Pat Hurley

1935 - 2025

Pat Hurley was the rider of Sizzle-On in the 1965 Grand National won by Jay Trump.

Pat's wife, Miriam informs me 'We'll be on a 15-day cruise on his 80th birthday - so I am hoping I can get wi-fi connection that day to show him this tribute...'

We hope so, too...

Author  Chris Pitt looks back on Pat's career.

Patrick Joseph Hurley was born on August 17, 1935. 

A northern-based jump jockey, he held a licence from 1954/55 to 1969/70 and was initially associated with Stewart Wight, who trained at Grantshouse, Berwickshire.

He rode his first winner on Wight’s 10-1 shot Hands Off at Kelso on Saturday, March 2, 1957 in a race called the Morebattle Hurdle, which is now one of Kelso’s biggest of the season but was then worth a humble £136 to the winning owner. Hands Off won by half a length from Tommy Mallorie’s mount Pentathlon but then had to survive an objection by the runner-up for bumping and boring. Luckily for Pat, the objection was overruled so he could finally celebrate his first success as a jockey.

He didn’t have long to wait for his second – just one hour, in fact, for he doubled up on that Kelso card by winning division two of the Crailing Hurdle, worth £102, on 8-1 chance Corbie Valley.

His third winner followed the following Saturday, a high profile victory in Sedgefield’s three-and-a-half-mile Durham National on Pampas Kid for trainer Jack Calvert, beating Tommy Foran’s mount Mr Gay by just a short head.

Winner number four came seven days later – he was becoming a ‘Saturday specialist’ – on Young Ashdrop at Ayr, and there was more success for Pat on the Monday of that Ayr fixture, winning on Logan Rock.

The Saturday trend continued when Pampas Kid became his sixth winner, following up his Durham National triumph with victory in the Ladies’ Cup at Rothbury’s annual fixture on April 13. Pat duly rounded off a highly satisfactory season with a seventh success, aboard Flying Witch for Nottinghamshire trainer Walter Buxton on the Saturday of Hexham’s Whitsun fixture.

He made a bright start to the 1957/58 campaign, achieving a brace of victories on that good chaser Bramble Tudor, the first a dead-heat with Mick Batchelor’s mount Winters Bank at Hexham, the second when beating Lex Kelly on Brown Nugget in a two-horse race at Kelso. Those two successes were the final races of Bramble Tudor’s career, a career in which she’d won the Great Yorkshire Chase and the Wetherby Handicap Chase when partnered by Dick Curran.

In between that pair of wins on Bramble Tudor, Pat rode Old Joke to win two Ayr selling hurdles within 48 hours. The second of those was the tenth win of his career and had resulted in his claim being reduced from 7lb to 5lb.

Four winners on the board by mid-October boded well, but it was to be five months before the next one came along, on selling hurdler Arcopeto at Ayr. An Easter Monday winner, Worthy Abbess at Manchester, (left) gave him a score of six for the season.

The 1958/59 season yielded seven winners from 84 rides, three of those coming courtesy of his old friend Hands Off. The second of them gave Pat his 15th winner, meaning his claim was cut from 5lb to 3lb, while the third came in the prestigious Montagu Hurdle on the Tuesday of Wetherby’s Easter card. Two other wins were gained in a Boxing Day double at Sedgefield on Admiral Hornblower for Wilf Crawford and novice chaser Cappaghmoy – who followed up at Catterick Bridge on New Year’s Day – for Stewart Wight.

By the first day of April 1960, Pat had ridden just one winner during the 59/60 campaign, but then along came a hurdler named Too Slow. Trained by John Bowness at Wigton, in Cumberland, Too Slow belied his name in a big way in the space of a couple of weeks. Having firstly doubled Pat’s score for the season by winning at Ayr on April 2, he then doubled it again by winning twice over Easter, first at Manchester on the Saturday and then landing Chepstow’s Easter Monday feature, the two-mile Welsh Grand Annual Handicap Hurdle. Pat’s next winner, Mickels Hill at Southwell, was the 25th of his career and meant he was no longer able to claim an allowance.

