The riding career of Welsh jockey Ash Morgan seemed to be over – until he moved to Australia, where he is making a name for himself at the top of the NSW state premiership.
Australia: James McDonald will need to hurry back from his European vacation if he is to have any chance of stopping the New South Wales state jockey’s premiership going to a rider from old South Wales in the shape of 32-year-old Ashley ‘Ash’ Morgan.
McDonald, the #1 jockey in the TRC Global Rankings, already had the more prestigious Sydney metropolitan premiership sewn up when he headed to Royal Ascot to ride Nature Strip to victory in the King’s Stand Stakes.
But in the statewide rankings – admittedly less prestigious but still notable – McDonald has been overhauled by Morgan, a one-time estate agent from Carmarthen, for whom a first premiership title will complete a remarkable career turnaround.
“James’s target every year is to ride the metro premiership and get 100 metro winners,” says Morgan. “He’s done both of them and no one will catch him.”
The statewide premiership, however, is a different matter. “When James went away I thought if I could reach 130 winners by the time he was back I would be 12 in front, which would be a tough ask for him over the last four or five meetings of the season,” says Morgan. “I’ve actually put 13 on him since he’s been away when we were level when he left so it’s been a great season for me – but I’m taking nothing for granted.”
After four seasons in Australia, Morgan has built on each campaign with this season’s best-ever haul of 131 winners to stand sixth overall in Australia in races won.
He has ridden more ‘country’ winners than anybody else in the country, and holds a 33-win lead in that specific category in NSW.
“I feel like my career has been building up to something like this,” he says. “I no longer had a claim when I came over so I started by riding at bush meetings and every year things have got better.
“Last year I rode 83 winners when I was riding for better trainers. I had a really good Grafton Carnival, riding five winners. From there things have kept rolling. I have a lot more Sydney contacts so I am going to the provincial meetings with better rides than I’ve had at any other time.”
It’s a complete transformation from Morgan’s early career in Britain where, starting out as a 16-year-old, he toiled for ten seasons, riding 70 winners. Frustrated by the lack of progress Morgan quit the sport, spending the next two years selling houses and working in IT recruitment.
“I tipped away but never really got going,” he recalls. “My best season was 2014 when I was with Chris Wall and I rode 16 winners from not that many rides. I rode a Listed winner that year and a winner at the July Festival, but I wasn’t getting many outside rides.
“I think I rode only two winners after that Listed win at Ayr. By then I was 24 and I felt it was never going to happen for me. I didn’t want to ride again.”
Morgan returned to his family in Wales with no idea what else he would do and no other skills, having left school aged 14. “I ended up getting a job in a real estate company, which was a bit random,” he says.
“I was there for 12 months and then spent another 12 months in a recruitment agency in London. It was different and helped with my communication skills, which was probably what I was lacking as a young jockey. I think I grew up a bit.”
It also helped Morgan refocus and during another trip home Morgan considered a return to riding either as a jump jockey or back on the Flat but decided it was unrealistic. His friends suggested a trip to Australia – and he followed their advice, via a brief stint in the US to gain some much needed fitness.
“I had not sat on a horse since my last race ride so I went to California where I got a job riding work for Peter Eurton for three months,” he says. “I did that, got my weight down and then I went to Scone to trainer Brett Cavanough in May 2018. My licence came through at the end of July when I had my first rides.
“I was riding plenty of horses and things picked up pretty quickly, certainly quicker than they did in England.”
Morgan has since swapped the dusty bush tracks for the country and provincial venues like Scone, Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Taree and Grafton. Last month he rode his first winner at Sydney’s premier track Randwick.
“This season I wanted to ride as many winners as I could,” he says. “The aim was 100 wins and if I could do that for the right people it would give me an opportunity to get to the metro meetings in town.
“Corey Brown told me there would be a spot for me there if I could ride at 53kg. I had a ride for the Snowden stable the other day in a Listed race so I don’t think it is too far away. The season has done the job I hoped it would do and now I need to kick on.
“I thought I was going to do well from when I was 16 and expected something like this to happen in my teens. That was probably half my problem. It was a hard slog but now things are starting to come good.”
• Visit the Racing NSW website and the NSW Country Racing website
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