Ascot Races

Steve Donoghue

Steve Donoghue is a jockey who was very succesful in the 1920`s, Steve Donoghue (8 November 1884 – 23 March 1945) was a leading English flat-race jockey in the 1910s and 1920s. He was Champion Jockey 10 times between 1914 and 1923 and was one of the most celebrated horse racing sportsmen after Fred Archer, arguably only Sir Gordon Richards eclipsing him.

Born in Warrington, Cheshire, England, Steve was apprenticed to John Porter at Chester when he was 14 years old. In 1904 he won his first winner in France, before returning to England to dominate the sport for the next two decades.

His greatest triumphs came in the Epsom Derby which he won six times. Three consecutive wins in the early 1920s - on Humorist (1921), Captain Cuttle (1922) and Papyrus (1923) - was the high point. He was also associated with the horses Brown Jack - who he rode to six consecutive wins in the Queen Alexandra Stakes at Royal Ascot and The Tetrarch, a 2-year-old that raced in 1913 and was said to be the fastest horse ever ridden in England.

In 1915 and 1917, he rode the horses Pommern and Gay Crusader to the English Triple Crown. In its more than two-hundred-year history, of the jockeys aboard the fifteen winners, Steve Donoghue is the only one to have ever won the Triple Crown twice.

Always popular with the public and his fellow professionals, Steve was never called up by the stewards. He retired in 1937, and died in 1945 from a heart attack. Below you can watch some vintage footage of him in action