Paris, France (AFP) — Jim Crowley, the 2016 British champion jockey who had switched from jumps to the flat, took the “hardest decision” of his life on Saturday and retired.

The 48-year-old Englishman made the rare switch in 2006 and went on to not only be champion jockey but also to win many major prizes.

However, a serious fall in a race last September resulted in fractures to his pelvis and a leg, and despite battling to return to the saddle, he opted to call it a day after undergoing five operations.

“I had internal bleeding after the accident and very nearly died that day,” he said at Goodwood, the racecourse where he rode his 2,000th winner back in 2020.

“It has been tough, the hardest decision of my life. I had my first ride when I was 17.

“Time does not wait for anybody, and the injuries I had at York have taken a lot longer [to heal] than I anticipated.

“But I feel very fortunate to have come out of that accident. On to the next chapter.”

Crowley said that, despite taking the advice of father-in-law and former leading English trainer Guy Harwood, there were many who thought he was mad to move over to the flat.

Indeed he told AFP in 2020 that “nine out of 10 people” advised him to remain a jumps jockey “but I had a little bit of an ‘Up yours’ attitude”.

He even admitted to having thought, when he had been riding over jumps, that “flat racing is for sissies”.

A Thousand Emotions

His opinion changed as the winners started flowing but, now his eyes are fixed on the next challenge.

“I am young enough to start training now and it is something I really want to get my teeth into,” he said.

Crowley had already witnessed the pitfalls of falls in flat races.

He came down in a race in Kempton shortly after he had been confirmed as champion jockey.

Fortunately, he eventually emerged unscathed — fellow jockey Freddy Tylicki was less fortunate in being paralysed from the waist down.

“Kempton was very nasty and I was very lucky to get up and walk away from it,” Crowley told AFP.

“It is not easy to come through something like this and [it] can leave you scarred mentally.

“In jumps you are used to falls, you expect it.

“However the falls on the flat are worse than the jumps.”

He was to go on and ride some great horses in the years that followed the fall, on the back of being champion jockey when he was hired as first choice jockey for the late Sheikh Hamdan al-Maktoum’s Shadwell racing operation.

He was most closely associated with the great sprinter Battaash and Baaeed — he rode the latter to victory in five Group One races.

“There are a thousand emotions running through me — good ones and sad ones — but I have had a lovely send-off and there is no finer place, so I am very happy,” he said.