Lucy Alexander

Article by Chris Pitt

Born in Fife in 1990, the daughter of trainer Nick Alexander, horseracing was very much in Lucy Alexander’s blood. Her family had bred, trained and raced thoroughbreds for more than 50 years. Her uncle Jamie and brother Kit were (and in Kit’s case, still are) both successful amateur riders, while a race at Kelso is named in memory of her grandfather, Cyril, an enthusiastic amateur rider who trained his own horses for 30 years with success on the racecourse and in point-to-points. Her father Nick was a stockbroker and company director before taking out a trainer’s licence in 2002, based at Kinneston Stables in Fife.

Lucy was just five years old when she started riding ponies. That inevitably led to the pony club, cross-country and hunting route. By the age of twelve she had progressed to riding racehorses. By fourteen, she was riding out regularly at her father’s yard.

Lucy attended Kilgraston – the only Scottish boarding school with equestrian facilities – where she proved invincible athlete, unbeatable in almost every event from the 100 metres to the shot putt. She had her first point-to-point ride, aged sixteen, on her father’s horse Wise Man. She dead-heated in the first one and then won two or three more, ending the season as Northern Area Novice Champion Rider. That fuelled her desire to become a jockey. Wise Man was her first ride under National Hunt rules, in a Perth hunter chase on April 26, 2007. They pulled up four fences from home when out of contention. 

Before embarking on her chosen path, Lucy had two abortive attempts at student life. In 2008, she began a biology course at Edinburgh University, and later returned to study sports science. However, she only lasted about six weeks both times. Her interest in the subjects wasn’t sufficient to encourage her to study for four years. She realised she had to choose between her riding and studies – and the horses won, so she dropped out of university. 

In her gap year before university, she had spent three months gaining valuable experience with Aidan O’Brien at Ballydoyle. In the summer break, having spurned her biology course, she spent six weeks with Sir Michael Stoute at Newmarket, where she rode alongside several top jockeys including Kieren Fallon.  

She rode her first winner under National Hunt rules aboard 40-1 chance Seeking Power, trained by her father, in a three-mile one-furlong handicap chase at Kelso on February 18, 2010. However, it was April 2011 before she registered her second, her sole success of that season. 

She turned professional aged 21 in September 2011, thus becoming Scotland's first female professional jumps jockey. The decision to join the paid ranks wasn't taken light-heartedly but it was a decision she never regretted. In February 2012 she recorded her fourth course success on the Bruce Mactaggart-trained Red Tanber, in the process breaking Lorna Vincent's 1980 record of 22 winners for a female jockey in a British jumps season. 

In July 2012 she gained further experience of Flat racing with Kevin Ryan at Malton. She went on to have some 20 rides on the Flat, including at Epsom and Ascot, resulting in a handful of winners, all of which helped to make her sharper and tighter in the saddle.

Lucy got the 2012/13 season underway with an opening week winner at Sedgefield on May 1, 2012, landing a three-mile three-furlong handicap chase on Mansonien L'As for Ferdy Murphy. Building on that swift start, she went on to rewrite the record books by becoming the first female rider to be crowned champion conditional jockey, achieving a score 38 winners, despite being sidelined for a month by a fractured collarbone sustained at Musselburgh in January.  

Whereas that milestone achievement should have been the launchpad for her career, it instead marked the start of a series of injuries, both major and minor. The first season and a half of her professional career had been injury-free but, following her conditional jockey title win, the fates decreed that she would suffer a frustrating run of injuries that would compromise her career. 

She broke a collarbone badly and then broke it again when she resumed in the summer. Having come back from that, she suffered a broken jaw that winter and then came back and broke yet another collarbone in June 2014 and again in October.

The unlucky spate of injuries continued to mount up, denying her a clear run for more than a few months at a time. She rode what would prove to be her last winner on Elvis Mail, trained by her father, in a novices’ handicap chase at Ayr on November 11, 2020. 

Two days later she was riding Chanting Hill in a mares’ handicap chase at Newcastle and was still going well when falling five from home. She was immobilised and taken to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle and operated on to stabilise fractures in her vertebrae in her lower back. Thankfully, there was no lasting spinal damage. 

That back injury eventually led her to announce her retirement from race-riding in April 2022. She retired having ridden 180 winners during her career. Frustratingly, the untimely injury had meant that she missed out on what would have been her biggest winner, with Lake View Lad’s defeat of Santini, Native River and Frodon in the Many Clouds Chase at Aintree.