Lester Piggott, champion British jockey, dies at 86

Lester Piggott, whose 11 jockey championship titles and a record nine English Derby wins made him Britain’s most successful jockey of the late 20th century, died May 29 at a hospital in Geneva. He was 86.

His daughter Maureen Haggas announced the death but did not provide a cause. He had reportedly had heart problems.

In a career spanning 47 years, Piggott rode 4,493 winners in Britain and more than 850 elsewhere. He won the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Belmont Park, New York, worth $500,000 at the time, on the Irishtrained Royal Academy, powering his way from the back of the field.

He took the Prix de l’arc de Triomphe in 1973 at the Longchamp track in Paris on Rheingold, and the 1968 Washington, D.C., International at Laurel Park, Md., on Sir Ivor. He went on to win the latter race twice more, on Karabas in 1969 and Argument in 1980.

In Britain, although Gordon Richards (4,870) and Pat Eddery (4,632) rode more winners overall, and U.S. jockey Bill Shoemaker had 8,883 career wins, Piggott’s record in the big races - including the five British “Classics” remains unsurpassed. In addition to the nine Derbys, the British equivalent of the Kentucky Derby, he won 21 of the other Classics: the 2,000 Guineas, the 1,000 Guineas, the Derby, the Oaks and the St. Leger.

Piggott was the British champion jockey in 1960, in every season from 1964 to 1971 and again in 1981 and 1982. He captured England’s Triple Crown — the 2,000 Guineas, the Derby and the St. Leger — in 1970 on the brilliant Canadian-bred, Irish-trained colt Nijinsky, owned by the American mining and metals magnate Charles W. Engelhard Jr. No horse has won the English Triple Crown since.

Relatively tall for a flatrace jockey — he stood 5 feet 7½ inches — and with the shortest of stirrups, he was easy to pick out in any race, his backside high in the air. He was nicknamed “The Long Fellow” by jockeys because of his height.

Within the racing game, Piggott also was known as “Old Stoneface” because of his unsmiling determination to win. But the description also partly came about because of a lingering shyness from the partial deafness that had left him with a slight speech impediment since childhood.