Ryan Day

Jump jockey Ryan Day rode over 100 winners before announcing his retirement in 2021, aged 27. They included the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup (initially known as the Massey-Ferguson, now registered as the December Handicap Chase due to numerous changes of sponsor) at Cheltenham’s December meeting, and the Eider Chase at Newcastle. 

He lived in the Cumbrian coastal village Flimby for the first two years of his life, then moved to Camerton, near Workington, where he was introduced to horses and ponies by his parents. He admits that he “kind of got into racing by accident” and that it wasn't something he always wanted to do as a child. His family had horses and they were getting an ex-racehorse from Elliot Cooper as a showjumper. 

Ryan went to try the horse and was asked if he would like to ride another up the gallops while he was there. He then started going there on weekends and school holidays, even skiving off school to go racing. 

While show-jumping was a natural stepping stone, from there he turned his attentions to point to pointing, winning on his last two rides for Tim Brockbank. 

On the advice of Elliott Cooper, he attended the British Racing School where he honed his race-riding skills before joining the Lisa Harrison stable at Aldoth, near Abbeytown as a teenage conditional jockey. 

His first success came on the Lisa Harrison-trained Solway Sam in a three-mile handicap hurdle at Perth on July 2, 2014. They won again over course and distance the following month. 

From there, he forged good links with the Mike Sowersby yard in Malton and subsequently began riding for Greystoke trainer Nicky Richards, with whom he went on to a successful association. Initially he found the going tough and at one point seriously considered leaving racing and applying to join the fire service. Eventually, however, the wheel of fortune turned in his direction. 

He achieved his first major victory aboard the Richards-trained Baywing in the Grade 2 Towton Novices’ Chase at Wetherby on February 4, 2017. Later that year, on December 16, he rode Richards’ Guitar Pete to win the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup at Cheltenham on only his second visit there. It came just two days after the death of his Ryan’s grandfather.

It was something of a bitter-sweet victory as the runaway leader Starchitect was heading for glory when he broke a hind leg approaching the second-last fence. The winner’s enclosure was sombre afterwards because everyone’s thoughts were with Starchitect’s connections. When interviewed after the race, Ryan’s first thought was to offer condolences, his response in the immediate aftermath of his biggest triumph earning respect and commendation from leading National Hunt figures. 

He then won another big race, the 1918 Eider Chase on Baywing. However, later that year he suffered a bad fall at Wetherby, breaking five ribs and puncturing a lung. Just months after he regained full fitness, he broke his ribs again when Baywing suffered a fatal fall when bidding for a repeat victory in the Eider Chase. 

In yet another fall, Ryan ruptured his spleen and had a lacerated kidney, but with the help of the Injured Jockeys Fund, he battled back to health, riding in more than 120 races during the following two seasons. He achieved the 100-winner milestone during the 2019-20 campaign. 

But the Covid-19 shutdown of racing in the spring of 2020, coupled with a personal crisis, caused him to rethink his priorities and to realise that he was doing something which wasn’t him. 

He said: “Once Covid started and racing got stopped I left Nicky’s for a while and I got involved in doing all sorts of things, and for the first time in my adult life I was part of the real world, all the sorts of things I’d missed out on.”

Though he resumed riding when racing restarted, he was put in touch with ex-jockey and trainee sports psychologist Aodhagan Conlon by Phil Kinsella at the Jockeys Education and Training Scheme (JETS) and felt it was time to pack his race-riding boots away for good. 

He rode what proved to be his final winner on Nicky Richards’ Royal Arcade in a Carlisle novices’ hurdle on March 11, 2021. 

He had had a long association with Richards’ chaser Duke Of Navan and won or was placed on 12 of the 16 occasions he rode him. Appropriately, it was that horse who provided Ryan with his final ride when second in a 2m 1f handicap chase at Stratford on May 22, 2021. 

He insisted he had no regrets about moving on to pastures new and called it “the most liberating thing I have ever done.  

“I have not stopped smiling since I did it,” he reflected. “Throughout my career I have been through stages of struggling with my mental health – and it took a global pandemic to make me focus on it more.

“I probably wasn’t enjoying it anymore and I didn’t want to get to the point where I absolutely hated it. I wouldn’t like to do a disservice to anybody if I kept going not giving them what they deserve.

“I’ve been getting loads of text messages, some of them saying it’s really sad – no it isn’t, it's not the end, it’s just the beginning. 

“Covid has been terrible, but it’s completely changed the way I see the world and myself. I’ll tell you what I’m doing: I’ve jumped and I’m going to learn to fly on the way down.”

Having spent his entire life around horses, he has opted to fly in a very different direction, reinventing himself as a photographer.

He says: “After some serious life changes and a lot of exploring of different countries and career options I found the thing that aligned most with my personality was to pursue a career as a creative, in which my aim is to be able to continue working within the equestrian industry alongside exploring the world creating breathtaking visuals for my clients.”

On his website, Ryan Day Photography, he adds: “To me capturing life’s vibrant moments is an art, and I specialise in crafting compelling visuals that tell stories. As a photographer, my passion lies in the art of creation. I am driven by the pursuit of capturing meaningful interactions and often overlooked moments in time that can breathe life into your brand’s message.”

Based in Chester, he is married to Haydock Park’s general manager Mollie Day, who three-day evented before entering the world of racing. Come 2025 the couple will be heading stateside, where Mollie has landed a new job as executive director of a Lexington, Kentucky based company responsible for organising the Kentucky Five Star three-day event. 

Hollie Day told the Racing Post: “I can sponsor Ryan and I hope he can continue his photography over there. I’m very lucky that I have found someone who is as passionate about what we do as he is, and as long as I have him, I’m happy.”