Leading female rider Hollie Doyle broke another record on Wednesday evening after landing her 117th winner of the calendar year and that breaks her milestone from last year.
After another superb year on the track the 24 year old had to wait a little while to finally break her record and it came at Kempton on Wednesday as State Occasion in the Unibet 3 Uniboosts A Day Nursery Handicap narrowly fended off Tornadic in a photo-finish.
Before last year Josephine Gordon’s record of 106 was the most winners seen in a calendar year by a female jockey, but Doyle made a beeline for the record and beat it by 10.
This season she has gone one better landing 117 winners with still plenty of racing to be done in Britain until the end of the year.
In early September she had already bought up the elusive 100 winners and this season she has gone on to do things in her career that she never dreamt would be possible by landing her first group race and also competing in her first ever Group One event.
She rode her first Group winner on the Ed Vaughan trained Dame Malliot in the Princess of Wales’s Stakes at Newmarket and after that she also went on to land her first Royal Ascot winner aboard the Alan King-trained Scarlet Dragon in the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes.
She just gets better and better!@HollieDoyle1 breaks her own record for the number of winners in a calendar year as State Occasion gets the better of a close finish at @kemptonparkrace
— Racing TV (@RacingTV) October 14, 2020
That's 117 so far in 2020 - incredible stuff! 👏 pic.twitter.com/U9fFj6AzBi
She has been close to landing the first Group One of her career which looks the next record to break as she finished third aboard Dame Malliot in Germany and also was a better second in the Sprint Cup at Haydock on Glen Shiel for Archie Watson.
Having done all this during the season she also manage to pick up the gig of retianed rider for owner Imad Al Sagar, who she has started superbly for.
With all this, the highlight of the female jockeys season has to be her becoming the first female rider to land five winners in one day at Windsor in August.
(Credit ATR) Doyle said: “When I broke the record last year, in the back of my mind I was always thinking about breaking it again this year, as I didn’t want it to be a one-off, so I’m delighted to have achieved that goal.
“When you think that we also missed two months of racing this year (through the Covid-19 shutdown), it is amazing that I have been able to do it so quickly. I want to thank all the owners and trainers that have supported me throughout this year – without them, none of this would have been possible.
”A large proportion of Doyle’s wins have come for Berkshire-based trainer Archie Watson, who added: “Hollie is an incredibly hard-working and talented jockey.
“We have had over 100 winners together in a short amount of time and I am delighted that she is starting to gain the recognition she deserves.”