Rachael Blackmore has enjoyed an incredible year so far - and it could get even better.
The Tipperary jockey was crowned the leading jockey at the Cheltenham Festival after partnering six horses to success at the famous meeting in March before riding Minella Times to Grand National success just three weeks later.
She could make more history by being crowned the Irish champion jockey next week, with the National Hunt season ending on the final day of the Punchestown Festival.
Blackmore is currently eight winners behind Paul Townend, but the defending champion is currently sidelined due to a foot injury picked up at the Fairyhouse Easter meeting.
As a result, Blackmore will have a good chance to cut into Townend's lead further in the coming days.
But despite winning almost €7million in prize money in her career to date, research from OLBG shows the 31-year-old is way down the all-time prize money list, which is unsurprisingly dominated by international flat jockeys.
Incredibly, only one jockey based in Ireland or the UK cracked the top 50 on the list, with Frankie Dettori coming in 37th place with total estimated prize money of over €176million.
Legendary riders AP McCoy (€46m) and Ruby Walsh (€24) are also some way off the riches of some of the lesser-known jockeys on the list, which is topped by Japan's Yutaka Take, who has won a jaw dropping estimate of €661m in prize money.
Japanese jockeys also take second, third and fourth place on the list and are responsible for eight of the top ten, which you can see in full below:
| Rank | Jockey | Country | Career wins | Career earnings |
| 1 | Yutaka Take | Japan | 4,249 | €661,440,276 |
| 2 | Norihiro Yokoyama | Japan | 2,840 | €465,767,617 |
| 3 | Masayoshi Ebina | Japan | 2,538 | €398,296,725 |
| 4 | Yuichi Fukunaga | Japan | 2,410 | €398,285,676 |
| 5 | John R. Velazquez | Puerto Rico | 6,258 | €357,770,026 |
| 6 | Yoshitomi Shibata | Japan | 2,296 | €346,420,603 |
| 7 | Yukio Okabe | Japan | 2,943 | €297,902,477 |
| 8 | Javier Castellano | Venezuela | 5,328 | €294,748,370 |
| 9 | Fujita Shinji | Japan | 1,918 | €290,824,346 |
| 10 | Yasunari Iwata | Japan | 1,656 | €287,092,823 |
Blackmore still couldn't believe she was a Grand National-winning jockey days after her victory in the world’s greatest steeplechase.
“It’s still hard to process it all, to be honest. It’s been unbelievable,” she said.
“I was meant to fly home on Saturday night, but I missed my flight so I came home on the boat on Sunday and got home on Sunday evening.
“I genuinely lay awake in bed all night on Saturday. I was completely exhausted and got into bed thinking I was going to have a great night’s sleep, but I just could not shut down. I’ve been catching up on sleep ever since!
“I just couldn’t believe what had happened, I suppose. Your adrenaline would still be up and you’d be thinking about what was one of the biggest days of my life, so sleep just wouldn’t allow!”
Blackmore is well used to big-race success, but admits the feeling of winning the National on the Henry de Bromhead-trained Minella Times was different to anything she has experienced before.
“It’s a very exciting race to be part of,” she told the PA news agency.
“I’d ridden Minella Times before, and he’s a beautiful horse to ride who jumps really well, so I was looking forward to going over the National fences with him.
“There’s a lot of anticipation in the build-up to the National. It’s so unique – 40 horses and 30 jumps. I suppose excitement was the overriding emotion on Saturday morning.
“You know very quickly if a horse is taking to the fences or not, and Minella Times absolutely took to them. After we jumped two or three fences, I knew he was really enjoying himself, and we got a fantastic passage around.
“Once you’ve got over The Chair and the water jump, you can kind of take a breath then as you’ve got over everything and you just have to go and do it once more!”
