Lizzie Kelly, the accidental pathfinder who became the first female jockey to win a top-class jumps race in Britain, has quit the saddle to start a family. She takes with her a stack of memories of a kind that would have seemed wildly improbable had she stated them as ambitions at the outset of her career a decade ago.

Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh were winning big races by then but good rides were hard to come by for women who were not quite so well connected and Grade One wins were not to be thought of. It hardly mattered because Kelly was studying event management at Winchester and riding her mother’s horses in point to points was just a fun thing to do between classes.

“None of us thought that I was going to be a professional jockey one day,” she reflected last year, while preparing for her first ride in the Grand National. “I left university at 21 and sort of thought, well, I don’t really want to sit in an office just yet, which is gonna be what I’ll end up doing.”

She spent a couple of summers riding out for Willie Mullins in Ireland and continued to fare reasonably well in the pointing field. But she remembers it being a surprise when her step-father, Nick Williams, offered her the chance to ride for his stable on a regular basis.

One of her earliest wins was in a Wincanton bumper aboard an 18-1 shot called Tea For Two. First prize was only £1,624.50 but it was a hugely significant moment for Kelly, the start of the most important working relationship in her career. Almost three years later, she and Tea For Two triumphed at Kempton on Boxing Day in the Kauto Star.

Walsh, Bryony Frost and Rachael Blackmore have won other Grade Ones in Britain since then but Kelly will always be the first and she suddenly found herself in the eye of a media storm. “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind,” she said a week later. “I’ve been amazed at how high it’s gone, you see CNN International tweeting about it...”

Kelly was never the most refined in her riding style but was undeniably effective and delivered Cheltenham Festival successes aboard Coo Star Sivola and Siruh Du Lac, both times in big-field handicap chases. When she made headlines in 2017 as the first female rider in the Gold Cup for 33 years, it ended in disaster with Tea For Two nearly breaking the second fence and unshipping her but they made amends at Aintree the next month, beating Cue Card in a thrilling finish to the Bowl.

She tried working at other yards in the hope of outside rides but found it a dispiriting process that sapped her confidence. “I think a lot of people would probably say that I’m underused,” she told The Guardian last year, “but I don’t go anywhere else, to warrant or deserve outside rides. I am here and 100% committed to anything that comes through the doors, which I think is probably a better way of being than spreading yourself thinly and not being as aware or as in tune with the horses you do ride.

“I’ve spent years riding out for people and every time you go, you ride a different horse. Whereas here, I know the horses inside out and I think that’s really important. I’ve made the decision that this is how I want to do it.

“I find that riding out for people can be very mentally tough because, when you don’t get the rides, you question why. And you forget that actually you can ride, you’re a perfectly capable jockey. Just because one person has decided that they’re going to waste your time, doesn’t mean that you’re not good.”

The 27-year-old said on Thursday: “I am announcing my retirement today with the news that my husband and I are expecting our first child. I will miss riding in races, the weighing room and everyone in it.

“I want to thank the girls in the weighing room who made it feel like home and the lads on the other side who were so good to me. I really have had a career that I could never have imagined and I’ve been blessed to be associated with the horses that I have ridden.”

Great British Racing, the sport’s promotional body, reacted by publishing figures that showed a 68% rise in jump winners ridden by women since 2015, the year of Kelly’s first Grade One. They also pointed to a 26% rise in the number of women holding a professional jockey’s licence.