My parents and family have all been very supportive since.” It seems fair to say that Loughnane’s career choice was the right one. At Ascot on Saturday, the 20-year-old will be officially installed as Flat racing’s new champion jockey and the youngest in more than a century. Pat Eddery was 22 when he won his first title, Frankie Dettori was 23, while Lester Piggott – who rode his first winner at the age of 12 – was twice that age when he landed his first championship.
Winning the jockeys’ title has been Loughnane’s driving – and oft-stated – ambition since the day of his first ride as a “very nervous” 16-year-old apprentice at Wolverhampton, and it has been clear for several weeks that this was going to be his year. After a slow start in May, he swept past Oisin Murphy, the defending champion, in mid-July and has been extending his lead ever since. What promised to be a close race between the two riders proved to be anything but.
So the pressure was off as a relaxed and sunny champion-elect discussed his achievement at the yard of his main employer, George Boughey, in Newmarket last week, but there was a strong sense too that he would have been equally amiable had he still been locked in a nip-and-tuck title battle. It’s just how he is, and Loughnane has relished every second of the five-and-a-half month journey. Then on a typical day it’s an hour in the gym, and if I’m riding at an evening meeting, there’s a bit of time to catch up with things but if not, it’s straight into the car and off you go racing.
I’ll ride anywhere from five to nine horses, then it’s back home and do it all again the next day, seven days a week. I think when you get to a certain age and level, you don’t want to be riding at Kempton on a Monday night, but I want to go racing every day. I’m bored when I’m not riding.” Loughnane’s success, as he is quick to point out, is and always has been a team effort.
He grew up in a racing yard, son of the trainer Mark Loughnane, who also supplied his earliest rides and winners, and pays great credit too to Boughey and Tony Hind, his agent, whose track record for turning talented riders into champions is unrivalled. My life changed as soon as I started working for him.” When asked to name his most satisfying success of 2026, it is telling that Loughnane does not pick a moment of personal brilliance, where a split-second change of plan paid off, but Bow Echo’s comfortable success in the 2,000 Guineas in May. The way the race went, it couldn’t have gone better.
It was just how me and George wanted it to go, and obviously when plans like that come off in Group Ones, it’s fantastic.” Loughnane has had six days off from racing since the start of August, and while the title race runs from early May to mid-October, there was little letup in his schedule from January to April. He is the only jockey to have reached 150 wins in the championship window, but has more than 220 this year in all, and a week or two off to let his title win sink in is the last thing on his mind. A title defence and “riding as many Group Ones as possible” are top of the list for 2027, as he looks to improve from one campaign to the next.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
