Under Starters Orders – Hollie Doyle

Name: Hollie Doyle

Age: 23

Career highlight: Becoming the winning-most female jockey in a calendar year in Britain last year with 116 wins.

Interesting fact: 23-year-old Hollie is used to mixing it with the boys: aged 10, she used to play scrum half in a boys’ contact rugby team.

Hollie Doyle grew up around racehorses, thanks to her parents both being former jockeys and her father a point-to-point trainer.

Having cut her teeth on the pony racing circuit, Hollie left school in 2013, aged 16, to launch her career as a jockey. Her first employer was a local trainer named David Evans, for whom she rode a winner on her first ever racecourse appearance at Salisbury.

Fast forward two years and a winter spent riding trackwork at Santa Anita in California, and Hollie made the leap to a much bigger stable under the guidance of trainer Richard Hannon.

By 2016, Hollie had made her mark as apprentice jockey to Hannon alongside boyfriend Tom Marquand, riding 33 winners that year and picking up more than 250 rides. The following year, she doubled the number of rides and clocked 59 winners.