Born in Nottingham on January 3, 1983, Hayley Turner rode here first winner, Generate, trained by Mark Polglase, in a lowly apprentices’ handicap at Pontefract on June 4, 2000. However, she first received wider attention when, in 2005, she shared the apprentices’ title with Saleem Golam and became just the fourth female apprentice, after Alex Greaves, Emma O’Gorman and Lisa Jones, to ride out her claim. In 2008, as a fully-fledged professional, Turner became the first female jockey to ride a hundred winners in a calendar year, bringing up three figures with a day to spare when the two-year-old Mulitovermaurice, trained by James Given, prevailed in a driving finish to a claiming stakes race at Wolverhampton on December 30.
As far as winners at the highest level are concerned, just like London buses, two of them arrived in rapid succession during the summer months of 2011. The first of them, the three-year-old Dream Ahead, trained by David Simcock, made a successful return to sprinting – having been soundly beaten by Frankel in the St. James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot on his seasonal debut – when a ready winner, albeit by just half a length, of the Group 1 Darley July Cup at Newmarket. The second, Margot Did, another three-year-old, but trained by Michael Bell, belied odds of 20/1 when keeping on strongly to win the Coolmore Nunthorpe Stakes at York just over a month later.
In 2012, fresh from becoming just the second female jockey, after Alex Greaves 16 years earlier, to ride in the Derby, Turner travelled Stateside to contest the Grade 1 Beverley D. Stakes at Arlington Park on the aptly-named five-year-old I’m A Dreamer, trained by David Simcock. The Noverre mare held on gamely to win by a head, thereby giving Turner her third winner at Group 1, or Grade 1, level.