Paris (France) (AFP) – Jim Crowley, the 2016 British champion jockey who had switched from jumps to the flat, took the "hardest decision" of his life on Saturday and retired.
Issued on: 01/08/2026 - 19:14
2 min Reading time
Former British champion flat jockey Jim Crowley has retired after failing to recover from the injuries suffered in a terrible fall last September © Glyn KIRK / AFP
The 48-year-old Englishman made the rare switch in 2006 and went on to not only be champion jockey but also to win many major prizes.However, a serious fall in a race last September resulted in fractures to his pelvis and a leg, and despite battling to return to the saddle, he opted to call it a day after undergoing five operations."I had internal bleeding after the accident and very nearly died that day," he said at Goodwood, the racecourse where he rode his 2,000th winner back in 2020. "It has been tough, the hardest decision of my life. I had my first ride when I was 17."Time does not wait for anybody, and the injuries I had at York have taken a lot longer (to heal) than I anticipated."But I feel very fortunate to have come out of that accident. On to the next chapter."Crowley said that, despite taking the advice of father-in-law and former leading English trainer Guy Harwood, there were many who thought he was mad to move over to the flat. Indeed he told AFP in 2020 that "nine out of 10 people" advised him to remain a jumps jockey "but I had a little bit of an 'Up yours' attitude".He even admitted to having thought, when he had been riding over jumps, that "flat racing is for sissies".'A thousand emotions'
