Jockey Tom O'Brien dies aged 39
Jockey Tom O'Brien has died at the age of 39, after being diagnosed with cancer. The BBC reported the death on 11 November 2026.
O'Brien rode more than 1,000 winners in Britain and Ireland. Most of those came in jump racing, where horses race over hurdles and fences, the obstacles that set the sport apart from flat racing. He was a rider who spent much of his career in the saddle at the top of the jumps calendar.
He won two races at the Cheltenham Festival, the four-day meeting each March that many people see as the high point of the national hunt season. He also won the Welsh Grand National twice, a long handicap steeplechase in which horses carry different weights to even out their chances.
His best-known winning partnership was with the horse Thyme Hill. The pair won the 2021 Liverpool Hurdle, and then the 2022 Kauto Star Novices' Chase, a race for young horses jumping fences for the first time at this level.
O'Brien was the nephew of the trainer Aidan O'Brien. He joined Philip Hobbs's operation at Minehead as a teenager and stayed there until he retired in 2023. Hobbs's yard was the place where he learned his trade and built his name.
He leaves his wife, Hayley, and their two young children.
Jump jockeys ride with real risk. Every fall, every tight turn at speed, carries the chance of serious injury. Many riders who leave the saddle carry the sport with them for years, and the racing community is now turning to the family of a man who gave it more than a decade of riding.
