World’s Top Jockeys: Rankings, Records, and Horse Racing Legends

Last updated: July 22, 2026

By: Miles HenryFact Checked

This guide breaks down who the best jockeys are into three parts: the current world-ranked stars topping Group 1 racing today, the North American riders winning right now, and the greatest jockeys of all time — starting with the men who’ve held the sport’s all-time wins record, and the Latino legends who reshaped American racing along the way.

Sources behind this guide: current standings from the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA) / Longines World’s Best Jockey rankings, plus records from the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame. Historical career records are cross-checked against official Hall of Fame profiles. Last updated: July 2026. I revisit the current-standings section a few times a year, typically after major Group 1 racing.

The Best Jockeys in Horse Racing Right Now (2026 Longines Rankings)

Each year, the IFHA and Longines score jockeys on their performance in the 100 highest-rated Group 1 and Grade 1 races worldwide — 12 points for a win, 6 for second, 4 for third. It’s the closest thing horse racing has to an official world ranking. As of July 18, 2026:

James McDonald has now won the Longines World’s Best Jockey title in 2022, 2024, and 2025 — three times in five years, a genuinely dominant recent stretch. His 2025 title came on 184 points from 12 qualifying Top 100 Group/Grade 1 wins, six of them aboard the Australian mare Via Sistina, including the Cox Plate and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. Ryan Moore has the most all-time titles among active riders with four (2014, 2016, 2021, 2023).

The Longines list is what most of the industry points to for a global answer. But it’s worth knowing there’s a separate, purely North American picture too: Equibase tracks current-year earnings for jockeys riding in the U.S. and Canada, and that leaderboard moves week to week. As of late May 2026, Irad Ortiz Jr. led North American earnings for the year at just over $16 million, narrowly ahead of his brother Jose Ortiz. Check Equibase directly for the live, current-week standings rather than relying on a snapshot here — this one specifically changes fast.

If you’re new to the sport, these are the names worth watching whenever they show up on a big-race program — McDonald, Moore, Purton, Buick, and the Ortiz brothers cover most of the riders you’ll actually see topping major cards worldwide.

Best North American Jockeys Today

The Longines ranking recognizes elite international Group 1 performance, but when American racing fans talk about the best jockeys in horse racing, they’re often thinking of who’s actually winning on North American dirt and turf circuits week to week. A few names dominate that conversation right now:

• Irad Ortiz Jr. — the current North American earnings leader, and a fixture at the top of the standings for years running
• Jose Ortiz — Irad’s brother, consistently one of the top earners in the country in his own right
• Flavien Prat — a regular near the top of both earnings and win-percentage leaderboards
• Tyler Gaffalione — a leading Kentucky Derby-trail rider and one of the busiest jockeys on the major circuits
• John Velazquez — still riding, still adding to a career that made him the sport’s all-time leading money earner
• Javier Castellano — still active and still winning at the highest level, decades into his career
• Joel Rosario — a consistent Grade 1 winner and a fixture in major stakes races year after year

Check Equibase’s current standings for the live North American leaderboard — these names shift position throughout the year, but they’re consistently the ones at or near the top.

What Makes a Jockey Great?

The best jockeys share a few traits that show up race after race, not just on a good day:

• Strategic acumen: knowing exactly when to hold a horse back and when to ask for everything it has
• Physical fitness: the strength and endurance to control a half-ton animal at speed for the length of a race, race after race, day after day
• Mental toughness: split-second decisions made at 35+ mph, with no time to second-guess
• A real connection with the horse: reading a horse’s rhythm and effort in real time, not just steering it. Some jockeys can feel when a horse isn’t traveling quite right long before anyone else notices — that kind of feel keeps horses sounder and wins races that aren’t obvious from the grandstand.
• Weight discipline: staying fit enough to make weight while still having the strength to control a horse at speed is a constant grind that never shows up in a form line

Those traits translate directly into race outcomes — tactical positioning, adapting to how a race is actually unfolding rather than how it was planned, managing a horse’s energy so it has something left in the final furlong, and the accumulated instinct that comes only with years of experience.

