A ‘RELUCTANT’ HERO, HUGHES
CHAMPION jockey Brian Hughes is asked if he’s a ‘reluctant hero.’
“There’s nothing heroic about me,” comes the reply, prompting a follow-up... ‘So, when you receive your award at Sandown next week, you’d just like to say a few ‘Thank yous’ and then scuttle back into the shadows, would you?’
“If you can arrange that, it would be perfect, fantastic,” laughs the 36-year-old Northern Irishman. It is, therefore, something of a privilege, and rarity, to speak to Hughes who has 195 winners this season.
Five more during the course of the next week will take him past the magic 200-mark – becoming just the fourth jockey to do so, following in the footsteps of Peter Scudamore, AP McCoy (below) and Richard Johnson.
And, in 2020, he was the first since Jonjo O’Neill in 1978 to become chamnpion jockey from a base in the north.
His achievements are up there with the best, particularly as he is not tied to one of the truly powerful trainers.
But it is proving a difficult job to coax anything approaching self-praise from him.
This is a fella whose wikipedia page stretches to just two lines. He should be a household name. And if that household was his alone, you get the feeling he would be overjoyed.
“I’m not going to be shouting about myself. I’m not one of those. I don’t bang a drum. I don’t like seeing my name in lights.
“You can’t get too high or too low. One day you’ll end up in the back of an ambulance. You’re jumping obstacles at speed sitting on an animal. Anything can go wrong.”
Hughes has not just ridden more winners than anyone else. He has also saddled more horses.
His strike-rate is up there, however, among the best. It remains something of a mystery to those on the outside, looking in, that he has not been tapped up to ride for one of the industry’s bigger trainers – and that’s with respect to Donald McCain, with whom he has enjoyed plenty of success.
He added: “There are big powerhouses. They’ve tied themselves to jockeys and they’ve never knocked on my door. Those jockeys have worked for them for years. I came over to this country in 2005 and worked for Howard Johnson. I’ve stayed.
“I’ve never been asked to do anything else. I’m just doing what I’ve always done. And I love where I live and what I do.”
His family will make the trek from their Cleveland base to Surrey next week to see Hughes receive his crown.
During the pandemic, he received the award from Mick Fitzgerald who visited him at his home. But the outing next Saturday will be a family affair.
He said: “It will be payback for them.
One million per cent. I’m no one-man band. I’ve benefited from a massive support network.
“It has enabled me to be selfish and to get into this position. When I was a kid, my father Brian would drive 100 miles to Kildare when I was an apprentice on the Curragh to pick me up and take me back home for Sunday lunch.
“All so my mother Mary could see her 16-year-old son for a couple of hours. Then, when I’d eaten, he’d drive me back again.
“That’s not just my family. That’s every jockey’s family. I’ve missed my own sisters’ weddings. My wife Luci’s sisters’ weddings, relative’s funerals – all to go racing.
“This award will be as much about them as it is me.”
Sorry Brian, but ‘reluctant hero,’ seems to sum it up pretty well.