Cheltenham Festival Top Jockey

When the Cheltenham Festival rolls around, the first thing most punters think about is which horses they’re going to be betting on. Oftentimes the horses put out by certain trainers will enter the conversation, largely thanks to the fact that some trainers have a much better relationship with the meeting at Prestbury Park than others, so if they’ve got some horses entered into the big races then it’s worth paying attention to.

Something that not everyone thinks about is which jockeys will be riding which horses, which is surprising when you consider that they are arguably the most influential people involved in the Cheltenham Festival. Yes, the trainers work hard to get their horses ready for the races, but once they’re out there it’s down to the jockeys to control how well they run.

Here we’ll look at who have won the Champion Jockey award at Cheltenham in the past, current trends and what they get for winning the award.

Champion Jockeys In The Last Ten Years

Where else to start but by looking at the Top Jockeys from the Festival over the past ten years, with information including how many times they won a race, how many times they came in second and how many times they finished third.  If two or more jockeys are tied on wins the overall champion is the one with the most 2nd and then 3rd place finishes.

Long gone are the days when you could bet on Ruby Walsh to be crowned Champion Jockey and be relatively confident that your bet would come in. Such was Walsh’s ability in the saddle and affinity with the Cheltenham Festival, it was almost pointless considering a wager on anyone else if you knew that he was taking part.

Indeed, it might have been him missing out on the title in 2018 and 2019 that made him consider retirement.  However, Paul Townend has now clearly taken over from Walsh with six top jockey titles, taking his fifth in a row in 2026.  Given he is Willie Mullins go to man and the record trainer shows no signs of slowing it is hard to see who else will win it next year.

Winners Since 1980: Irish Jockeys Are Now Dominating

The Cheltenham Festival was cancelled in 2001 because of the outbreak of the foot and mouth disease in the United Kingdom.

It’s fair to say that betting on an Irish jockey to do well in the Champion Jockey stakes is a pretty safe bet, with Nico de Boinville the only person to break that particular trend in the past ten Festivals. Before that, you need to look as far back as 2007 for an English jockey to take the crown, such has been the dominance of Irish jockeys at this most British of jump racing meetings.

The other interesting thing to note about the Champion Jockey award is how few wins they need to take the crown, relatively speaking. Indeed, a look back as far as 1980 sees some truly low scores racked up by the jockeys that finished at the top of the pile – although bear in mind there were less races prior to 2005 when the fourth day was added.

Apart from how often Ruby Walsh’s name appears in the table, the other thing that stands out is how rarely jockeys have needed to win as many as five, six or seven races in order to be crowned as the best one at the Festival. Indeed, when Jonjo O’Neill won the title in 1982 he did so by winning just a single race. The amount of first and second place finished get taken into account if jockeys are tied for the same number of wins, but otherwise don’t.

There’s an extent to which jockeys on the whole have improved their performances at the Cheltenham Festival, which is why the number of wins racked up in the most recent period have been higher. That being said, for a meeting that has had in excess of 20 races for a number of years, it’s certainly surprising to see how rarely the top riders actually take Prestbury Park by storm on their way to being crowned champion Jockey.

Ruby Walsh

One of the biggest and most recognisable names in racing, a true great of the sport, Ruby Walsh was arguably at his very best when the biggest occasions came around. None more so than the Cheltenham Festival, a real testament to both his skill, and ability to deliver under pressure, when it mattered the most.

He built a strong relationship with some of the biggest stars in racing, off the track with trainers, and of course, on the track with horses.

Born in County Kildare, Ireland, Walk would begin his life as a festival jockey in the late 1990s, and rode their until retirement in 2019, giving him two decades at the meeting. He would end with a tally of 59 Cheltenham Festival winners, which leaves him at the top of the all-time jockey leaderboard, as things stand.

Throw together his skill on a horse, the already mentioned ability to deliver on the biggest stage under pressure, and the longevity he showed, and that’s why some regard Walsh are the greatest of all time.

