Interview with the popular ex-pat who last month at Churchill Downs rode the final winner of her career
Sophie Doyle wouldn’t be the first jockey who has had to graft and scrap to make a name for themselves, so she must have a good reason for calling time on a career of which she is quite rightly proud. And she does.
“Emilie is a huge part of this decision,” she explains, referring to her young daughter, to whom she has just supplied a glass of orange juice at their Lexington home.
“I always said once I had a child, I’d retire, it was too dangerous, but I breezed a horse called Epic Ride, who ran in the Derby last year, and must have had this grin on my face because John Ennis looked at me and said, ‘Soph, you’ve still got that spark. I’m not saying you have to, but give yourself the opportunity to really know’.”
So, in April last year, Doyle returned to the saddle having been out of it since 2021.
“I was second on my first ride back and it felt great,” she says. “I rode the next day and had a winner, and to have a winning picture with Emilie was right up there with my Grade 1. The ball kept rolling, but recently I’ve been in lots of races with accidents.
“Thankfully, I haven’t been caught up in anything, but I’ve come back in and Emilie has been quite worried. For three and a half years old, she understands, sees the incidents and asks questions. The last one involved someone whose daughter plays with her at the races.
“That night, Emilie asked if he was going to be okay and I said he would, and she said, ‘Rae Rae really needs her daddy and I really need you, Mummy’. I’ve been trailblazing for a year and a half, but that hit me really hard because she does need me.”
Born in Cambridge, Doyle is part of a well-known British racing family. Her mother Jacquie was a trainer, while younger brother James is a leading jockey on the global scene, havins held major riding jobs for some of the sport’s superpowers including Juddmonte and Godolphin, and now the emerging force of Wathnan Racing,
Sophie battled for a breakthrough in Britain between 2006 and 2012 before deciding enough was enough and the States was worth trying.
Hard work pays off
There, she had to prove herself all over again and the hard work paid off.
She recorded 478 winners and earned $14.5 million in prize-money – figures she freely admits she could not have come close to back home – while a career highlight came via a memorable G1 triumph came on the Larry Jones-trained Street Band in the 2019 Cotillion Stakes on the Pennsylvania Derby card at Parx.
“That was amazing,” she says, “because I’d done so much homework and everything went as I thought it would.”
Joejoe Go, trained by her husband Christopher Davis and successful at Churchill Downs on November 23, will go down as the final winner of a career that started thousands of miles away in Lambourn, in Britain’s ‘Valley of the Racehorse’, where her mother was based.
“There’s a picture of Mum schooling a horse with a big belly in front of her and that was probably a week before she had me,” adds Doyle. “You could say I was born on the back of a horse.”
Unsurprisingly then, the 39-year-old dreamed of being a jockey as a child, riding finishes on a rocking horse in front of the TV in silks borrowed from the tack room, while she began galloping racehorses aged 11.
Time was spent with trainers Mick Channon, Stan Moore and Jamie Osborne, and Doyle rode a healthy 28 winners in 2010, before a working holiday with Jim Cassidy at Santa Anita.
“Things were going well, but something changed dramatically when I came home,” she explains. “I wasn’t getting the opportunities, but it wasn’t like my head was in America – I was putting in the same effort and hard work, but nothing was coming back. I wondered why I was putting myself through it.”
‘Home girl’ spreads wings
A self-confessed “home girl”, Doyle had earlier had her eyes opened to the wider world with two spells in Dubai and a switch across the Atlantic was a no-brainer for the jockey, whose last campaign in Britain in 2012 yielded zero winners from just 85 rides.
“I’m strong willed and determined, and didn’t want to be miserable,” she says. “I was already at the bottom in England, so the only way was up.”
After six months in California, Doyle was more streetwise after regular drives through Inglewood and a night in a bullet-ridden hotel in El Paso. Let’s just say she wasn’t in Kansas – or Berkshire – anymore. She made her way to Kentucky and partnered horses “no-one wanted to ride” at Ellis Park before registering her first two Stateside victories at Churchill Downs in November 2014.
“There was another thing then …” Doyle recalls, haltingly. “Mum’s mum was ill and we didn’t know if she would make it. It wasn’t the best time to leave as I was getting going, but my grandmother was everything to me. Thankfully, she was going to be okay and knew I’d started to do well, so she told me to go back.”
On her return, Doyle found herself with no job and nowhere to live – “it was very stressful and I didn’t know where the hell my career was going” – but a call to Kentucky-based trainer Larry Demeritte put her at ease. He is name checked as someone, along with the aforementioned Jones and on-off agent Penny Ffitch-Heyes, who helped shape Doyle’s success, which was just around the corner.
Prize-money astronomical
“After I got back from England, it was the December meet at Turfway Park and I had more than 70 rides there,” she says. “That was more rides in a month than I might get in half a year back home and the prize-money’s astronomical compared to Britain – look at Irad Ortiz, who’s won $39 million this year, it’s insane.
“They’re good at receiving female riders over here because if you can ride, you’ll get a shot, while I think people appreciated my feedback and I was known for trying really hard, especially when it came to riding through the placings. It seemed opportunities came easier than back home.”
The following year things exploded for the ex-pat, a measured, thoughtful talker who now possesses something akin to a Southern twang, which draws teasing from her brother.
From 747 rides, she enjoyed 72 winners, including a first Graded stakes thanks to a chance spin on Fioretti. “Her rider got hurt and I ran in, told the clerk of the scales to put me on her and had the silks on when her trainer [Anthony Hamilton Jr.] came to look for a jockey!”
That horse then took the rider to the Breeders’ Cup in 2015. “Maybe I was immature and naive, but loads of journalists came over from the UK for it and I said I was a little bitter I couldn’t make it in Britain, but I cringed when I read it back,” she remembers.
“It was frustrating I couldn’t make it back home, but I’m not bitter now – how could I be? I’ve had a wonderful time and would have snapped your hand off if you’d offered me my career 20 years ago, while I’m proud people from England – not just girls – get in touch and ask for my advice about the opportunities here.”
There are, as Doyle has demonstrated, plenty of those – and training, if the finances make sense, is something she would one day “love” to do, although helping her old colleagues with their mental health and post-riding careers is on the agenda too.
It is unlikely we’ve heard the last of someone who has certainly made a name for herself.
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