Rob Hornby

The headline numbers are impressive, but it is at the top end of the sport where Hornby has really made his mark. He has won 16 Class 1 races — the very best races in Britain — at venues including Newmarket, Newbury and Sandown Park. Those are the races that define careers, the ones that appear on a jockey's CV forever. Adding another at Ascot in October 2025 and one at Newmarket back in May of the same year means he has been delivering on the biggest stages throughout the season, not just occasionally stumbling into a good result.

His most reliable working relationship is with trainer Jonathan Portman, and the numbers there tell a striking story. From 157 races together, they have combined for 24 wins — that is a win rate of 15%, or roughly 3 in every 20. In a sport where even the best partnerships rarely click at that level consistently, it suggests something more than luck. When Portman sends a horse out with Hornby in the saddle, there is a genuine expectation of a result.

Then there is Newcastle, where Hornby has been close to unplayable. Seven winners from just 12 races at the track means he wins more than half the time he turns up there. That kind of dominance at a specific venue is rare, and it tends to be built on feel — an instinctive understanding of how a particular track rides, where to position a horse, when to make a move. Whatever the reason, Newcastle has become something close to a home track for him.

Sixteen top-level wins in four years, a banker partnership with one of his key trainers, and a track where he wins at a rate that borders on the extraordinary — Hornby is not a jockey who is merely getting by. He is one to watch.