Walsh’s Cheltenham journey began in earnest with his first Festival win in 1998 aboard Alexander Banquet in the Champion Bumper, trained by his father, Ted Walsh. This victory marked the start of a career that would see him dominate the Prestbury Park winner’s enclosure for two decades.

His breakthrough as a top-tier jockey came in the 2000s, particularly through his association with trainer Willie Mullins, whose yard provided Walsh with a conveyor belt of exceptional talent. Their partnership yielded 47 of Walsh’s 59 Festival wins, showing just how dominant the pair were.

Standing tall amongst his racing achievements is the Cheltenham Festival leading jockey award. Walsh would take this crown an incredible 11 times, they all came between 2004 and 2017, a time when he was dominating the sport at the top level.

The 2009 Festival saw Walsh have his most successful Cheltenham, he rode seven winners across the four days. They included wins in three of the four Championship races, Master Minded in the Champion Chase, Big Bucks in the Stayers Hurdle and Kauto Star in the Gold Cup, all for British trainer Paul Nicholls. In the same year, he also rode the great Quevega to the first of her six Mares’ Hurdle wins.

Talking of Championship races, it wasn’t just this year where Walsh delivered, once again showing why many saw him as being the man for the big moment. He would win the Champion Hurdle four times, the Champion Chase three times, Stayers Hurdle twice and Gold Cup twice.

Perhaps most remarkable of all is that when Walsh finally left the game and retired, you always wondered if we actually saw the best of him, or at least enough of him at his best. Injuries plagued him throughout his career, particularly in the latter years of it.

Falls are part of the day job, Walsh had plenty, they included a leg break in 2010, and while it’s almost impossible for a jockey to avoid injuries, had Walsh done that, we’d have seen even more from him.

In April of 2019, Walsh retired from the sport after winning the Punchestown Gold Cup, calling it a day in his native Ireland.

His closing Cheltenham Festival stats left him with 59 winners from a total of 375 rides, a strike rate of almost 16%. Most jockeys would snap your hand off for that in the lower grades of racing, never mind at the biggest meeting of the year.

Paul Townend

Paul Townend has carved out an impressive legacy at the Cheltenham Festival, emerging as one of Ireland’s premier jockeys in National Hunt racing. Born on September 15, 1990, in County Cork, Townend has become synonymous with success at Prestbury Park, particularly through his long-standing association with trainer Willie Mullins.

After the 2026 Cheltenham Festival, his record of 42 winners at the meeting places him among the elite, and given the firepower behind him, it’s going to take a big change of circumstances for the Townend train to slow down anytime soon.

Townend’s Cheltenham story began with a breakthrough win in 2009 aboard Tiger Cry in the Johnny Henderson Grand Annual Chase, a victory that hinted at his potential at just 18 years old.

However, it was his partnership with Mullins, especially when he became stable jockey in 2015 following Ruby Walsh’s retirement, that propelled him to prominence. Most of Townend’s 42 winners so far have been trained by Mullins.

He’s already won the Cheltenham top jockey title six times, the first of those coming in 2019, with 2021 the only recent year he hasn’t won the title, when Rachel Blackmore took it.

The 2024 event was the year that Townend performed best, so far at least anyway, with six winners in four days that included steering Galopin Des Champs to victory in the Gold Cup.

He’s a man for the big races, with five Cheltenham Gold Cup wins to his name – that means he is the record Gold Cup winning jockey ever, now one ahead of Pat Taaffe.  Consider that for a moment.  Paul also has three Champion Chase wins, two in the Champion Hurdle, one in the Stayers Hurdle and two in the Ryanair Chase.

After calculating success at the 2025 festival, Townend has 42 wins to his name from 286 rides, which gives him a win percentage of just under 15%. But he does have time on his side. At just 35 years old, he’s in his prime now, and barring injuries or any major incidents, has plenty of time left to ride more winners at the meeting.

In 2027 he is surely going to beat Barry Geraghty’s tally of 43 winners, he’s the second most winning Cheltenham Festival jockey. Number one is Ruby Walsh, the man who Townend took over from at the Mullins yard, and if Townend is game, he’ll have the Walsh figure of 59 winners firmly in his sightlines.

