Nowadays, Michael Anthony ‘Mick’ Fitzgerald is best known as a television presenter, most recently with ITV Racing. However, until forced into retirement in August, 2008, aged 38, Fitzgerald was one of the most successful National Hunt jockeys of all time. All told, he rode a total of 1,310 winners in Britain and Ireland, all bar 15 of which came on British soil, but his riding career was effectively brought to an end when he smashed four vertebrae in his neck during a second-fence fall from L’Ami in the Grand National on April 5, 2008. He recovered sufficiently to return to the saddle but, faced with the threat of paralysis in the event of another fall, he took medical advice and hung up his boots.
Fitzgerald rode his first winner, Lover’s Secret, trained by Richard Tucker, in a conditional jockeys’ selling hurdle at Ludlow on December 20, 1988. In the early nineties, he became stable jockey to Nicky Henderson at Seven Barrows in Lambourn, Berkshire, where he would spend the remainder of his riding career. As far as the Cheltenham Festival is concerned, Fitzgerald rode a total of 14 winners at the March showpiece, the first of which was Ramylette, trained by Henderson, in the now-defunct Cathcart Challenge Cup in 1994.
In 1996, Fizgerald won the Grand National on Rough Quest, trained by Terry Casey and, in 1999, the Cheltenham Gold Cup on See More Business, trained by Paul Nicholls. Rather ironically, though, granted that Nicky Henderson has since become the most successful trainer in the history of the Champion Hurdle, the two-mile hurdling championship was the one major race to elude his long-serving stable jockey. Henderson has saddled See You Then (1985, 1986 and 1987) and, since Fitzgerald retired, Punjabi (2009), Binocular (2010), Buveur D’Air (2017 and 2018), Epatante (2020) and Constitution Hill (2023).