Star apprentice Billy Loughnane is making big headlines after a remarkable 23 winners in January – and he’s heading Stateside to further his education. Steve Dennis speaks to the young tyro, who had his first ride only three months ago.
GB: Look back, and what do you remember about being 16? Maybe you were writing terrible poetry, or groaning under the thumb of unrequited love (the two may have been connected), or using the bank and taxi service of Mum and Dad with no real notion of the next step in life.
Billy Loughnane is 16, and when one day he looks back he’ll remember being the leading rider in Britain. The boy from the heart of the green Worcestershire countryside rode a remarkable 23 winners in January, putting him well clear of the competition and earning himself the obvious but resonant nickname ‘Billy The Kid’ from the awestruck tabloid press.
The young gunslinger has made an enormous impression in a very short time – even the BBC, which tends to focus on the negative when covering horse racing, sought out the prodigy for a feelgood interview to grace the evening news bulletins.
Later this month he’ll swap the drabness of the English winter for the sunshine of Miami, where he’ll hone his nascent talent and fine-tune the clock in his head by riding trackwork for trainer Anna Meah, whose husband David is a friend of the family.
“I’ve never been to America before,” says Loughnane, eagerly. “I’m really looking forward to it. Of course I’d like to be at home riding winners, but it’s the best thing for my riding education, the right thing to do for the long term.”
It’s another jigsaw-puzzle piece in the bigger picture, a plan devised by Loughnane’s trainer-father Mark to maximise his apprentice sorcerer’s opportunities this summer. In Britain, an apprentice – ‘bugboy’, in the US – can claim a 7lb weight allowance until he/she rides 20 winners, a 5lb allowance up to the 50-winner mark, and then 3lb until the 95-winner threshold, after which it’s level weights with the senior riders.
Retaining as much of his claim as possible until the bigger races on turf come along will increase Loughnane’s earning power and widen his circle of employers.
Weight in gold
For a good apprentice is almost literally worth his weight in gold, with everyone wanting a piece of that crucial weight allowance, including the biggest names in the sport. Last week Loughnane made his first appearance in the blue silks of Godolphin, a watershed moment for any rider let alone one so inexperienced, and he grabbed the opportunity with both hands when driving home Sapphire Seas at Wolverhampton to win by a nose.
“That was the best day ever,” he says. “I’ve grown up watching Godolphin win so many big races, and to ride a winner in those blue colours was incredible.
“Charlie Appleby was really nice to deal with, spoke to me in the morning, told me to ride the race as I found it. It was a very big moment for me.”
The unglamorous all-weather circuit at Wolverhampton is where the Loughnane juggernaut began to roll, the scene of his first winner in November; he had his first ride in public the previous month.
It was a foggy day at Wolverhampton, visibility down to the minimum, and when he brought Swiss Rowe out of the gloom in front it marked both the fulfilment of Loughnane’s boyhood dreams and the kindling of his teenage ambitions.
“Ever since he could speak, he wanted to be a jockey,” says father Mark, based at Rock Farm in Worcestershire. “He’s got plenty of brain cells and his mother Clare wanted him to be a vet, but he just wanted to ride.
“We never expected things to happen this quickly. It’s gone so well, we couldn’t have scripted it any better, I’m so pleased and so proud of him.
A duck to water
“When he had his first ride I was very nervous, but he took to it like a duck to water. And when he rode for Godolphin I wanted that horse to win like it was my own runner in the Derby. I drove him to the track and he was so cool about it. I wasn’t!”
The boy Loughnane began life in the saddle on a rocking-horse he was given for Christmas, but soon graduated to the real thing. He travelled the well-trodden path of pony racing from the age of 13, conquered that empire when becoming champion last year, and has brought that formative education to bear on his transition to the major league.
“Pony racing has really helped Billy with his pace awareness,” says Mark. “You’ll say I’m biased but other trainers have said it too – he’s always in the right place at the right time, and that’s not just luck.
“He’s improved and strengthened with every race, with every horse he’s ridden. He’s very technically aware for a 16-year-old.”
It certainly shouldn’t be forgotten, amid the blizzard of headlines and interviews and acclamation that has surrounded Loughnane for the last few weeks, that he is only 16, just a boy thrust wholesale into an adult world, a boy who only last summer left his schooldays behind by passing every one of his GCSE exams – “Mum helped me a lot”. There are all the brain cells his father mentioned.
Everything seems possible
Yet he’s coping with it all with the usual insouciance of youth, the fearlessness and confidence emblematic of the teenage years when everything seems possible and anything might happen.
“This has always been my goal, I’ve been working towards this since I was little,” he says, although he’s not that much bigger now. “It’s always been horses for me, I’ve been getting saddles, riding kit for birthdays and Christmas.
“I didn’t expect things to happen quite as quickly as this, it’s all sort of rocketed. The interview on the BBC was really good, a great way for people to notice me. My mates don’t really understand the whole picture of racing, how it all works, but they saw me on the news and I got a lot of messages saying ‘well done’. It’s all going great.”
Loughnane has the right people around him, from mum and dad to his very experienced jockey coach Rodi Greene and his agent Shashi Righton, who also books rides for Loughnane’s idol Tom Marquand.
He’s his role model – “Tom’s so professional in everything he does, such a great rider, he was champion apprentice [2015] and it would be amazing to follow in his footsteps” – but it’s one step at a time for the moment. Starting with a short visit to the States.
Go west, young man
“Going away, while he’s got all this momentum behind him, was a hard decision to make but it’s the right one,” says Mark. “Billy will be in the US for a few weeks and then he’s been invited to ride at the Ribot Cup, an apprentices’ challenge competition, in Pisa. After that he’ll come home and be ready for when the turf season starts at the end of March.”
By then Billy will have turned 17, and will be keen to pick up where he left off. “I know things might not always be going as well as they have been just now, which is why I have to make the most of it while I can,” he says, a dash of realism marbling the unreal events of the past month. But I can’t wait to get going again – I’m really looking forward to it.”
And already so many of the right things to look back on.
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