Jockeys often endure a lean spell when losing their allowance and such was the case with Pat in a 1960/61 campaign that yielded just one winner, Wilf Crawford’s Admiral Hornblower at Ayr in October.

It was Crawford who was subsequently responsible for breaking Pat’s year-long hiatus without a winner, legging him up to win a Catterick selling hurdle on Hamilcar in November 1961; and he also supplied Pat’s two other winners that term, Cameron Lad at Sedgefield in March, Early Bird at Ayr in April.

The wretched winter of 1962/63 wreaked havoc on racing, especially in the north. Only one meeting took place in Britain between December 22 and March 8, that being a fixture at Ayr on January 5. Pat had one ride at that meeting, on Merrydor, who led the field to halfway in the three-mile handicap chase, only to fall in the closing stages. That typified Pat’s season, plenty of falls but no success, and it was no better for the next two campaigns in which he again failed to ride a winner.

He did, though, in the midst of that injury-blighted drought, have the compensation of riding in the 1965 Grand National on 100-1 outsider Sizzle-On.

The giant hunter chaser Sizzle-On was trained by Ian Jordan at Westerhope, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and was owned by his wife. In 1964, he’d won the Heart of All England Hunt Cup at Hexham, a race with a long history and one that invariably inspired considerable rivalry among the Northumberland hunting and racing community.

Pat rode Sizzle-On in his first race of the 1964/65 season, falling two out in Kelso’s Anthony Marshall Trophy Chase, and again in the Eider Chase at Newcastle, pulling up when out of contention. Sizzle-On then finished fifth in a high-class Cheltenham Foxhunters before heading to Aintree for the Grand National, run that year on Saturday, March 27.

Wearing Mrs Jordan’s colours of ‘white, green cross-belts, blue cap’, Pat was looking forward to a good ride but their race came to a premature end at Becher’s first time round, being brought down by long-shot Nedsmar (John Hudson), in a four-horse melee that also saw the exits of Ruby Glen (Stephen Davenport) and Barleycroft (Phil Harvey).

Returned to hunter chasing, Sizzle-On finished the season by winning Sedgefield’s South Durham Open Hunt Cup and Hexham’s Adam Scott Memorial Cup, ridden on both occasions by John Alder. Later that year, Pat and Sizzle-On were reunited over the Aintree fences in the Grand Sefton Chase, on October 30, 1965. They were leading the field until coming down at the seventh fence.

Ian Jordan was not only responsible for providing Pat with his only Grand National ride; he was also the man that ended his barren spell that had lasted more than three and a half years, when the Jordan-trained mare named Girl Guide won the Hardwick Arms Handicap Chase, over two-and-a-half miles, at Sedgefield at odds of 100-6 on December 11, 1965.

Pat continued to ply his trade and rode regularly for Jordan, but the next two seasons yielded no further winners. There was to be just one more, again for Jordan, on juvenile hurdler Midsummer Willow at Kelso on October 26, 1968.

Pat carried on for one more season, 1969/70, but rides were few and far between, and those that did come his way might have been better to avoid. His last two rides, both on novice hurdler Marmidas, ended in falls, at Carlisle on March 28 and at Newcastle on May 2, 1970. 

Many years later, in April 2013, along with his wife Miriam, Pat was reunited with many of his former weighing room colleagues at a gathering in Middleham to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pat Buckley’s 1963 Grand National victory on Ayala.

Still hale and hearty, Pat Hurley celebrated his 80th birthday on August 17, 2015.

