“It’s definitely not been an overnight success. It’s been a very long story,” Silvestre de Sousa says with a wry smile on a quiet morning at home. The Brazilian jockey, who is only five foot tall, shakes his head in his kitchen on the outskirts of Newmarket. He has overcome mighty odds and the unlikeliest of beginnings in an unforgiving profession. De Sousa is now almost certain to become British champion jockey and some bookmakers have already paid out the few bets placed on him winning the title.
He will not be crowned as champion for another six weeks but his lead is so established – 28 winners ahead of his closest rival – even the usually private jockey has begun to reflect on his strange journey to this point. De Sousa did not sit on a racehorse until the age of 17 in São Paulo, but now, 15 years later, he is about to become the king of British racing.
Doubt and frustration have stalked him and De Sousa has been given only limited opportunities compared to his more famous rivals. That fate continues today but unyielding commitment and determination have compensated for his relatively unprivileged status.
De Sousa is the third youngest of 10 children and his formative experiences with horses were not around thoroughbreds but riding the working nags on his father’s farm. “Now they use cars and bikes to chase the cattle in Brazil,” he says. “But in my time they used horses. My dad would say: ‘Go get the cattle in.’ I would jump on a horse and I was very comfortable. I never had a problem with those horses.”
He nods when asked if his ability to conjure winners from the least favoured racehorses has its roots in those days of bareback riding. “Definitely. I learned how to ride.”
De Sousa had no racing ambitions and, at 16, he left the farm to work in his brother’s small furniture factory in São Paulo. Fate intervened. A friend took him to the races and he met Fausto Durso, the Brazilian jockey who would became a two-times champion in Macau. Durso recognised a future jockey in the strong, short frame of De Sousa and helped him find a place at São Paulo’s racing academy.
“Unfortunately he got killed a few months ago,” De Sousa says of Durso, who was stabbed fatally in May. “We had kept in touch and he would say you’re doing great. It’s very sad he won’t see me become champion after everything.”
De Sousa struggled for years. “Even at the academy I waited six months for my first race,” he says. “Normally you get your first ride after two months but 16 months later I became apprentice champion. I then lost my claim very quick and broke my arm. My dad said: ‘You must find something else – I don’t think you are going to make a living riding horses.’”
He left São Paulo for Ireland in February 2004 with a vague idea of gaining experience as a jockey. De Sousa bursts out laughing when asked what he thought of Ireland during his first weeks at Dermot Weld’s stable at The Curragh.
“‘I want to go home!’” De Sousa exclaims. “That’s all I was thinking. We came in a group – five Brazilian jockeys. That helped a bit but I had no English and the culture was so strange. The weather was frozen and I had just left São Paulo, where it was 35 degrees. So it was a big shock. I knew what to do on a horse but I doubt if I understood what the trainer wanted.”
Weld would not give De Sousa a chance to race. “I was there nearly three years and he’d promised me some rides – but never gave me one. Maybe he would change his mind now.”
De Sousa smiles to soften any bitterness. “I got the licence and he would say he’s going to put me up but he never did. It was hard because I got offered other rides but the Irish government said I was only allowed to ride for Dermot. Every morning I would get up early and ride for him but no races …”
What did he earn during those difficult days? “Work-ride wages. €300 a week. Just enough to go down to the pub and come back.”
De Sousa laughs again but, then, he was so dejected he resolved to return to Brazil. A few weeks before he was meant to fly home another chance meeting changed his life. “I met Dandy at The Curragh,” De Sousa says of David Nicholls, the Yorkshire-based trainer who helped him finally break into racing. “My friend worked for Dandy and he said: ‘You should come join us.’ I said: ‘I don’t know. I’m a bit sour now.’ But I went for a trial and Dandy said he would put me up on a few horses. My first winner was on a horse called Sonic Anthem. It was New Year’s Day [2006] at Southwell. I won by a furlong! There were seven other horses but he took me around like there was nobody else. It was like being on Frankel but Dandy had plenty of jockeys and his son Adrian was first jockey. So I was only getting a few spare rides. The place started to feel too small and [Nicholls] told me to move on.”
He moved on with a new life, which now included his wife. “I met Vicky there. She was an apprentice [jockey] and got plenty of winners. She had 19 for Dandy but then she got pregnant [with their son Ryan] and she stopped riding.”
