Ride. Sleep. Repeat. It has been the story of Oisin Murphy’s year, from the darkest days of January all the way through to Champions Day, British racing’s showpiece meeting, at Ascot on Saturday. In all, he has weighed out for more than 1,000 rides, ridden nearly 200 winners and will head to the country’s most prestigious venue looking for a suitable conclusion to what has already been a breakthrough season.
This is a track, and a meeting, that can set the seal on a glorious career, or elevate a rising star to a new level. Champions Day itself, which launched in 2011, has already been the stage for two victories by Frankel, the outstanding Flat horse of recent decades, including the win in the Champion Stakes in 2012 which brought down the curtain on his unbeaten, 14-race career.
Nearly 30 years ago, meanwhile, this was the track, and Saturday’s Queen Elizabeth II Stakes was the race, which gave a young jockey called Frankie Dettori the first major success of his career.
The same race is the principal target for Murphy on Saturday afternoon, when he will ride Roaring Lion, the favourite, in a race that is worth £655,000 to the winner. Dettori was a teenager when he took the QEII in 1990 while Murphy is 23, but victory could confirm his place among the world’s elite riders, as it did for the Dettori in 1990.
Dettori, in fact, rode two Group One winners in a single afternoon that day, and Murphy also has a big chance aboard The Tin Man in the Champions Sprint, earlier on the card. Roaring Lion is the one that matters most, though, not least as the colt carries the colours of Sheikh Fahad al-Thani, who retains Murphy as his principal jockey and also sponsors the entire Ascot card.
Dettori is still the jockey to beat at Ascot, and his rides on Saturday will include Cracksman, the odds-on favourite, in the Champion Stakes, the richest race of the year in Britain with a prize fund of £1.3m. And he is still the jockey Murphy hopes to emulate over the seasons ahead.
“Frankie was beside me in the stalls [at Longchamp] the other day,” Murphy said in Newmarket this week, “and it was just before the Arc, and he said: ‘Kid, is this your first Arc? It’s my 30th.’” A couple of days later, he was in the stalls alongside Dettori once again, but this time in a minor race on an evening card at Kempton Park. Gérald Mossé – “who’s ridden so many Group One winners that he’s forgotten how many” – was there too.
“That shows that they’re very hungry,” Murphy says. “And I’ve got to prove that I’m hungrier. They’re at the top for a reason, they’ve got some work ethic.”
So does Murphy. “From the beginning of January, I set my stall to work really hard at it. I was going everywhere, and for example in January, February and March, I would fly to Dubai on Wednesday night after riding at the evening meeting at Kempton, ride in Dubai on Thursday and then get back for early morning Friday to ride at Lingfield Park. I did that 10 times.”
Murphy’s personal target was to reach 200 winners in Britain over the course of the year, and while he has made it to 186, international commitments in the US and Australia over the next two months may mean that he falls short. A first winner on the Champions Day card would offer some consolation, though, as it would be his first at the meeting after several near misses.
“I’ve been part of Qipco Champions Day for five years,” he says, “and one of my first rides for Sheikh Fahad was in the apprentice race at the meeting. I’ve basically not had a winner there, so it’s frustrating. I thought Simple Verse would win the Long Distance Cup [in 2016] and she didn’t. I don’t know why but it didn’t happen, but I’ve got a great book of rides this year.”
Another of them is South Seas, as a 12-1 chance, in the Balmoral Handicap at the end of the card, and Murphy suggested a few days ago that the horse could be “the nap of the meeting”.
Roaring Lion, though, will set a challenge for his rider as he is returning to race at a mile having become used to the less insistent pace of races at a mile-and-a-quarter. “He’s an exceptional horse and every time I ride him I need to keep that in mind,” Murphy says. “Horses like him are so hard to get your hands on and he will have no trouble coming back in trip.
“If you roll back the clock to the 2,000 Guineas [Roaring Lion was fifth], clearly he’s proven now that he’s a much better horse than [the winner] Saxon Warrior. If you could run the Guineas again, at the stage he is now, I think he would win. He’s a different horse now to what he was in May.”
Ascot 1.25 Sir Erec (nap) 2.00 Brando 2.40 Kitesurf 3.15 Happily (nb) 3.50 Cracksman 4.30 Mitchum Swagger
Ffos Las 1.35 Gold Bonne Raine 2.10 Ruby Fool
2.45 Etamine Du Cochet 3.20 Tornado In Milan
3.55 Vision Des Flos 4.25 Silver Streak 4.55 Zamparelli 5.30 Khanisari
Market Rasen 1.40 Papagana 2.15 William Hunter 2.50 Solo Saxophone 3.25 Highway One O One 4.00 Romain De Senam 4.35 Ballydun Oscar 5.05 Felicidad
Catterick 1.50 Sylvia’s Mother 2.25 Ice Gala 2.55 Royal Connoisseur 3.30 Dakota Gold 4.05 Vision Clear 4.40 Our Charlie Brown 5.10 Echo
Stratford 2.30 Dandolo Du Gite 3.00 Hoponandsee 3.35 Atlantic Storm 4.10 One Forty Seven 4.45 Shambra 5.15 Mountain Chimes 5.45 So Sorry Sarah
Wolverhampton 5.40 Tamerlane 6.15 Haylah 6.45 Epaulement 7.15 Global Hero 7.45 Looking For Carl 8.15 River Cafe 8.45 Texas Radio 9.15 Safrani