Rachael Blackmore

When Gee Armytage won the Kim Muir Challenge Cup in 1987, becoming the first female jockey to do so in the professional era, few could have imagined that it would take so long for a female jockey to be crowned as Champion Jockey. In fact, Armytage nearly won the title herself, having won the same amount of races as Peter Scudamore and only missing out because he had landed more second and third places than her.

Armytage’s success came four years after Caroline Robinson won the Foxhunter Chase, which she did as an amateur on her own horse Ellogarty, putting female jockeys front and centre of the news stories for a brief period of time. All of the female jockeys that came after these trailblazers owe them a lot, but just how much might Rachael Blackmore’s success during the 2021 Cheltenham Festival shift those tectonic plates even more?

Coming out of Killenaule in County Tipperary in the Republic of Ireland, Blackmore was on the back of her first winner in 2011 as an amateur jockey. Born in July 1989, she became a professional jockey in the March of 2015 and rode her first winner six months later. Despite this, it took her until 2019 to ride a winner at the Cheltenham Festival. A month later and she’d notched up her first Grade 1 win in Ireland.

Blackmore came second to Paul Townend in the 2018-2019 season’s Irish Champion Jockey standings, coming third the following year when the season was curtailed because of the Coronavirus outbreak. It was unquestionably in 2021 when she saw her name etched into the record books, however, when she not only made history by becoming the first female jockey to win the Champion Hurdle but was crowned Champion Jockey at that year’s Cheltenham Festival.

Her wins at the 2021 meeting were as follows:

• Baring Bingham Novices’ Hurdle on Bob Olinger
• Champion Bumper on Sir Gerhard
• Champion Hurdle on Honeysuckle
• Dawn Run Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle on Telmesomethinggirl
• Ryanair Chase on Allaho
• Triumph Hurdle on Quilixios

Her relationship with talented trainer Henry de Bromhead has been part of her success, but you don’t get given horses to ride by such excellent trainers unless you’ve proven yourself, which Blackmore very much has. When she returned to action at Thurles the week after her Cheltenham exploits, she was given a guard of honour alongside Gold Cup winner Jack Kennedy by the personnel that were at the track.

What Rachael Blackmore achieved at the Cheltenham Festival in 2021 can’t be measured in money or trophies alone. She well and truly shattered the glass ceiling, with the number of young women and girls who will have been inspired to enter the horse racing industry because of her incalculable. The next female jockey to be named as Champion Jockey at the end of Festival week will doubtless praise Blackmore for leading the way.

Blackmore finished second in the table in 2022 behind Paul Townend, but she won’t have minded that on account of the fact that two of the races she did win were the Champion Hurdle (again) and the Gold Cup – again becoming the first woman to do so.  She finished third in 2023 with two wins, although one of which was Envoi Allen in the Ryanair Chase, and now has 14 Festival wins to her name.

In 2024 she also finished third but won the Champion Chase and in 2025 she finished fourth but won the Stayer’s Hurdle, meaning she has now won all the Championship races – an outstanding achievement for any jockey let alone a female jockey in a male dominated racing world.  She may have only been Champion Jockey once but she is certainly the champion of champions when it comes to female jump racing jockeys.

What Do Champion Jockeys Win

During his jump racing career, Ruby Walsh won 59 races at the Cheltenham Festival. Little wonder, then, that the Jockey Club decided to name the trophy awarded to the Champion Jockey at the end of Festival week in his honour after his retirement. The next closest jockey to him at the time of writing is Barry Geraghty, who was in the saddle for 43 wins during his time at Prestbury Park.

When Rachael Blackmore was named Champion Jockey in 2021, she was handed a trophy in the shape of one famous jockey in Ruby Walsh by another famous jockey, A.P. McCoy. It is a real honour for jockeys to not only win the title but also to take a trophy in the shape of the best ever rider to take part in the Festival, such is the extent to which he is held in high esteem by all that are in the profession.