RYAN MIGHTY Moore’s mission
Moore on a mission as he aims to land the second leg of a Triple Crown on Saxon Warrior
IT is late morning in a village outside Newmarket. One set of driveway gates swings open and then another. A horse wanders over to the rails of its paddock, looking curious. A kid’s tricycle sits on the tarmac. Ryan Moore opens the door of the new red-brick house, offers his hand and smiles.
In the kitchen, Moore’s partner, Michelle, is getting ready to go out. Their two youngest kids from their gaggle of four, Jessica, four, and Heidi, 21 months, are vying for attention. Their 14-year-old pug, Romeo, ambles in and laps from his water bowl. That’s all of us. A couple of public relations executives were supposed to be in attendance but Moore vetoed that.
No 1 in a list of things Moore wouldn’t say: ‘The more the merrier.’ The jockey who is likely to ride Saxon Warrior, the short-priced favourite in the Investec Derby at Epsom next Saturday, is an understated man, quiet and
thoughtful. People who dismiss him as dour or taciturn have got him wrong. He might not play it for laughs but he has got a beautifully laconic sense of humour.
I ask him about his sister, Hayley, who hit the headlines last week when she stood in the way of loose horse Give Em A Clump at Chepstow, and was knocked to the ground as she grabbed his reins. Her brother has never been one for extravagant praise and he doesn’t start now. ‘She’s always been a little bit different, bless her,’ he says.
Moore is watchful. He is wary of cliché. Slip into it and he might offer a raised eyebrow or a wry grin. He has won ten English classics, the Melbourne Cup, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and the Japan Cup, among others, but he is an implacable enemy of hyperbole and cant.
I ask him whether his place in history matters to him. ‘I wouldn’t care about my place in history,’ he says. ‘I just want to compete in the biggest races and win them. I hope I wouldn’t care if there wasn’t a line written about me in any of them.’
I ask him if he prefers horses to people and he looks at me as if I must be mad.
‘Horses are very easy to be comfortable around,’ he says. ‘They’re not going to ask you a question or answer you back. You are just going to ride them and you’re not going to be on them long. I’ve been kicked once in my life and that was my own fault. I have been around them my whole life and I can work them out.’
Moore is regarded by many as the best Flat jockey since Lester Piggott. He has been champion three times, although it would almost certainly be more if he chose to hurtle round the country, racing at different meetings every day in the pursuit of more and more winners.
‘To begin with,’ says Moore, ‘work was all-important. Race-riding took over. I would ride every race, every day. I enjoyed it. Now, I have today off. I had yesterday off. Even tomorrow, I’ve taken off because I had a couple of horses got withdrawn and I was left with one or two at the meeting.
‘The ones I was going for didn’t run. Five years ago, I’d have gone regardless. Now, I think: “Hang on, give yourself a chance, take your time a little bit more and spend a bit more time helping out at home, picking the kids up and all that sort of stuff”.
‘For me, it’s always about getting to the biggest races and riding the best horses and I am doing that more often now, so that is more enjoyable. When you get to the big days, you enjoy them more than the smaller days. If I look at a racecard and don’t like what I see, that’s a bad sign. I want to see myself riding good horses in the big races and then I enjoy it. If I am riding ordinary horses, it’s not as fun. I ride horses because I enjoy it.
‘It was just a way of making a living by having fun. I didn’t ride horses as a business. I enjoyed the race riding. It takes over for a while and then as you get older, you get a bit more realisation about what’s most important. I enjoy my job and I feel very fortunate to have the people I have around me. I have a great family and a job I enjoy, so I am in a privileged, fortunate position’.
If there is no hitch in the plans, his ride on Saxon Warrior in the Derby will be the second leg of the horse’s attempt on the Triple Crown. The colt won the first leg, the 2,000 Guineas at the beginning of the month, with trainer Aidan O’Brien’s son, Donnacha, on board because Moore was racing in the Kentucky Derby on Mendelssohn.
Does he feel any sympathy for Donnacha, who is set to miss out on the ride on Saxon Warrior at Epsom? ‘Donnacha gave him a lovely ride at Newmarket, very smooth, and I thought he put up a very commanding performance,’ says Moore. ‘But it’s a tough game. I ride for the owners and it’s their call. I was sent to do another job that day, otherwise I would have been on him at Newmarket.’
If Saxon Warrior wins at Epsom and again in the St Leger, at Doncaster, in September, he will become the first horse since Nijinsky in 1970 to seal the Triple Crown. It would be a first even for O’Brien and Coolmore Stud, but the way Moore speaks about both trainer and horse, it would be foolish to write them off.
I don’t care about my place in history. I just want to win the biggest races
‘Ballydoyle (O’Brien’s base) is the most amazing place,’ says Moore. ‘It’s a beautiful place to go and see those horses and watch what Aidan does. For someone like me who has been around horses their whole life, it is so special to see it done so well. Everything they can do to maximise the potential of the horse is done.
‘The Triple Crown is something the owners haven’t achieved. They nearly did it with Camelot six years ago and if it’s something they want to do, it’s their horse. Whatever happens, it will be what is best for the horse and they won’t ask the horse to do something it’s not capable of doing.
‘It’s not been done for so long because it’s hard to do. The first race is a mile at Newmarket in May and it is hard to have a horse ready that early and to keep them on the go until September when you’re going three quarters of a mile further and in different conditions.
‘There’s not much point talking about it until he has got Epsom, which is as never as easy as people seem to think. There’s very much a job to be done there first. He is a very strong horse with a high cruising speed and a good turn of foot. He’s a beautiful horse to look at. He has got a fantastic pedigree. Class is the most important thing a racehorse has to have and Saxon Warrior has a lot of it.’
Moore has a lot of it, too. He is in the prime of his career and there is a feeling he is just getting started.
‘Why do you want to win these biggest races?’ he asks. ‘I don’t know. I don’t want any pat on the back for it. I just want to do it for selfish reasons. I just like to try to do it. I think it is trying to do the job as best you can in different circumstances. Maybe it’s testing yourself, proving yourself. Maybe it’s just because you want to win for the people you’re working for.
‘I’ve loved racing my whole life. We’ve got to find the right horse and have the right circumstances — and then have the luck on the day.’
lTHE Investec Derby is part of the QIPCO British Champions Series. For more information, go to britishchampionsseries.com