Jockey Profile

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From Youghal, County Cork, Davy Russell became champion jockey for the first time in 2011/12 and retained his crown the following season. He rode as the retained rider for Gigginstown House Stud from 2007 until he lost the position, famously over a cup of tea with Michael O'Leary, at Punchestown on New Year's Eve, 2013.

He won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on the Jim Culloty-trained Lord Windermere in 2014. Davy rode a winner at the Cheltenham Festival for 13 successive years beginning with the Philip Rothwell-trained Native Jack in the Glenfarclas Cross Country Chase in 2006. The remarkable sequence came to an end at the 2019 Festival but he was among the Festival winners again the following March.  

In all, Davy has 25 Festival winners. He was leading rider at Cheltenham in 2018 with four winners. He rode three winners at the 2020 Festival but missed the 2021 renewal through injury and didn't ride a winner at the 2022 Festival. However, his tally means that he has ridden more winners at the Cheltenham Festival than any jockey currently riding and as of 2022, and is the fifth-winning most jockey since 1945 at the Festival.  

He won the 2018 Aintree Grand National on the Gordon Elliott-trained Tiger Roll and two weeks later was crowned champion jockey in Ireland for the third time with 119 winners. 

Davy and Tiger Roll wrote themselves into the record books when winning the Aintree Grand National for the second successive year in 2019. Tiger Roll became the first horse to achieve such a feat since Red Rum in 1973 and 1974 and was denied the chance of a historic three-in-a-row by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. 

At the conclusion of the 2022 Aintree Festival, Davy had ridden 58 Grade 1 winners. His first Grade 1 winner was the Arthur Moore-trained The Railway Man in the  Dr P. J. Moriarty Novice Chase at Leopardstown in January 2006.