Ben Jones: the Carmarthen jockey who won the King George

Last updated 8 September 2026. Career details verified against published racing records.

Ben Jones won the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day 2025, which puts a jockey from Carmarthen on the roll of one of the biggest chases in the calendar. He is 26.

The basics

A Welsh racing upbringing

Both his parents rode as amateurs. His father Dai has spent his working life running Welsh racecourses: clerk of the course at Ffos Las, then appointed to the same job at Chepstow in September 2023. If you have been racing in Wales in the last 20 years, the ground you walked on was his father’s responsibility.

Jones rode in point-to-points in Wales and moved to Somerset at 17 to join Philip Hobbs, which is the well-trodden route out of Welsh point-to-pointing and into the professional ranks.

The breakthrough nearly came early. In the 2020 Martin Pipe at the Cheltenham Festival he was beaten a short head on Pileon for Hobbs.

The big wins

The Cheltenham Festival winner arrived in March 2024 on Shakem Up’arry, trained by Ben Pauling and owned by Harry Redknapp. At the start of the following season Pauling made him stable jockey, and was clear about why:

The Jukebox Man

The partnership that made him has been with one horse. The Jukebox Man was second in the Albert Bartlett at the 2024 Festival, won the Kauto Star Novices’ Chase on Boxing Day that year, and came back to Kempton twelve months later to win the King George VI Chase itself.

Two Boxing Days, two Grade 1s, the same horse and the same rider. For a jockey still in his mid-twenties that is a serious partnership to have.

Riding for a yard on the way up

Ben Pauling’s Gloucestershire operation has grown from a small string into one of the more dangerous jumping yards in the country, and Jones arrived as stable jockey exactly as that was happening. Getting the job at a stable on the rise is a different proposition from inheriting one at its peak: the horses improve underneath you, and so does the profile.

Harry Redknapp’s involvement as an owner has done the yard no harm either. The former football manager owned Shakem Up’arry for the Cheltenham Festival win and The Jukebox Man for both Boxing Day Grade 1s, which has brought a level of mainstream attention that jump racing rarely attracts.

The Welsh connection

Jones rides mostly in England now, as almost every successful Welsh jump jockey ends up doing, because that is where the horses are. The link home is unusually direct though. When he rides at Chepstow, the ground has been prepared by his father.

Backing him

Pauling’s yard has grown quickly and Jones rides most of the good ones, so his prices reflect it in the big handicaps. Odds on all his rides are on the DragonBet horse racing page, and the betting glossary explains any term here you have not met.

More Welsh jockey profiles: Sean Bowen and James Bowen.

Sources: career record and race results per published racing sources; Ben Pauling interview from DragonBet’s own reporting, October 2024. Correct as of 8 September 2026.