Bill Skelton

Who is Bill Skelton?

Bill Skelton was a top jockey in New Zealand Thoroughbred horse racing who competed from the 1940s for four decades. He also rode in Australia, South Africa, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

He started as an apprentice jockey aged 13, and rode his first winner aged 15 at Winganui. He was champion jockey seven times, and was outside the top four of the premiership between 1947 and 1979 only four times. He rode a record 124 winners in the 1967-68 season, and in May 1980 became the first New Zealand jockey to ride 2000 winners; he finished with 2179. He remains the most successful jockey of the 20th century in New Zealand with those figures. He claimed the best horse he rode was Daryl's Joy, champion New Zealand two year old in 1968, champion three year old in Australia in 1969, and later successful in the United States. Skelton won both the W S Cox Plate and the Victoria Derby on Daryl's Joy in Australia. The big two mile victories in New Zealand included the Auckland Cup on Lucky Son, which he also trained; his father-in-law Fred Pratt's mare Foglia D'Oro in the New Zealand Cup and Loofah in the Wellington Cup.

Skelton was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 1990, and to the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame in 2006.