43-year-old retires after final ride at Newton Abbot‘After nearly 30 years in the saddle, the time has come’As it so often does, for jump jockeys above all, the news that Richard Johnson had decided to hang up his boots came out of the blue. Some riders wake up one morning and realise they cannot face the physical demands for even one more afternoon. In Johnson’s case, it arrived after the second-most successful jump jockey of all time had partnered six losers at Newton Abbot on Saturday – five days before the start of the Grand National meeting at Aintree and a week before the National itself, one of the few big races in
Britain to elude him over 28 seasons in the saddle.
Related: Grand National’s enduring charm embodied by stirring Worsley story