Jockeys

Of course, since 2015, the British Flat season has been truncated, at least as far as the Flat Jockeys’ Championship and Apprentice Jockeys’ Championship are concerned, such that it runs from the Guineas Festival at Newmarket in early May to British Champions Day at Ascot in October. Both championships are decided, as they always have been, on the number of winners ridden in the designated period, albeit nowadays over a period of approximately 24 weeks, rather than the previous 32.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a total of four British champion apprentices, including one joint champion, have subsequently become champion jockey. In 2002, in his fourth year as apprentice to Richard Fahey in Musley Bank, near Malton, North Yorkshire, Paul Hanagan became champion apprentice with 81 winners, just half a dozen shy of the post-war record set by Lee Newman two years earlier. Having saddled Vintage Premium to a narrow victory in the John Smith’s Cup at York, under Hanagan, Fahey said prophetically, ‘If this boy is not champion jockey one day I will give up the game.’ Well, Hanagan was (champion jockey), twice, in 2010 and 2011, and Fahey didn’t (give up).

In 2003, Ryan Moore won the apprentices’ title with a relatively modest total of 52 winners, but went on to become champion jockey three times, in 2006, 2008 and 2009. In 2008, William Buick and David Probert, both apprenticed to Andrew Balding at Park House Stables in Kingsclere, Hampshire, shared the title with 50 winners apiece. After finishing runner-up to Oisin Murphy in 2020 and 2021, Buick finally became champion jockey in 2022. He currently leads the 2023 title race by 27 winners from his nearest rival, Tom Marquand, with less than a month of the season remaining and is long odds-on to retain his title. Murphy, too, was apprenticed to Andrew Balding when he won the title in 2014 and, notwithstanding a ‘troubled’ career since, became champion jockey three years running, in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Lanfranco ‘Frankie’ Dettori has experienced his fair share of ups and downs during his 35-year riding career, but it would be fair to say that he has never been far from the headlines, for one reason or another. In December 2022, Dettori revealed his decision to retire at the end of the following season but, ten months later, changed his mind. Following scheduled visits to the United States, Australia and Hong Kong, for the Breeders’ Cup, Melbourne Cup Carnival and Hong Kong Mile, his intention is now to base himself, full-time, in Santa Anita, California, from the start of 2024, with a view to continuing his career Stateside.

In inimitable style, on what may, or may not, be his British racing swansong, at British Champions Day at Ascot on October 21, 2023, Dettori rode his sixth Group 1 winner of the season on British soil, King Of Steel, trained by Roger Varian, in the Champion Stakes. His retirement U-turn has been criticised in some quarters but, as Dettori told the ‘Daily Telegraph’, ‘I am simply not ready to retire completely. I’m still enjoying riding and want to carry on for a while on the international circuit.’

Indeed, granted his successes, at home and abroad, on his ‘farewell’ tour, who can blame him. Domestically, Dettori rode 28 winners from 121 rides, at a strike rate of 23%, and won £4.7 million in prize money, making 2023 his most successful season, financially, since 2019. At the highest level, his other five winners were Chaldean, trained by Andrew Balding, in the 2,000 Guineas, Emily Upjohn in the Coronation Cup, Soul Sister in the Oaks, Courage Mon Ami in the Gold Cup and Mostahdaf in the International Stakes; the last-named quartet were all trained by his old ally John Gosden who, since 2021, has held a joint licence with his son, Thady.

James Forman Sloan, popularly known as ‘Tod’ Sloan, was an American jockey who found fame, and infamy, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean on either side of the turn of the twentieth century. Born in Bunker Hill, near Kokomo, Indiana on August 10, 1874, Sloan was originally nicknamed ‘Toad’ by his father, because on his diminutive stature. As an adult, Sloan stood just 5′ tall and weighed in at 90lb but, after riding his first winner at Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 6, 1889, eventually went on to become an international superstar.

He first dominated the West Coast and, later, the East Coast, before moving to Britain in 1896, where he is credited with popularising the so-called ‘American seat’, or ‘monkey crouch’, as it was initially derided by the British. Traditionally, British jockeys sat bolt upright in the saddle, with long stirrup leathers and their legs hanging down at the sides of the horse. By contrast, Sloan shortened his stirrup leathers – although, according to photographic evidence, not by as much as some historians would have you believe – so that he could crouch low and forward over the withers of the horse, with his knees bent close to his body. In so doing, he effectively uncoupled his own movements from that of the horse, thereby reducing the burden upon it and allowing it to run faster.

Sloan was by no means the first jockey to ride in this way, but was, nonetheless, one of the pioneers of the new riding style in Europe. After four hugely successful seasons riding for leading owners James Keene, Pierre Lorillard, Lord William Beresford and Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, Sloan was denied a licence by the Jockey Club for ‘ conduct prejudicial to the best interests of the sport’. He was never ‘warned off’, but never reinstated either, and his riding career was effectively over.