Obituaries: Lester Piggott, jockey who rode more than 5,000 winners

Lester Piggott, jockey and trainer. Born: 5 November 1935 in Wantage, Berkshire. Died: 29 May 2022 in Switzerland, aged 86

Lester Piggott was without doubt the finest jockey of his generation, and probably of any that has gone before or since. Tall for a jockey at over 5ft 7ins, “The Long Fellow”, as he became affectionately tagged, partnered more than 5,000 winners worldwide. His career in the saddle will never be matched, and if there were occasional lows – none more so than serving 366 days of a three-year prison sentence handed down in 1987 for tax evasion and being stripped of his OBE awarded by the Queen – there were many more highs.

Lester Keith Piggott was born in Berkshire in 1935 into a staunch racing family. His father Keith trained a Grand National winner, his grandfather Ernest rode to victory three times in the great steeplechase and his mother Iris was the daughter of Classic-winning jockey Fred Rickaby.

Piggott won his first race in August 1948 aged 12 on The Chase in the Wigan Lane Selling Handicap at Haydock Park. The Merseyside track was, appropriately, the scene of his final winner, too – Palacegate Jack in October 1994. He was approaching his 59th birthday.

In the intervening years, there was the small matter of 30 victories in the English Classics, including nine in the Derby, and 116 winners at Royal Ascot. He was crowned champion jockey 11 times. Remarkably, he returned from an aborted retirement to achieve one of his greatest feats at the age of 54 when he scored on Royal Academy in the Breeders’ Cup Mile.

Like most jockeys, his career was littered with injuries, a particularly frightening example being the one he suffered in 1992 in a fall from the Richard Hannon senior-trained sprinter Mr