It was only when De Sousa finished second in the jockeys’ title race in 2011, just four winners behind Paul Hanagan, that he reached “a turning point” but the theme of limited opportunities continued. Even at the outset of this year’s championship, De Sousa was not quoted on William Hill’s list of the top 10 jockeys expected to compete for the title.
“I should be 100-1 at the start of the season,” he agrees. “Even now I feel I should be 100-1 because I have no one behind me. Chris Dwyer is probably the only trainer who sees me as his stable jockey and he has just 20 horses. I’m not riding for a powerful trainer like Sir Michael Stoute. I ride for a big trainer in Mark Johnston and some good trainers like Chris and Nigel Tinkler. But Mark has other jockeys as well. We’ve been sharing the rides.”
Does his heart sink when, some mornings, he sees his list of anonymous rides for the day? De Sousa smiles sadly. “It really does. Sometimes my heart even stops beating for a couple of seconds. I say: ‘Jesus … no favourites again.’ You look at 20-1 shots, 16-1 if you are lucky.”
Yet De Sousa has an uncanny ability to win on horses which have never known victory before. We consider some of his most unexpected winners. Basil Berry, a handicapper for Dwyer, has won twice this year with De Sousa but is 0-6 when ridden by other jockeys. Nancy From Nairobi, a Mick Channon‑trained filly, was 0-8 this year under six different jockeys but she won recently when De Sousa rode her for the first time.
How does he produce such magic? “It’s hard to explain but I have lots of determination. I don’t ride to finish third or fourth. I ride to win and give 100%. I believe in myself and what I can do. My dad gave that to me.”
The champion-elect produced his most memorable performance of the season a few weeks ago when beating the supposedly invincible Golden Horn, ridden by Frankie Dettori, at York. Golden Horn, fresh from winning the Derby and the Eclipse, was a 4-9 favourite and on course to being feted as the greatest racehorse since Frankel. But De Sousa won on a 50-1 filly, Arabian Queen. It was the most delicious shock of the racing year.
“Maybe she shouldn’t have been a 50-1 shot. She had two bad runs – at Newmarket and Ascot with me but she ran well at Goodwood, finishing third.
“Fair play to David Elsworth, her trainer, because he told me: ‘We are not an outsider here. She’s working well and I’ve never seen her in better form.’ But I didn’t think for a moment she could beat Golden Horn or even The Grey Gatsby. I thought if she can finish third in a Group One race it’s great.
“I rode to win, don’t take me wrong, and when I turned for home on the bend I could feel plenty of horse underneath. It was me, The Grey Gatsby and Golden Horn. Those were the only three to finish. She started to go quicker even before I ask her. I really enjoyed it more than when I won the Dubai World Cup. I just felt like a kid again. I couldn’t believe it. To defeat the Derby winner! Everyone was waiting for that horse to win and for me to come at 50-1 and [claps hands] shut the door … it was so special.”
De Sousa almost hugs himself before making a sobering point. “I love what I am doing but life is full of ups and downs – especially for a jockey. You have good times but you definitely have more bad times. Last year I went 89 races without a win. I was always in the right place at the right time but the horses just couldn’t produce.”
There have been deeper disappointments. De Sousa rode briefly for Godolphin, the powerful stable driven by Sheikh Mohammed, before being eased out. “Sometimes you feel down but it happens to every jockey. Kieren Fallon lost one of the best jobs in the world [at Ballydoyle]. Mick Kinane lost his job, Johnny Murtagh lost his job, Frankie lost his job, Jamie Spencer lost his job. I lost my job. You turn up in the yard and they tell you: ‘We don’t want you anymore.’ OK. Of course the pay is a lot less than what I was getting two years ago.”
De Sousa winces. “You hurt big time. Definitely. But I am still alive and I carry on. So good luck to Godolphin. I had a great time and thanks a lot to them.”
A point has been made, through success in the saddle, to Godolphin, Weld and everyone who doubted him. Does he believe the Stobart championship title, worth £25,000 to the winner, will help bring him much better rides in the bigger races? “I hope so. I want to be champion but let’s see what happens.”
The boy from Brazil smiles when asked if, in his earliest days at the frozen Curragh, he harboured a fantasy of becoming a champion? “Not at all. When I first saw proper racing at The Curragh I was fascinated. I just hoped to one day have a ride there. That’s all. It happened. And now I ride winners here. It’s been a brilliant story – in the end.”