Miriam writes: Pat enjoys gardening - hedges and lawns are his speciality. He has a keen sense of humour and enjoys a joke. Pat reads a lot but never fiction. He has a huge amount of autobiographies, mostly racing. He has all the copies of 'Racing Up To Date' and 'Chaseform NH Season' from 1934 to 1972 which he reads and recalls races 'won and lost' and the characters he rode with. He loves Suduko and crosswords, and plays a great game of snooker and pool.

We enjoy holidays both at home and abroad and travel extensively. We have visited Hong Kong (and the Happy Valley races), Singapore, the Bahamas, America, Canada, Russia, Israel, Egypt, the Greek Isles, Italy & France...to name a few. We also make regular trips to his home country, Ireland.

We keep in touch with several ex-jockeys, their partners and families. 

We are involved with fundraising for the Injured Jockeys' Fund and have benefitted from holidays where we meet up with lots of old friends and ex-racing colleagues. We have recently returned from a week to Malta with the IJF - there were over 80 beneficiaries, partners and carers. These holidays are great fun with lots of memories shared.

Following a brave battle with cancer Pat Hurley passed away, aged 89, on April 3rd 2025.

Pat rode a total of 31 winners during his career. The full list - compiled by Chris Pitt - is as follows.

1   2 March 57   Kelso   Hands Off   Morebattle H'cap Hurdle

2   2 March 57   Kelso   Corbie Valley   Cralling Hurdle (Div 2)

3   9 March 57   Sedgefield   Pampas Kid   Durham National H'Cap Chase

4   16 March 57   Ayr   Young Ashdrop   Afton Novices' Chase

5   18 March 57   Ayr   Logan Rock   Sundrum H'cap Chase

6   13 April 57   Rothbury   Pampas Kid   Ladies' Cup H'cap Chase

7   8 June 57   Hexham   Flying Witch   Shire (S) H'cap Hurdle

8   30 September 57   Hexham   Bramble Tudor (d-h)   Langley H'cap Chase

9   5 October 57   Carlisle   Old Joke   Rydale Water (S) H'cap Hurdle

10   7 October 57   Carlisle   Old Joke   Cross Fell (S) Hurdle

11   19 October 57   Kelso   Bramble Tudor   Berwickshire H'cap Chase

12   15 March 58   Ayr   Arcopeto   Carluke (S) H'cap Hurdle

13   7 April 58   Manchester   Worthy Abbess   Stockport Maiden Hurdle 

14   11 October 58   Ayr   Hands Off   Sandyford H'cap Hurdle

15   25 October 58   Kelso   Hands Off   Cherrytree H'cap Hurdle

16   5 December 58   Manchester   Worthy Abbess   Jupiter H'Cap Hurdle

17   26 December 58   Sedgefield   Admiral Hornblower   Morden Novices' Hurdle

18   26 December 58   Sedgefield   Cappaghmoy   Durham Novices' Chase

19   1 January 59   Catterick   Cappaghmoy    Robinson Crusoe Novices' Chase

20   31 March 59   Wetherby   Hands Off   Montagu H'Cap Hurdle

21   17 October 59   Kelso   Danny B   Ferneyhill (S) H'Cap Hurdle

22   2 April 60   Ayr   Too Slow   Skeldon H'cap Hurdle

23   16 April 60   Manchester   Too Slow   Stamford H'cap Hurdle

24   18 April 60   Chepstow   Too Slow   Welsh Grand Annual H'cap Hurdle

25   16 May  60   Southwell   Mickels Hill   EsamH'cap Chase

26   15 October 60   Ayr   Admiral Hornblower   Cassillis Chase

27   4 November 61   Catterick   Hamilcar   Kiplin (S) H'cap Hurdle 

28   24 March 62   Sedgefield   Cameron Lad   Grove Novices' Hurdle

29   7 April 62   Ayr   Early Bird   Grove Novices' Hurdle

30   11 December 65   Sedgefield   Girl Guide   Hardwicke Arms H'cap Chase

31   26 October 68   Kelso   Midsummer Willow   Ednam (3-y-o) Hurdle