Rather like the league table on the first weekend of the football season the only information that can be safely deduced is who is going to be taking part, but this year’s Flat jockeys’ title could be shaping up to be one of the most interesting contests in recent years.
Aside from seasons where injuries have intervened, the last dozen years have been largely dominated by two men. Kieren Fallon held the title with an iron grip which was only loosened when he decamped to ride in Ireland for Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore has exerted a similar hold on the crown since then.
The early indicators from the markets are that it will be business as usual for Moore but he may be facing a greater number of challengers this season, including his own hunger for a fourth title in five years.
Moore not only replaced Fallon as champion jockey but also as stable jockey to Sir Michael Stoute. This gives him the keys to the horsepower of one of the major yards but brings with it the caveat of the trainer’s disapproval over the number of miles that a jockey can clock up in a season if he chases the championship. Even with current rules that prevent a jockey riding at more than nine meetings a week, the advent of floodlit all-weather racing has increased the cycle of jockeys attempting to ride at two meetings a day that was once the preserve of the summer months of evening meetings.
Fallon, during his time with Stoute, resisted all entreaties to scale down from such a hectic schedule but Moore may need less persuading. As he said of such a treadmill existence at the end of last season: “We’ll give it a go but I won’t be doing Wolverhampton on Friday and Saturday night or Kempton on a Wednesday night. It just isn’t possible to do that amount of work when you’ve got big days on Friday and Saturdays.”
The last two jockeys to win the title other than Fallon or Moore were Jamie Spencer and Seb Sanders. They shared the title in 2007 but the battle took its toll on Spencer to the point where he felt unlikely to mount another such challenge and Sanders appears to lack the firepower needed, which seems to be a similar constraint on the aspirations of Richard Hughes.
Two outsiders could be William Buick and Paul Hannagan but one may not be quite ready for an assault on the title while he is still getting used to being stable jockey for the high-profile yard of John Gosden while the other would have to break a monopoly that has seen just one jockey in living memory, Kevin Darley in 2000, winning the title while being based north of Newmarket.
The days when Frankie Dettori won the championship may have receded a little in the memory but he appears to be ready to become a player once more.
The Italian once claimed to have “lost the map” to some of the less exalted venues after he won his second title in 1995 but then decided that he had become too much of a part-time jockey. The moment was hammered home to him when, during his time as a team captain on BBC’s A Question of Sport programme, one contestant asked when he had retired.
That spurred him to reclaim the title but the need to balance his global commitments to Godolphin had seemed to make Dettori redraw the boundaries of his priorities. However, the decision by Sheikh Mohammed to appoint Mahmood al Zarooni as a second Godolphin trainer in Newmarket this season has brought about another redefining to Dettori’s thinking. He will continue to ride primarily for Bin Suroor while Ahmed Ajtebi, another Godolphin protégé, will be a regular rider for Al Zarooni.
At the age of 39 Dettori finds a challenger to his internal supremacy and may find a title challenge as the best way to assert his authority. It is worth noting that he now has the pick of those Sheikh Mohammed-owned horses trained by Mark Johnston and Dettori has set his sight on a target of 150 winners.
That would only be enough to have won the championship once in the last quarter of a century, when Fallon won with a total of 136 winners in 2002. Moore won the title last year with 174 winners but Fallon has ridden 200 four times and the Irishman has made no secret of his desire to reclaim the title.
As he has proved time and again Fallon thrives on a challenge. The more his critics decry him as yesterday’s man, the more he vows to be the man of the future. The Irishman is nicknamed “the Assassin” for his cold-eyed calm when riding in the big races but this time his target is another jockey. When Fallon returned from an 18-month drugs ban last September he quickly rattled up a half-century of winners, partly to prove to trainers that he was still the real deal and partly to remind Moore that he was still worthy of being dealt a hand when they play for the big pot this time around.
Fallon may feel that his best chance will be to set a pace this summer that will test Moore’s resolve for an eight-month battle.
That could be the match of the season.
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