page_title: Joe Childs
section_title: Royal Jockey (1925–1935)
hierarchical_section_title: Joe Childs / Career / Royal Jockey (1925–1935)
caption_attribution_description: Gainsborough, b.h. 1915. By Bayardo from Rosedrop by St Frusquin. He was a winner of the English Triple Crown.
context_page_description: Joseph Childs was a French-born, British-based flat racing jockey. He won fifteen British Classics in a 35-year career, the last ten years of which were spent as jockey to King George V. He was known for riding a slow, waiting race, and also for having a short temper which regularly saw him at odds with his trainers and owners.
context_section_description: From 1925 until his retirement in 1935, Childs would be jockey to King George V whose horses were trained by William Rose Jarvis. Childs would refer to the King as 'My Guv'nor' and would toast him with champagne every time he won on one of his horses.  In the King's colours he would have 'the proudest moment of his life' when he won the 1929 1,000 Guineas on Scuttle. As a reward, the King presented Childs with a cane, which would become his most treasured possession. The 'best race he ever rode' was for the King too – the 1933 Hardwicke Stakes on Limelight.
  Childs won the 1926 Derby on Coronach for one of his long standing trainers, Fred Darling, one of the few trainers who could handle him.  The horse's aristocratic owner was Lord Woolavington. Childs and Coronach won the race with an uncharacteristically fast, front-running performance, Childs being known as a 'hold up' jockey. This resulted in a famous post-race comment, "The bastard ran away with me".  No jockey would win a Derby with the same front running tactic until Steve Cauthen on Slip Anchor in 1985.
  By the end of his career Childs was often found riding for Cecil Boyd-Rochfort and it was for him he rode his last classic winner – Brown Betty in the 1933 1,000 Guineas. Childs had by this time mellowed considerably with age.  His final winner was at Derby in November 1935 and in December of that year he was invited to Buckingham Palace at the request of the King. In all, Childs had achieved 15 British Classic wins, two Grand Prix de Paris and one French Derby.
caption: Gainsborough, the horse on which Childs won the Triple Crown
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