Born on October 15, 1992 in Naunton, Gloucestershire, Sam Twiston-Davies is the elder son of trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies, who, since the start of the 2025/26 National Hunt season, has held a joint licence with his younger son, William. He took his first ride under Rules on On Spec, trained by his father, in an amateur riders’ handicap at Ludlow on January 15, 2009 and rode his first winner, Baby Run, also trained by Twiston-Davies Snr., in a hunters’ chase at the same course on February 18, 2009. Just over a year later, on March 19, 2010, the same horse provided him with his first high-profile winner when justifying favouritism in the Foxhunter Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.
In his first season as a conditional jockey, 2010/11, Twiston-Davies rode 59 winners to win the conditional jockeys’ championship. He rode over 100 winners in a season for the first time in 2013/14 and towards the end of that season was announced as stable jockey to Paul Nicholls in Ditcheat, Somerset from the start of 2014/15 season, replacing Darryl Jacob. Twiston-Davies spent four years as stable jockey to Nicholls, but at the start of the 2018/19 season announced that he would become a freelance jockey, having been succeeded at Ditcheat by Harry Cobden.
Twiston-Davies enjoyed his most successful season, numerically and financially, in 2014/15, when he rode 145 winners – including Dodging Bullets, trained by Nicholls, in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at the Cheltenham Festival – and amassed nearly £2.5 million in prize money. At the time of writing, all told, he has eight Festival winners and 15 Grade 1 winners to his name, the most recent of which was Potters Charm, trained by his father, in the Formby Novices’ Hurdle at Aintree on Boxing Day 2024.
On June 23, 2019, Twiston-Davies reached the milestone of 1,000 career winners on Nordican Bleue, trained by Richard Newland, in a mares’ novice hurdle at Southwell. At that time, he said, “It seems only yesterday that I was playing starters orders with [younger brother] Willy! It’s a great a achievement and I feel really lucky to have hit the landmark.” On Boxing Day that year, he won the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Nicholls’ apparent second-string, Clan Des Obeaux.
More recently, in January 2026, Cobden was announced as the retained rider for leading owner John ‘J.P.’ McManus, thereby officially vacating his position as Nicholls’ stable jockey at the end of the season. Nicholls has already announced that Twiston-Davies is one of the jockeys who will benefit from the new arrangement.