“IT was nice to get it done,” says Hayley Turner OBE, with some understatement, of the moment she became the first female British jockey to record 1,000 wins. She partnered Tradesman to victory on 21 November 2023 for trainer David Simcock in a two-mile handicap at Chelmsford and says: “I was relieved, more than anything.”
She'll admit to being “chuffed” but not much more: “I don't get emotional; you don't get time to reflect when you're riding every day and in a routine,” she says. “Probably when I stop riding I'll look back and appreciate everything that I've done, but I'm still in the thick of it.”
It's a long way - more than 20 years and about a million miles - from her first race in 2000 when she made her teenaged debut on Markellis at Southwell on 27 March. That was also her first time at a racetrack, as she's not from a racing background, and she was not prepared, to
