Teenage star jockey Billy Loughnane: ‘It's been my dream job since I was a baby'

The Guardian

a day ago

'I want to be champion jockey,' Billy Loughnane says, with the grin that is already something of a trademark. 'That's my goal, my only ambition. I want to be champion jockey, I need to be champion jockey and hopefully I'll be able to do it.'
From any other teenage rider bar the 19-year-old Loughnane, such a resolute statement of intent could prompt at least a niggle of concern that, with such a tight focus on the ultimate destination, he might not appreciate the journey. Loughnane, though, has been a little different from the earliest days of his riding career.
He was being talked about as a future champion well before he started to discuss the idea himself. He has also, quite clearly, been enjoying every moment of the ride and every fresh career milestone that has appeared in his rearview mirror at a remarkably early stage of his career.
Horses have always just run for Loughnane, as they did for Ryan Moore, Frankie Dettori and, way back in the 1950s, for a teenaged Lester Piggott, who, like Loughnane, grew up in a racing yard and started out riding for his father.
'There's pictures of me a couple of days after I was born, perched up on a horse,' Loughnane says. 'I grew up around racehorses and it's been my dream job since I was a baby, as soon as I could imagine.
'I've had a good couple of years and I've been lucky since I started. I've got a very good agent behind me now in Tony Hind, and a good boss in George Boughey to go with it.'
Dettori was the champion apprentice at 18 but Loughnane was a year younger when he picked up the prize in 2023 and, while Dettori needed the best part of two full seasons to ride out his claim, Loughnane reached the necessary 95 winners less than a year after his debut success in November 2022.
It was an 11-month period when the naturally gifted Loughnane was, for practical and punting purposes, a senior jockey with a claim. His first winner, Swiss Rowe for his father, Mark, was a 28-1 chance but it did not take the market long to catch up. Within weeks, he was the punters' favourite apprentice, riding – and winning – on well-backed runners on almost a daily basis.
His first Group-race win arrived in April 2024 and a first success at Royal Ascot – on only his ninth ride at Flat racing's showpiece meeting – came two months later, as Loughnane coolly steered Rashabar, an unconsidered 80-1 shot in the betting, to victory in the Group Two Coventry Stakes. It was the jockey's sole ride on Brian Meehan's colt and it remains the only success of Rashabar's 10-race career. A longed-for first success at Group One level, meanwhile, arrived this month, when he got the call from Charlie Appleby to ride Rebel's Romance, the hot favourite, in the Grosser Preis von Berlin.
Amid all the quickfire success and the inevitable attention that followed, Loughnane's awareness and composure in the saddle have been matched by a strikingly clear-eyed sense of how far he still has to travel. How has he managed to stay so grounded? 'Everyone asks me the question,' he says, 'and it's a difficult one for me to answer.
'I wake up, ride out in the mornings, try and ride out in as many places as possible to get around and get the rides later in the day. Then I go to the gym, go to the races, focus on my rides, ride my horses and go home, that's my whole life.'
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In 2025, Loughnane has not simply been busy, but the busiest rider of all in the British weighing room, with 770 rides. Rossa Ryan, with 704 rides, is the only other jockey to pass 700. Every ride, meanwhile, involves much more than a minute or two on the track.
'A lot goes in beforehand with the form book,' he says, 'looking at my horse's previous form and its run style, making a plan on what to do with the trainer before the race. I'm very lucky that I've got a good team around me and a driver to drive me to the races, so I can do my form in the car on the way, when I'm not sleeping.'
Only Oisin Murphy, with 124 winners since 1 January, has ridden more than Loughnane's 121 this year, and though Loughnane trails the reigning champion by 28 in the official race, which runs from May to mid-October, a recent burst of winners has taken him into a clear second, going into the Ebor meeting at York this week.
'There are no days off, I'm riding seven days a week,' he says, 'but I'm happy to be busy and I'd be complaining if I was sat at home with no rides. My outlook's the same and it will always be the same, Trying to win the championship every year to come.'