HORSE RACING: Skybet make Richard Johnson 4/1 to ride 3000 winners and 2/5 to notch up 2500 firsts after reaching the 2000 landmark at Newbury on Wednesday.
Skybet make Richard Johnson 4/1 to ride 3000 winners and 2/5 to notch up 2500 firsts after reaching the 2000 landmark at Newbury on Wednesday.
Although left languishing on 1999 when Folkestone were forced to abandon Tuesday’s card due to frost, Johnson finally rode the milestone winner just 24 hours later at the Berkshire venue in the Powersolve Electronics Greatwood Charity Handicap Chase.
His victory on Fighting Chance for Richard Lee also gave the rider his fourteenth consecutive century and he joins Tony McCoy as only the second jump jockey in history to ride 2000 winners.
McCoy has since gone on to set a new record by riding his 3000th winner at Plumpton earlier this year in February aboard Nicky Henderson’s novice chaser Restless D’Artaix.
Sky Bet make Johnson 2/5 to pass the 2500 winner mark if he fails to emulate his great friend and rival by booting home another 1000 winners needed to equal McCoy’s record before hanging up his boots.
Matt Doyle of Sky Bet said: “It is an outstanding achievement for Johnson who, like Adrian Maguire before him, is the greatest jump jockey never to have won the title.”
Sky Bet also offer odds of 2/1 for Johnson, the eternal bridesmaid in the jump jockeys’ championship, to wrestle the title away from McCoy for the first time by the 2012/13 season.
Johnson has finished runner-up in the jump jockeys’ championship to McCoy no fewer than eleven times since the Champion took the first of his 14 consecutive titles in 1995/96.
