockey’s personality and global schedule can turn them into an international ambassador for the sport.
Rachael Blackmore – The Trailblazer
Rachael Blackmore has rewritten what is possible for women in jump racing. In 2021, she became the first female jockey to win the Grand National when she partnered Minella Times to victory at Aintree, ending a 182‑year wait for a woman to land the world’s most famous steeplechase.
Her breakthrough at Aintree followed a starring role at Cheltenham, where she had already claimed the leading jockey title at the Festival and later became the first woman to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Blackmore’s success has inspired a new generation of riders and fans, proving that at the very highest level, it is judgment, strength, and nerve, not gender, that decide who crosses the line first.
Shaping Today’s Racing
From Walsh’s ice‑cool rides at Cheltenham to Shoemaker’s record-breaking tally, from Dettori’s globe‑trotting Group 1 exploits to Blackmore’s history-making Grand National win, these jockeys helped shape what modern racing looks like.
Across more than 170 years, they raised professional standards, changed how big races are ridden, and opened doors for a wider range of riders and fans.
For a race like the Grand National, their influence is obvious, and as modern stars follow in their footsteps, the legacies of these legendary jockeys continue to be felt every time the tapes go up, whether at Aintree, Cheltenham, Churchill Downs, or any of the world’s great racecourses.
