Lester Keith Piggott (5 November 1935 – 29 May 2022) was an English professional jockey and trainer. With 4,493 career flat racing wins in Britain, including a record nine Epsom Derby victories, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest flat racing jockeys of all time and the originator of a much imitated style. Popularly called "The Long Fellow", he was known for his competitive personality, restricting his weight and, on occasion, not sparing the whip, such as in the 1972 Derby. Piggott was convicted of tax fraud in 1987 and sentenced to three years in prison. He served just over one year. Early life Piggott was born in Wantage, Berkshire, to a family that could trace its roots as jockeys and trainers back to the 18th century. The Piggotts were a Cheshire farming family who from the 1870s ran the Crown Inn in Nantwich for over 30 years. Piggott's grandfather, Ernest Piggott (1878–1967), rode three Grand National winners, in 1912, 1918 and 1919, and was married to a sister of the jockeys Mornington Cannon and Kempton Cannon, who both rode winners of the Derby, in 1899 and 1904 respectively. He was also three-times British jump racing Champion Jockey (in 1910, 1913 and 1915), and owned a racehorse stable at the Old Manor in Letcombe Regis (now in Oxfordshire). Lester Piggott's father, (Ernest) Keith Piggott (1904–1993), was a successful National Hunt jockey and trainer, winning the Champion Hurdle as a jockey in 1939 and the Grand National as a trainer in 1963 with Ayala, becoming the British jump racing Champion Trainer of the 1962–63 season. He owned a training stable at South Bank in Lambourn, where Lester Piggott lived until 1954. Lester Piggott was a cousin, through his mother Lilian Iris Rickaby, of two other jockeys, Bill and Fred Rickaby. Fred Rickaby was British flat racing Champion Apprentice in 1931 and 1932. Career Piggott began racing horses from his father's stable when he was ten years old and won his first race in 1948, aged twelve, on a horse called The Chase, at Haydock Park. Piggott was known for his quiet demeanour. He described his mother as wisely playing down his success, while his father rarely gave advice unless there had been a particular mistake. By his teens a sensation in the racing world, he rode his first winner of The Derby on Never Say Die in 1954, aged