Jean-Luc Samyn

Who is Jean-Luc Samyn?

Jean-Luc Samyn is a jockey in American Thoroughbred horse racing.

The son of a pastry chef, Jean-Luc Samyn was one of three children. At age thirteen, he went to work for the stable of trainer John Cunnington at Chantilly, a racecourse about 50 kilometers north of Paris city center. He apprenticed for five years and on September 7, 1975 earned his first career win at the racecourse in Compiègne.

After a visit to the United States, Jean-Luc Samyn returned permanently to compete. In 1976, he was the top apprentice jockey at Garden State Park in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and then at Keystone Racetrack in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. In 1977, Samyn relocated to race at New York Racing Association tracks where he has been based ever since. He and his wife Antoinette eventually made their home in Manhasset, New York.

In New York, Jean-Luc Samyn immediately began winning important stakes races and in 1984 rode Play On to a 2nd place finish in the Preakness Stakes then won with the colt in that year's Withers Stakes. Samyn had a long a successful association with the late U.S. Racing Hall of Fame trainer, Philip G. Johnson, winning more than four hundred races together.