Selim Kaya, who was born in ลanlฤฑurfa on May 1, 1977, grew up as one of 26 siblings. During his childhood, he worked as a shepherd between the ages of 7 and 10 in order to support his family in his father's absence, and he walked his horse from ลanlฤฑurfa to Adana within a week. At the age of 11, he started his apprenticeship by going to hippodromes with his brothers; The death of one of his older brothers due to a horse fall led him to become a jockey.
He had a similar accident when he was an apprentice and was in intensive care for weeks with fractures in his ribs and skull. However, he overcame this process and continued to ride horses, winning 100 races in a short time and becoming an official jockey.
Kaya, who achieved great success both at home and abroad throughout his career, competed with champion horses such as Ribella, Kafkaslฤฑ, Pan River and Finesse. The death of his colleague รmer Kaya after falling off his horse in October 2016 dealt a heavy blow to the family, and then the heart attack of Remazan Kaya, one of the leading names in Turkish racing horse racing, in December 2017 and his death on February 14, 2018 was another loss.
Even after all these difficulties, he continued to ride horses and achieved a total of 2951 first places in countries such as Tรผrkiye and Dubai. He became the winner of the Gazi Race with "Mystical Storm" in 2010 and won the ฤฐsmet ฤฐnรถnรผ Race six times, sharing the title of the most winning jockey in this race with Halis Karataล.
He broke the world record by achieving 58 victories with the thoroughbred named Kafkaslฤฑ, and during this period, he was engraved in memories with the words "Unfortunately, horses cannot choose their owners."
On December 31, 2020, during the Covid-19 period when spectators could not enter the hippodrome, he announced that he would celebrate the first day of the races with spectators and expressed his criticism on this issue, stating that the use of whips was cruelty to animals. On January 5, 2021, he achieved a remarkable success by reaching first place without using a whip with the thoroughbred named "My Victory", and then founded a company called Unano to deal with horse trading.