Crowley is all set to fly at Glorious Goodwood
. . . and he’ll fight to keep his Flat title
One statistic from Jim Crowley’s season might seem disappointing but another reflects the reward of driving himself so hard to become champion Flat jockey for the first time last year.
Crowley’s 60 winners are a healthy return but the 25 by which he trails runaway leader Silvestre de Sousa makes retaining his title a long shot.
Then there is the prize-money. Crowley may lag behind De Sousa on numbers but he is thrashing him on quality.
The mounts of Crowley have won over £2.3million this year, almost double De Sousa’s winnings. even at this stage of the year, it is the first time the 39-year-old one-time jump jockey has achieved the landmark.
Replacing Paul Hanagan as no 1 jockey to Sheik Hamdan Al Maktoum had made a big difference. But more avenues have also opened up, notably the ride on Sir Michael Stoute-trained Ulysses, who landed this month’s eclipse Stakes before finishing second to enable in Saturday’s King George at Ascot.
‘Becoming champion jockey has definitely opened up a few more doors for me,’ said Crowley, who rode 189 winners last year. ‘Would I have got the job riding for Sheik Hamdan if I was not champion? Big jobs like that don’t come around very often. To get that opportunity is fantastic. now is the time to grasp the opportunity and take the career to another level and start riding in races like the eclipse.
‘The work which goes into winning the championship is massive. Silvestre is a freelance. He is hungry and not tied to a specific stable or owner. It is a massive benefit to be in that position.
‘I’d love to win the title again, but it’s different for me now in a good way. I am riding better horses at better meetings.’
The original dream for Crowley, who was born in Ascot and whose parents trained point-to-pointers, was to emulate his hero, champion jump jockey Richard Dunwoody.
Crowley rode 300 winners over jumps and had a stint based with the Sue and Harvey Smith’s Bingley stable, before deciding to concentrate on Flat racing in 2006. ‘It is crazy how things work out,’ said Crowley. ‘I would never have dreamed of being in this position. You can look back on it and think it’s mad but if you want something and believe in yourself enough it will happen. I wanted to be champion jump jockey and realised that was not going to happen, so I switched to the Flat. Being a jump jockey has been such a help.
‘That art of race riding on the Flat is more technical. It is about positioning and tactics. But the basics of horsemanship are so important. You have to be a horseman just to be a jump jockey as well as succeed as one. That helps you a huge amount on the Flat.’ Those skills will be tested at Goodwood this week, arguably Britain’s most beautiful racecourse but, with its twists and undulations, one of the hardest to ride. Those fresh opportunities for Crowley will be evident again.
Sheik Hamdan’s Battaash in Friday’s Group Two King George Stakes looks one of the jockey’s best chances and his opening ride of the meeting will be the Sheik’s Royal Ascot beaten favourite Khairaat in the Matchbook Betting exchange Handicap.
But his rides tomorrow also include Charlie Hills-trained Dutch Connection, who tries to win the Lennox Stakes for the second year running, and Willie Mullins’s 2016 Irish St Leger winner Wicklow Brave in the Goodwood Cup.
Crowley, who lives less than 20 miles from the course, said: ‘I’ve always enjoyed riding there but it is a tricky track. It lends itself to interference because you get a lot of congestion and you get hard- luck stories. It suits some horses but others don’t act there.’