Hollie Doyle is something of a legend in British flat racing, setting the bar for women in the discipline. In 2019, for example, she set a new record for the number of wins in a single season by a female rider. She went further in 2022, becoming the first female jockey to win one of the French Classics, as well as being the first to win a European Group 1 Classic.
In the Flat Jockeys’ Championship she came joint-second, which was the highest finish for a woman at the time. She has won some major races during her career, developing relationships with horses, such as Glen Shiel, Trueshan, and Nashwa.
About Hollie Doyle
In some ways, Hollie Doyle was always destined to get into horse racing on account of the fact that she comes from a racing background. Both of her parents were riders, with her father, Mark Doyle, having been a jockey himself in Clonmel. Her mother Caroline, meanwhile, rode in Arab horse races. When she was growing up, the Doyle family lived in Herefordshire and had both ponies and point-to-point races at home. Hollie was a member of the Radnorshire & West Herefordshire Pony Club and rode a pony for the first time when she was nine-years-old. Born on the 11th of October 1996, her first ride under rules came when she was 15.
That was when she was still an amateur rider, taking The Mongoose on and winning a race at Salisbury at the first time of asking. That was before she had even taken her GCSEs, which she did later in the year and then went on to join David Evans’ training yard in Wales. In the winter, Doyle left to spent some time in the United States of America, riding track work in California at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia. It was a chance to gain some experience not only of living in another country but also of riding on a regular basis, developing her ability as a jockey prior to heading back to the United Kingdom to carry on working with Evans.
Doyle’s Major Achievements
In 2014, Doyle joined the yard of Richard Hannon as an apprentice jockey, spending the next three years riding out her claim at the Wiltshire base.
Billesdon Bess
In the August of 2017, still working as an apprentice, she rode her first winner in a Listed race thanks to the running of Billesdon Bess, who crossed the line first in the Upavon Fillies’ Stakes. In June 2018, she might have been forgiven for thinking twice about whether riding was really for her, being unseated in a race at Haydock Park that led to her suffering facial injuries. She lost a number of teeth in the incident, but was back riding again just ten days later as she put the incident behind her.
Scarlet Dragon & Dame Malliot
Having seen Josephine Gordon set a record for wins by a female jockey in a single season with 106, Doyle overtook her two years later when she managed 116 victories. Better things were to come, not least thanks to the win that she enjoyed at Royal Ascot in the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes, which was her first win at the meeting. Scarlet Dragon, the horse that she rode to victory, was rated as 33/1 chance, so the performance made the horse racing industry sit up and take notice. A month later and she won her first Group race, taking Dame Malliot home in the Princess of Wales’s Stakes on Newmarket’s July Course.
Trueshan & Glen Shiel
If 2020 wasn’t already a special year for Doyle, it was cemented thanks to the fact that she rode five different winners in the same day at Windsor Racecourse on the 29th of August. In doing so, she became the first female jockey to win five winners on the same card in Britain. A month or so later and she rode her 117th winner, breaking her own record from the year before for winners in a single season. When Champions Day rolled around at Ascot, she became the first female rider to take home a winner when Trueshan won the Long Distance Cup, followed by a first Group 1 win in the Champions Sprint with Glen Shiel.
Nashwa
Within a year of having achieved a five-carder, and having set the record for a female jockey in the Flat Jockeys’ Championship by finishing fourth, Doyle rode another five-carder. This time it was at Kempton Park, with her first run in a Classic coming a few months later. She finished ninth from 14 runners in the Oaks, making her the first woman to place in the prize money in one of the British Classics. By the end of the year she would have ridden 121 winners, which was another record, only to surpass that in 2021. Another record came on the third of June 2022 when she rode Nashwa to third in the Oaks, setting a Classic record.
Shavasana & Bradsell
A couple of weeks later and Doyle broke another record, this time becoming the first female jockey to win a European Group 1 Classic when Nashwa won the Prix de Diane at Chantilly. She continued to win Group 1 races throughout the year and came joint-second in the Flat Jockeys’ Championship. In spite of suffering an injury at the start of 2023, she saddled her second European Classic winner when Shavasana won the Oaks d’Italia at Milan’s San Siro Racecourse. In the same month she became the first female rider to win a Group 1 race at Royal Ascot thanks to Bradsell’s win in the King’s Stand Stakes.
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