Ryan Moore happy to be part of the workforce
Clarke Kent needed a telephone box, Ryan Moore just needs any racecourse weighing room.
Like Superman’s alter ego, Moore in a sober suit would pass almost unnoticed on a high street, which is probably just how he likes it. Some seek achievement as a ticket to celebrity, for Moore it is simply the excess baggage that comes with being one of the most gifted riders of his generation.
The 26-year-old champion jockey is a driven man, much like his jumping counter-part Tony McCoy. The difference is that while McCoy sees no further than the next winner, even if his victory in the Grand National brought more raw emotions to the surface than he normally shows, Moore’s priority is conquering the major peaks. And even then he is not easily satisfied.
When Snow Fairy won the Investec Oaks on Friday, Moore was asked if this was a special moment in his career, the three-time champion jockey said simply: “No, not really – it’s not the Derby.”
A first British Classic winner may have been Mount Everest but Moore’s sights were set on the Olympian summit, which he reached with masterful understatement. As Workforce scythed down At First Sight to cover the mile-and-a-half course at Epsom quicker than any horse before him, Moore’s celebration at winning the Investec Derby extended no further than his right hand reaching down to pat the colt’s neck.
Ask Moore if he would consider one of Frankie Dettori’s flying dismounts and the half-smile would be a hint that the inquisitor must have just flown in from Mars. Moore simply does not do that.
It is a mixture of innate shyness and a work ethic that was instilled into him early by his father Gary, a former jump jockey turned trainer, and it is that which makes him perhaps the perfect partner for Workforce’s trainer, Sir Michael Stoute.
All the partnership required was a third member of the team and the big, if unfurnished, bay colt who arrived last year gave hints that he could be the missing link. “I remember when we saw him in the spring last of year,” Moore said of Workforce’s early days at Stoute’s yard. “He was a big, backward two-year-old who was always going to look a three-year-old. He stood out early on but his work was always just workmanlike.
“He impressed me as a two-year-old but you never know – you’ve just got to hope they progress. And he’s a big horse so you’re just hoping he was going to fill out into that frame and be strong enough to carry it forward.”
There was enough promise in his solitary juvenile win, at Goodwood in September, that Workforce would carry Moore’s hopes for the Derby but the small problems that can afflict big horses meant that the colt had to be pushed into a first run of the season in the Dante Stakes, when so much went wrong that many outside the yard lost faith. “He just took a while to come to himself,” Moore explained. “It was quite a hard winter and he just took time. We ran him in the Dante on ground that was probably a bit too quick for him and really you wouldn’t want to run him. But we were running out of time and things didn’t go right for him. He had his tongue lolling out and if made it difficult for him.
“We knew he would shape up for the race. I thought he’d done well to put his head down and get going. As I say, he’s not a flash worker at home and he probably wasn’t there fitness-wise and the race has brought him on hugely.”
Victory in the Derby has brought Workforce on to that small pantheon reserved for the best and Moore hopes that, having scaled the peak, the horse’s talents have not been too greatly diluted. “I was a bit worried about the drying ground but he’s handled it and you’d like to think he’d be better with a bit more give in the ground. Hopefully he’ll carry on progressing and he’ll be a real good horse. He has a really good mind, he’s a very settled horse.
“When I asked him to go, he quickened really impressively. It was just sooner than I’d have liked to have been in front. It’s a shame because I really had to keep him up to his work. He’s an inexperienced horse you just want to make sure on a day like today. He’s had a tough time – he’s a very honest horse and he gave everything.
“It’s still early days in his career and we just hope he comes out of this race in good shape and carries on progressing.”
Moore’s progress has been no less impressive and he and Stoute are clearly a fusion of like minds. “He puts you at ease straight away. He’s a master trainer, he really knows his horses and he’s prepared this horse magnificently,” Moore said. “I remember he rang me up early in the season, when I wasn’t riding work, and said ‘a couple of horses impressed me today’ and this fella was one of them - and when he says that you take notice.”
So what was the other horse? Back comes the half-smile. Moore has signed Freemason Lodge’s version of the Official Secrets Act and that question goes quietly by.
Even Superman knows limitations.
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