Michael Bell salutes Hayley Turner on hitting 1,000 winners

Molly Hunter
November 22, 2023 2:57 pm

‘It’s a huge personal achievement, she’s a credit to her profession’.

Michael Bell has paid tribute to Hayley Turner after she hit a milestone tally of 1,000 career winners at Chelmsford on Tuesday night.

Turner rode David Simcock’s Tradesman to victory to tip the count to 1,000, fittingly sporting the Khalifa Dasmal silks she wore when she landed her first Group One success aboard Dream Ahead in the July Cup in 2011.

Simcock has championed her throughout her career and so too has fellow Newmarket trainer Bell, with Turner apprenticed at his yard as a teenager before sharing the 2005 champion apprentice title with Saleem Golam.

He said of her milestone victory: “It’s a huge personal achievement, she’s a credit to her profession and in many ways has been a role model and pathfinder for all female jockeys. She set the standards they aspire to.

“She came to me aged 18 or 19 having ridden one winner and it was pretty obvious looking at her ride that she had some natural ability.

Margot Did and Hayley Turner winning the Nunthorpe (John Giles/PA)

“At that stage I had to work quite hard to get owners to use her, but very soon her talent shone through and my job became pretty easy after she was riding bucketfuls of winners for us.”

Turner enjoyed a notable association with Bell’s top sprint filly Margot Did, with the duo contesting valuable five-furlong contests and landing the Nunthorpe at York together, just a month on from Dream Ahead’s July Cup win.

“She rode her in all her races, she’d already won the July Cup by that stage so that was two Group Ones in the space of a month. I think she then won a Group One in America the next autumn for David Simcock so she was on an absolute roll by then,” Bell added.

Bell also noted that Turner has shown plenty of resilience to go with her talent as her career has recovered from two major injuries, one of which caused a decision to retire in 2015 that was later rescinded.

He said: “Don’t forget Hayley also had a sabbatical, or a retirement, and a couple of injuries that would have finished most people off. A head injury back in the day when she missed a year, and also that awful injury in the Park Hill, she then subsequently retired for another year.

“She probably missed at least two years riding through injury and it’s testament to her strength of character and fitness level that she’s lasted so long and been so successful.”