Frank Wootton

Frank Wootton (Francis Leonard Wootton, 14 December 1893 to 6 April 1940) was an Australian jockey who, as a teenager in the Edwardian era, was British champion for four successive years. The eldest son of Richard Wootton, he grew up under a very strict regime set by his father, and the family moved to South Africa, where he rode his first winner aged nine, and in 1906 to Epsom in Surrey. By sixteen he was the youngest champion jockey ever, having won the Oaks on Perola, and he won the St Leger and the Eclipse Stakes on Swynford. Weight problems all but ended his flat career by 1913, and after war service in Mesopotamia he rode over hurdles and trained. He died in Australia in 1940, and in 1999 the Racing Post ranked him ninth among its top 50 jockeys of the twentieth century.