It has been quite some year for jockey-churning, the latest example being the mid-season decision by owner-breeder Imad Al Sagar to drop Hollie Doyle as his retained rider. ‘A change of strategy,’ said racing manager Teddy Grimthorpe after Hollie’s 38 winners for the partnership including three Group 1s on Nashwa. It was nevertheless an eyebrow-raiser since the chosen replacement for Hollie, the rider of more than 1,000 winners including the first Classic success for a woman, is champion jockey Oisin Murphy.
Oisin of course is one of the best riders in the world, as good at his post-race reporting and analysis as he is in the saddle, but his availability is the question. He already has retainers with Qatar Racing and Prince Faisal which will take priority. As someone hoping to be running his horses in the best of races, it seems curious for Imad Al Sagar to switch retainer to a rider who could have two reasons for being unavailable in those top contests.
The Doyle affair follows the ditching by John and Thady Gosden earlier this year of Kieran Shoemark as their stable jockey after he finished second on Field of Gold in the 2000 Guineas. At the time Gosden senior pointed out that being a stable jockey for a top stable isn’t what it used to be: even if Shoemark had stayed as the number one there were five or six top owners with horses in the yard who had their own retained jockeys and whose horses he would have been unlikely to ride. In a sport ever more dominated by a small group of very rich combinations, owners are very much the choosers. Rossa Ryan, for instance, would be seen by most as the jockey with the pick of Ralph Beckett’s legion of racing bluebloods at Kimpton, yet if they are owned by Valmont it is Hector Crouch who usually gets the ride.
Racing has enough warning flags fluttering with the decline of foal numbers, too many small fields and the comparative decline of prize money. But we should also be worrying about our jockeys. Life is fine for a few superstars; however, it’s a warning sign that both David Probert and Richard Kingscote, two jockeys who would figure in most people’s top ten, have decided this summer to take up invitations to leave and ride in Hong Kong instead, as Andrea Atzeni did last year. Kingscote rode a Derby winner for Sir Michael Stoute, both have a steady supply of rides available at home and the career stats to prove their effectiveness – but these days too little of the cream goes to the very top.
No other sportsmen have to suffer the working hours and travelling strains which jockeys face for a riding fee of £167.67 a time, as I was reminded on Saturday. Mark Winn, who won the 7f Handicap on Darkness for David O’Meara, had driven five hours from a Hamilton ride the night before for his first ever race at Goodwood, and bank holidays at meetings all over the country are crucial opportunities for jockeys with lower profiles. Two apprentices took theirs: Richard Hannon’s Alec Voikhansky rode a beauty on the 12-1 Pink Lily in the ten furlong race and 5lb-claimer Jack Dace, son of Lambourn trainer Luke, won coolly on Prince of the Seas for his guv’nor Ralph Beckett.
I had partly come, though, to watch a man who’s had to wait a little longer for his career to take off and who could now be at breakthrough point. Paddy Bradley has for a while been a go-to rider at local Lingfield for a clutch of Epsom trainers like Pat Phelan, Simon Dow, Jim Boyle and Michael Attwater. Lately he’s been popping up more at bigger tracks and at Goodwood he had rides for Newmarket trainers Charlie Fellowes and Kevin Philippart de Foy. Are things looking up? ‘Yes they are. I’ve put in a lot of work at lower levels for a long time but there is a gradual escalation. Opportunities are coming which weren’t before and I’m happy that they are.’ The level-headed rider, who stopped riding for a while in 2021 after returning from a stint at Ballydoyle, admits: ‘I’ve lacked opportunities on better horses for bigger stables but if you keep chipping and chipping away at a lower level then some people do notice. Some people burst on the scene and ride out their claims rapidly. Some people are slow burners. If you are consistent on lower-grade horses for long enough opportunities will come – but you do need to be consistent.’
It was Paddy’s performance on a bank holiday spare ride for Fellowes which led to more. Now he’s riding out once a week for the Newmarket yard of the rapidly-advancing James Owen. There have been opportunities, too, with Philippart de Foy, recently appointed a retained trainer for the free-spending Amo team. What it’s all about, Paddy says, is finding that ‘signature winner’ to take him on to the next level. He deserves to find it.
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