TRC Emerging Talent: a record-breaker who’s really going places

You’ve heard a lot about Pierre-Charles Boudot this week, and the way he’s going it’s a fair bet you’re going to hear a lot more in the future - which is why he’s first up as an Emerging Talent in our new TRC Global Rankings series.

We’ll be focusing regularly on jockeys, trainers, owners and sires whose rankings trajectories, we believe, indicate a level of ability beyond the norm, and Boudot fits that bill - and then some.

The prolific Frenchman made headlines on Tuesday, when he broke the European record for the number of flat-race winners in a calendar year - his four-timer at Chantilly took his total to 276, overtaking the previous best of 273, set by Germany’s Peter Schiergen in 1995.

But there’s more to Boudot than just chasing winners at lesser race meetings. His progression in the TRC Global Rankings (see the graph on the right), particularly since his first G1 win on Gallante (for Fabre) in the Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp in 2014, is surely a portent of even better things to come. He is currently #54 in the jockeys’ standings and is fifth highest-ranked among riders with France as their Modal Country.

The son of the late trainer Marc Boudot, he is just 24, and this year’s is already his second French jockeys’ championship - he shared the title with eight-times champ Christophe Soumillon (on 179) in 2015. Soumillon was the previous record holder for French flat victories - 228 in 2013.

Mentored by Andre Fabre since he rode his first winner in 2009, Boudot is increasingly in demand on big occasions. He has ridden regularly for Godolphin, and in October he rode two G1 winners - Waldgeist for Fabre in the Criterium de Saint-Cloud and National Defense for Criquette Head-Maarek in the Qatar Prix Jean Luc Lagadere at Chantilly on Arc day (see the YouTube video below).