I chased after the young man at York, definitely arousing his interest, but with no definitive response, writes Tony Stafford. Yesterday morning, on a 22-minute call to his agent in Cambodia, I think I’d got a fair way along the road, but again, no reply from Gavin Horne.
It’s all so different now. Could you imagine 25 years ago being able to live 6,221 miles away and six time zones ahead of the UK and still sort the rides with such certainty for the now guaranteed four times champion Oisin Murphy? “He’s been with me for ten years and is the only jockey on my books, but it’s still a tough existence,” he says.
“I owe a lot to WhatsApp”, says Gavin, “I have everything ready for the trainers when they get to their offices at 6 a.m.” So far, the formula has brought a career-best 22% wins of his mounts, with 168 victories, 52 short of his best of 220 in 2019.
Four championships will be something to be proud of, but a shade insignificant in numerical terms compared with the 11 each by Lester Piggott and Pat Eddery. But one name – in flat racing terms anyway – stands above all others: Sir Gordon Richards, 26 titles and a peak of 269 in 1947.
It took the force of nature that was Tony McCoy to exceed the single-season tally with 289 jumps wins in 2002/3, one of 20 consecutive titles the dominant jumps rider amassed.
Returning to my first point. My initial question to Oisin was to ask whether he was likely to be away for large parts of the winter. He said not, so the prospect of lucrative stints in either Hong Kong or Japan was unlikely. Gavin Horne confirmed that supposition.
So we sit, with barely seven weeks of the Flat Race Jockeys’ Championship remaining to divvy up the honours and, after Champions Day at Ascot, that’s it.
What I was trying to emphasise to young Mr Murphy was that at the present rate of progress he would comfortably exceed the necessary 102 wins to beat Sir Gordon’s 77-year record and have a fighting chance to topple the McCoy tally.
This was the idea I floated, seemingly getting a positive response. The idea first came to mind based on the recent example of the 2023/4 jockeys’ championship in South Africa when Richard Fourie beat the existing record by more than 40 victories.
Turf Talk, my weekday daily read of all things South African racing, latched on to the Fourie phenomenon early, and issued a daily Barometer, as they called it, of his likely finishing figure.
It brought tremendous interest over there, unsurprisingly as he ended on 378 wins, despite putting the handbrake on with some more leisurely weeks as the conclusion came nearer.
My contention to Murphy and Horne was that the last weeks of the UK season on the flat, solely all-weather for seven weeks after the conclusion of the final meeting at Doncaster, needs a little enlivening.
Jump racing is of course the main diet of those times, but if we got a severely cold or excessively wet period, all-weather steps forward into the role for which it was first intended more than three decades ago (October 1985, when Conrad Allen won the first race and is still going strong!)
Other major jockeys will be elsewhere, but with their massive strings, Andrew Balding, Murphy’s boss, and many others have to keep going with their later developing juveniles and horses that need to get a win on the board, something that can be easier as the season draws on.
Gavin described Oisin’s last few days as “like a snowball going downhill and getting bigger and accelerating all the time.”
On one of our brief encounters at York, I asked if he’d given it any thought. “I need a winner here first,” he said. Naturally, he won the next race and four in all, one a day at the meeting.
Since then, though, it has indeed been the accelerating snowball. He rode two winners each day at Goodwood on Sunday, Epsom on Monday, Lingfield on Tuesday, Kempton on Wednesday and Sandown on Friday, topping it up with three at the Esher track on Saturday. Eleven different trainers contributed to the tally.
I’m pretty sure that if he did declare that he would be going all out, the rides would come in exponentially, requiring Mr Horne’s knowledge of the form book to sort the multiple chances in various races.
That 17-winner spell from York to Sandown came in 11 days. To beat Richards, he needs 25 wins a month and a couple more. To beat McCoy it’s another five a month, so virtually a winner a day in all. But I’m sure trainers would be falling over themselves to get his services, knowing that it would guarantee a committed ride by one of the best three jockeys in the weighing room.
Referring to this year’s action, Gavin said that Oisin had hardly over-exerted himself in collecting 46 wins up to early May when the championship took over; “He was pretty much messing around in the US,” he says. “If he’d have been at full throttle from January 1, he could have had a lot more winners by now,” he added.
Naturally, there would need to be an incentive and I’m pretty sure that one of the big bookmaking firms might like to get involved. The Oisin Betfred Barometer has a ring to it and I know from a quiet word with Ed Chamberlin that ITV would certainly like the extra excitement. With AP a regular on ITV for the jumping season, it would be interesting to see if his score was exceeded, whether he would be as gracious as Alastair Cook was when Joe Root beat his record number of Test match centuries at Lord’s on Saturday.
In the final analysis though, Murphy might not fancy the cold, winter days, up early to drive (or be driven) across to the all-weather tracks that are within comfortable reach of his base in Lambourn. You wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t fancy it, but how I’d love to see someone beat a great racing historical record that Piggott, Eddery, Dettori, not to forget Jason Weaver, never managed. And, of course, for Oisin to make his own little piece of history.
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Talking of champion jockeys and agents, I was at a party yesterday hosted by Graham Smith-Bernal at his Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire. I sat at the same table as Tony Hind, agent to Ryan Moore, William Buick and many others. Tony is the flat-race equivalent of Dave Roberts, who looked after McCoy for all his career, but so many other top-notchers.
‘Bony Tony’, as he loves to be called, and his wife, along with friend Charlie Pigram and his better half, were all fully in step with the Tottenham Hotspur vibe, (as an Arsenal fan I wasn’t too upset when yesterday’s result came through), with former player Davd Howells also on our table.
Across the way were Ossie Ardiles, Steve Perryman (Bony’s idol whom he had never met before) and John Pratt, who played cricket with me at Lord’s I think in 1964. Hard to believe it was so long ago.
Buick was on family duty, often happily carrying his younger child outside the tent on a rare free day in the summer. To think I knew William, introduced by dad Walter in the press box at Newbury racecourse, when he was ten years old.
The party was arranged to thank members of various syndicates. The one involving Charlie and Bony includes Smith-Bernal, who retains 25%, and the Stud name includes club legends Ardiles, Brazil (Alan) and Hoddle (Glenn). The boys all made a £30k investment in several horses in which they have a share and Miss Fascinator, a daughter of Mehmas trained by Roger Varian, is likely to bring a big return.
Already a winner at Ascot and Newmarket, the two-year-old, bought for Newsells by Jamie Piggott for 72,000 Guineas, is rated an official 95 and, if she went to the sales, would probably be worth at least four times the purchase price.
Incidentally, Jamie Piggott was at the table alongside older sister Maureen Haggas and husband William who reported the “promising” Economics <as he called him> will be taking on the cream (minus City of Troy) of Aidan O’Brien in the Irish Champion Stakes next weekend.
His last run, when he got to and drew away from Brian Meehan’s smart colt Jayarebe at Deauville recently, got a big boost from the other side of the Atlantic this weekend. Jayarebe had won the Group 3 Hampton Court Stakes at Ascot before taking on Economics in France.
The third home at Ascot was Andrew Balding’s Bellum Justum, ridden by Murphy, and he went on to be a closing second to Jan Breughel in the Gordon Stakes at Goodwood.
Balding might have a massive string nowadays, but he is certainly aware of opportunities around the globe. On Saturday at Kentucky Downs, Bellum Justum went for the DK Horse Nashville Derby Invitational and won easily under Frankie Dettori. The prize? £830k to the winner! Nice to see Frankie’s still earning a crust!
- TS
