The names of Hannon and Hughes have been linked in triumph many a time at this lovely racecourse but Thursday’s card provides the latest evidence of a very slight loosening of the ties between the two Richards in what is Hughes’s final year in the saddle. As the champion Flat jockey put it here yesterday: “We’re freeing each other up a bit.”
Both men feel that a slightly more relaxed association will suit their immediate needs. Hughes hopes to be champion jockey for the fourth year in a row and will sometimes be allowed to take an outside ride against a Hannon runner if he prefers its chance, as in a fillies’ handicap, in which he will ride for Roger Charlton.
Hannon, meanwhile, is conscious of the fact that he will have to face next year without the services of Hughes, who will retire in the autumn to launch his own training career. Hannon needs to develop his own squad of jockeys to fill that breach and has been making plenty of use of promising young talent like Cam Hardie, Sean Levey and Tom Marquand as well the stable veteran Pat Dobbs.
“There’s a good few of them,” the trainer said on Thursday. “They all need experience and they need experience on nice horses, so hopefully this year we can give it to them.
“When Hughesie came to us [in 2008], I wouldn’t say he was necessarily in the top two or three and he made himself that. We’re looking for another man that can do that and I’d much rather look from within than outside, someone that knows how our system works.
“Everyone seems happy with that and everyone’s looking forward.”
Of Hughes, Hannon said: “He’s still our jockey but if there’s something else in the race he wants to ride, we’ll have a conversation and try and keep everyone happy. Don’t worry, if I want him to ride one, he’ll ride it. And if he wants to ride one, he’ll ride it.”
Hughes offered much the same description of how their relationship now works. “Richard wants to start getting the boys, give them more [opportunities] because it’s a huge operation now and they’re riding out with us every day,” the jockey said.
“If I think I can get a good ride, I can go and take it. As long as it doesn’t mean I’ll be getting off everything.”
While Hughes hopes a little extra freedom might help him find a few more winners in defence of his title, he readily concedes that the season so far has not been an unqualified success. “Not good, to be honest,” he said, when asked to assess his 2015 so far. “I’m not riding as many winners as I’d want. Horses haven’t fired yet. But it’s very early.”
As he left here to ride at Sandown on Thursday night, Hughes remained on nine winners for the new championship, half of the total amassed by Ryan Moore. But the betting market retains its faith in Hughes, who is the 1-2 favourite to be in front when the title race ends in mid-October.
Lady Of Dubai put herself into the Oaks reckoning by landing the Height Of Fashion Stakes here by three and a quarter lengths on her first run of the year, beating Encore L’Amour and Jellicle Ball.
The filly is now best priced at 16-1 for the Epsom Classic in three weeks’ time, having been 40-1 before this success, but her trainer, Luca Cumani, said he would wait to see how she recovered before committing her to the Oaks.
John Gosden said his Jellicle Ball had failed to stay the 10 furlongs and would now be returned to a mile. She did not enjoy the clearest of runs but neither did she seem an unlucky loser.
Racing’s senior officials may not have seen much of Thursday’s action as they fretted over how to respond to the news from the Levy Board that the funding it will provide for 2016 will have to be cut by £4m with perhaps a greater cut the following year, thanks to a decline in monies received from bookmakers. “Discussions are under way within the sport as to where these proposed cuts will fall,” said Nick Rust, chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority.
“It is likely that they will affect a range of headings, with some difficult decisions ahead. It can’t simply be a case of making pro-rata cuts to prize-money levels across the board and it is impossible to guarantee that a number of levels of activity associated with the sport won’t be affected.
“The root cause of the levy potentially falling to such damaging levels of income remains the fact that the mechanism is unable to capture the vast majority of digital betting and racing is collectively working as hard as it can to address this, along with being committed to its own self-help strategy for growth.”