The Greatest Jockeys of All Time: Shoemaker, Pincay, and Baze

Any conversation about the greatest jockeys of all time eventually comes back to the all-time wins record, and that record has only changed hands twice in the last 60 years. Bill Shoemaker held it first. Standing just 4-foot-11 and weighing under 100 pounds, “The Shoe” rode from 1949 to 1990 and retired with 8,833 career wins — a record that stood for nearly three decades. He won four Kentucky Derbies, including his most famous ride: guiding Ferdinand to victory in 1986 at age 54, making him the oldest jockey ever to win the race. In 1953 alone, he won 485 races, a single-season record that stood for 20 years. Shoemaker was paralyzed in a 1991 car accident but continued training horses from a wheelchair for years afterward.

Laffit Pincay Jr. broke Shoemaker’s record in 1999, finishing his own career with 9,530 wins — a mark that in turn stood until Russell Baze surpassed it in 2006, retiring with 12,842 North American victories. Three jockeys, three different eras, each one the “winningest” rider of his time. It’s a good reminder that “greatest ever” is rarely a permanent title in this sport.

Latino Jockeys Who Dominated the Triple Crown Era

No history of great jockeys is complete without recognizing the Latino riders who reshaped the sport starting in the mid-20th century. Joseph Rodriguez was the first Latino to ride in a Triple Crown race, finishing second aboard Upset in the 1922 Preakness — but it was the 1950s onward when Latino jockeys began dominating the sport’s biggest stages.

In 1958, Ismael Valenzuela became the first Latino jockey to win the Kentucky Derby, also taking the Preakness that same year. Since then, all but two Triple Crown races have featured a Latino jockey in the starting gate — a run of continuous representation spanning nearly seven decades.

Ismael “Milo” Valenzuela and his brother Angel, born in Texas and raised in Mexico, got their start on bush league tracks in Arizona before Milo went on to ride the legendary Kelso to 22 graded stakes wins and become racing’s all-time leading money winner at the time. He was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in 2008.

Victor Espinoza became the first Latino jockey to win the Triple Crown, aboard American Pharoah in 2015 — also making him the oldest rider ever to win it. That same year, he became the first jockey in history to win both the Triple Crown and the Breeders’ Cup Classic in the same season. Espinoza has won over 3,200 races despite arriving in the U.S. unable to speak English and sleeping in tack rooms at Northern California tracks early in his career.

When people argue over the greatest jockey of all time, these are exactly the names that keep surfacing in both fan debates and Hall of Fame conversations.

Panama’s Jockey Factory and Laffit Pincay Jr.

For a country its size, Panama has produced a genuinely disproportionate share of American racing’s greatest riders. Manuel Ycaza immigrated to the U.S. in 1956, won the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award in 1964, and finished with over 2,300 wins before his 1977 Hall of Fame induction.

Braulio Baeza became the first Central American jockey to win the Kentucky Derby in 1963, won it and the Belmont Stakes three times each, and retired with over 4,000 wins. But the name that towers over all of them is Laffit Pincay Jr. — the man who held the sport’s all-time wins record between Shoemaker and Baze, as covered above. Pincay also won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey five times, more than any other rider, and later founded the Laffit Pincay Jr. Riding Academy to train the next generation of Panamanian jockeys.

Puerto Rican and Venezuelan Standouts

Angel Cordero Jr. won the Kentucky Derby three times and became the first Puerto Rican jockey to sweep all three Triple Crown races, finishing his career with more than 7,000 wins and a 1988 Hall of Fame induction. John Velazquez, also from Puerto Rico, became the sport’s leading career money-earner — over $262 million — and has ridden 15 Breeders’ Cup winners and four Triple Crown winners across a career that’s still adding to that total.

Venezuela’s Gustavo Ávila won two legs of the 1971 Triple Crown aboard Canonero II, a horse that lost 70 pounds during quarantine on its trip from Venezuela — weight loss that likely cost him the sweep. Ramón Domínguez led all North American jockeys in wins in back-to-back years in the early 2000s and retired with nearly 5,000 career victories. Javier Castellano, still riding today, set the single-season purse record in 2013 at over $26 million and won four straight Eclipse Awards from 2013–2016.

Cordero, Velazquez, Ávila, Domínguez, and Castellano are the names that come up again and again when serious racing fans debate the best Latino riders of all time.

Here’s a video look at the world of horse racing jockeys.

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