LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Geoff Lewis, best known for being the jockey of legendary 1971 Epsom Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Mill Reef, died on Wednesday aged 89.

Born in Wales, he was one of 13 children, the family moved to England when he was 11 years old with his first job working as a pageboy in an upmarket London hotel.

He found his calling as a jockey when he became an apprentice at the Epsom stables of Ron Smyth having told his parents a tall tale so he could quit being a page boy, a job he despised.

“I had seen Welsh ponies but I had never sat on a horse,” he told BroughScott.com when he turned 80 years old.

However, he had a natural talent and this was seen to devastating effect when young English trainer Ian Balding entrusted him with Mill Reef, who he was to ride in all 14 of his races, winning 12 of them.

He was to go on from being a top class two-year-old to be one of turf’s greatest ever horses.

Lewis nearly missed the Derby ride as on the same day Mill Reefwas surprisingly beaten by Brigadier Gerard in the English 2000 Guineas he suffered a dreadful fall.

Fortunately for him it was not, as feared, a broken neck but a trapped nerve and jockey and horse gave a peerless performance at Epsom in the colours of American philanthropist Paul Mellon.

“I’d ridden some good horses before but there was just something different about Mill Reef,” Lewis recalled in the
Racing Post in 2021.

“He always seemed to do the right thing at the right time. He was the easiest horse to ride, although he could be a tricky little thing at home.”

They were to go on and win the Eclipse Stakes, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and to cap it all Europe’s most prestigious race the Arc at Longchamp in October that year.

“It’s very sad news,” said Balding’s son Andrew, who is now a leading trainer.

“Geoff played an important part in my family’s life and will be greatly missed. Not only was he a wonderful jockey but he was also a huge character, a huge personality as well.”

Lewis may never have ridden a better horse than Mill Reef — they added the Prix Ganay and Coronation Cup in 1972 to their Group One tally — but he won several other classics, including the 1973 English 1000 Guineas and Oaks on Mysterious.

Never one to bite his tongue — despite a pronounced stutter — nor back down from a confrontation he replied in kind when asked why he had been so emotional when he passed the Epsom winning post on Mill Reef.

“Wh-wh-what’s the p-p-p-point of having e-e-emotions,” he said.

“If you never e-e-effing show them?”

Lewis was to go on and enjoy a relatively successful training career when he hung up his riding boots in 1979 but his personal life was marked by tragedy — son Gary died due to a brain hemorrhage.

Lewis’s death comes days after that of Ron Turcotte, who rode another legend of the turf, 1973 US Triple Crown champion Secretariat or ‘Big Red’ as he was known.