Sammy Jo Bell
Northern Ireland-born Sammy Jo Bell was apprenticed to Kevin Prendergast in Ireland and rode her first winner on just her third ride in public, Celtic Dane, in a one-mile two-furlong handicap at Leopardstown on 27 March 2011. She also worked for Jim Bolger before leaving Ireland and joining Richard Fahey’s North Yorkshire stable.
She looked set for big things when making the most of a late call-up as an apprentice to Ascot’s Shergar Cup international jockeys' competition in 2015. She rode two winners that day, claiming the Shergar Cup Silver Saddle prize for the meeting's top rider, thanks to wins on Royal Signaller and Shell Bay, the double helping the Girls' team land the overall prize.
She ended 2015 with 28 winners and got off to a bright start in 2016 with a Beverley sprint handicap success in April on Arctic Feeling, taking her record on the Richard Fahey stalwart to seven wins.
However, she was then sidelined for ten months from May 2016, having sustained a serious fracture of the pelvis when her mount Royal Duchess reared up and then fell on top of her on the way to the start for a seven-furlong handicap at Carlisle. Initial examinations suggested she had escaped serious injury, but it later transpired she required surgery and was forced to spend eight weeks in a wheelchair.
She returned to action in January 2017, riding her first winner back at Musselburgh in April, and finished the season with 16 winners from 167 rides. The last of those wins came courtesy of the Pam Sly-trained All My Love in a class 5 handicap at Catterick on 10 October. At the end of the season, she again underwent major surgery to remove metalwork, requiring another long period of rehabilitation.
In February 2018 she announced her retirement, aged 27, admitting to dissatisfaction with her subsequent progress. She also confirmed her appointment to a temporary placement position with York Racecourse.
She said: “By delaying an announcement I was giving myself the option of changing my mind. Being a jockey was something I’d always wanted to do but I knew I had to make the decision as opposed to prolonging things. I wanted to get this done before moving on to the next chapter.”
Sammy Jo partnered 72 winners in Britain, 51 of them for Richard Fahey, having earlier enjoyed ten successes in Ireland. That victory on All My Love at Catterick was also her final ride of the season, so she had bowed out on a winning note.
But that was not quite the last we saw of Sammy Jo Bell in the saddle. A year and a half after announcing her retirement, she was invited to take part in the Leger Legends Stakes for former jockeys at Doncaster on 11 September 2019 in aid of the Injured Jockeys Fund. She duly guided Richard Fahey’s 5-1 chance Dubai Acclaim to a popular victory.
Reappearing in the same race in 2021 she finished fifth on the Philip Makin-trained Fennaan. Then, on 7 September 2022, she gained her second Leger Legends Stakes success – the first jockey to do so – on 11-1 shot Absolute Dream, also trained by Richard Fahey for owners Steven and Glenda Clayton.
The race has to date raised over £1 million for the Injured Jockeys Fund’s Jack Berry House and the National Horseracing College since its inception in 2010. For Sammy Jo, the win had significant meaning.
“It’s good to be able to give something back to the IJF, who were so good to me throughout my career,” she said after the race. “The idea couldn’t be better as I spent a good year or more in their rehab and couldn’t have returned to race fitness without them."
