John Lowe

John Joseph Lowe was an English flat-racing jockey whose career stretched across more than three decades in the saddle and nearly sixty years around horses. Born in Liverpool on 31 October 1950, the son of a merchant seaman also named John Lowe, he was apprenticed first to Jack Watts in Newmarket between 1966 and 1970 and later to Bill Watts in Richmond, Yorkshire, from 1971 to 1973. His first winner came at Kempton on 11 May 1968, aboard Pally's Double in the Great Jubilee Handicap, and he went on to ride more than 2,000 winners worldwide.

In Britain he amassed 1,138 winners across 33 seasons from 1968 to 2000, peaking with 86 wins in 1977 when he finished seventh in the jockeys' table. He claimed the Cock O' The North title in 1984 with 58 winners, the northern award for the leading flat rider of the turf season. His Group One success came aboard Goodbye Shelley in the Prix Marcel Boussac in 1982, and he also landed Group races on Full Extent in the Gimcrack Stakes and Protection Racket in the Doncaster Cup. Big-handicap days included the Cambridgeshire on Leysh and Mellottie, the Ayr Gold Cup on Sparkling Boy and Final Shot, the Lincoln on K-Battery, and four winners at Royal Ascot, among them a remarkable Ascot Stakes and Queen Alexandra Stakes double on Mountain Cross in the same week in 1978. He also rode with success in India during the winters before the all-weather programme expanded opportunities at home, and his 1,000th British winner came aboard Lobinda at Beverley on 19 September 1991.

After retiring from race-riding in 2000, following a final winner on Deep Blue at Windsor on 26 October that year, Lowe became a race reader for the Press Association and rode work for Sir Henry Cecil at Warren Place. There he sat on horses including Oaks winner Reams Of Verse, Sussex Stakes winner Ali-Royal, and Dr Fong, later naming Fleetwood as the best horse he rode at Cecil's. He also rode work for William Haggas. From 2015 he spent nine memorable years riding out for Roger Varian at Carlburg Stables in Newmarket, retiring from the saddle in 2024 after nearly sixty years. He and his wife Gale emigrated to Perth, Western Australia, on 5 September 2024 to be closer to their daughter Verity and grandsons Isaac and Gabriel, a move Gale later recalled with pride as John settled into garden life and family rituals such as taking Isaac for his first official pint on his eighteenth birthday.

Lowe died in hospital in Perth on Monday, 21 September 2026, aged 75, four days after suffering a stroke while watering plants in his garden. He had recently undergone a knee replacement and was recovering well when he fell; Gale never left the hospital until he passed on Monday night. British jockeys wore black armbands in his memory the following day. Tributes from Dale Gibson of the Professional Jockeys Association and from former weighing-room colleagues recalled a naturally light, chirpy horseman with a dry sense of humour, punctual habits, and an exceptional eye for a horse, remembered as much for decades of quiet professionalism on the Newmarket gallops as for his big-race days in the north and abroad.