Charlie Swan (born 20 January 1968)[1] is a former top National Hunt jockey in Ireland in the 1990s. He is associated with the great Istabraq, on whom he won three Champion Hurdles. He was twice top jockey at the Cheltenham Festival and was champion National Hunt jockey in Ireland for nine consecutive years.[2] After retiring as a jockey he spent several years a trainer, based in Modreeny near Cloughjordan, County Tipperary.
First and only son to Donald Swan, a former British Army Captain, and his wife Teresa, Charlie was named after an ancestor who was the surgeon to the British King 'Bonnie Prince Charlie'. He rode his first winner as a fifteen-year-old, on his father’s Final Assault, in a two-year-old maiden at Naas in March 1983, and, after a successful spell as an apprentice, he later turned his attention to the National Hunt scene. He won his first Irish jockeys' championship in 1989/90 and retained the title up to and including the 1997/98 season. He was only deposed as champion Irish rider after deciding to concentrate on his training career. Swan holds the Irish records for the most winners in a season (147 in 1995/96) and the most in a calendar year.[3]
Away from Cheltenham, he has ridden numerous big-race winners, including Ebony Jane in the Irish Grand National and Ushers Island and Life Of A Lord in the Whitbread Gold Cup.