43 Time Cheltenham Festival Winning Jockey

Barry Geraghty called time on his career in 2020 signing off with 5 wins from 11 rides at the Cheltenham Festival. He retires as the second most winning jockey at the festival sandwiched between Ruby Walsh’s 59 wins and Sir A P McCoy’s 31 wins. He added a fourth win in the Champion Hurdle on Epatante, a third win in the RSA on Champ and had a clean sweep of wins in the handicap hurdles. All 5 wins were on horses owned by the meetings most successful owner – J P McManus.

Cheltenham Festival Wins

Barry missed the 2017 Festival through injury ending a sequence of wins going back to 2002. He returned in 2018 winning the feature Champion Hurdle on Tuesday (his third win in the race) and the last race of the meeting (Grand Annual) on Friday. He added a further two wins on the Thursday of the 2019 meeting.

In 2020 on his final festival ride – Saint Roi – Willie Mullins became the fifteenth different trainer Geraghty has ridden a winner for.

In all Geraghty has had 43 Cheltenham Festival winners. Moscow Flyer provided his first win in 2002 and Barry has had at least one winner at each Cheltenham Festival he has ridden at since then. In 2009 he became the first jockey to have won Cheltenham’s four feature races and the Aintree Grand National. He has had further success since and has now won each of the Cheltenham feature races at least twice.

His wins in the big four Cheltenham races came on Jezki (2014), Punjabi(2009) ,Buveur Dair and Epatante in the Champion Hurdle, on Jessica Harrington’s Moscow Flyer ( 2003 and 2005),  Colm Murphy’s Big Zeb (2010) and Nicky Henderson’s Finian’s Rainbow (2012) and Sprinter Sacre (2013) in the Champion Chase, on Jonjo O’Neill’s Iris’s Gift (2004) and More of that (2014) in the World Hurdle, and on Tom Taaffe’s Kicking King (2005) and Nicky Henderson’s Bobs Worth (2013) in the Gold Cup. Barry won the 2003 Grand National on Monty’s Pass.

Barry Geraghty Cheltenham Festival Wins (43)

Geraghty success is not confined to Cheltenham. He has been particularly successful at Aintree and was leading rider at the Grand National meeting from 2011-14 inclusive.

Barry was also leading rider at the 2016 Punchestown Festival.

Barry  has won 66 Grade1 chases in his career to date with Sprinter Sacre fittingly bring up his 50th win at the 2013 Cheltenham Festival. Geraghty has had a particularly good record on two mile chasers. While he has been fortunate to be associated with greats such as Moscow Flyer and Sprinter Sacre his list of 2 mile Grade 1 winners includes horses that provided unexpected success including God’s Own and Lucky William. Barry has also won 54 Grade 1 races over Hurdles ( and one bumper) giving him an overall total of  120 Grade 1 wins which gain places him second only to Walsh at this level.

Barry Geraghty Grade 1 Chase Wins (66)

 Barry Geraghty Grade 1 Hurdle Wins (54)