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.