ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE MAD, BAD AND SAD.

​ ‘I don’t know what it is anymore. I don’t understand when it starts or when it finishes. People say it’s the start of the flat now, but it isn’t really, and when does it end?’ (Taken from an interview with Peter Thomas in the Racing Post)
When a jockey of the calibre of Ryan Moore (the best flat jockey of my long life) says that about the jockeys’ championship you know the whole concept is a mess and in desperate need of reform. Or if we want to keep things simple we could just go back to the tried and tested formula used to determine the title for centuries. In his ‘quiet man’ and diplomatic way Ryan Moore is telling us he disapproves of the current method of determining who is to be champion flat jockey. And for someone who doesn’t care a hoot for being champion that is a big, bold statement.
Most people, I suspect, would agree with him.
At the time of writing Luke Morris leads the jockeys’ championship – the all-weather jockeys’ championship – with 71 winners. These winners, hard fought for and achieved at a time of year when the British weather is at its worst and while those who vie for Ryan Moore’s position as the ‘best there is around’ are away in foreign parts soaking up the sun and earning far more money than Morris for a lot less effort, will not be recorded as part of the title race. He will be crowned all-weather champion, of course, but his total for the winter/spring season will not be added to his score for the part of the flat season that comprises the championship, and any winners accrued between Doncaster’s opening meeting and the Guineas meeting at Newmarket will also not count.
What is bonkers/anomalous (take your pick) is that winners on the all-weather from the Guineas meeting onwards do count towards the title. Try explaining to non-racing men or women how our champion jockey is determined and you will find yourself discussing the topic for a considerable amount of time.
The season begins with the Lincoln meeting at Doncaster and ends with the November Handicap meeting also at Doncaster. A neat, bookending, arrangement that is at total odds with a racing programme that is as topsy-turvy as if the race meetings are drawn out of a hat. Yet the champion jockey is already known weeks before the last meeting, the last race. It’s a mad, bad and somewhat sad way of handing out the silverware. It is bewildering that the jockey who rides the most winners in a calendar year is rarely nowadays declared ‘champion’. Fred Archer would turn in his grave if he knew.
Horse Racing is often compared with Formula 1, yet in motorsport they wait until the final race of the championship to determine its champions. Even if a driver is too far ahead going into the final races to be caught points won in those last few races are still added to a driver’s overall score.
The introduction of all-weather racing and the vast inroads it has made into the racing programme has, it must be admitted, muddied the waters when determining flat racing’s champions. Of course winners gained at these meeting should count towards the championship and to highlight and give greater gravitas to winter flat racing some would argue the championship should be year-long, with every winner won from January 1st to December 31st counting towards the title. This would make more sense than a method that was only introduced as a convenience to a day’s racing grandly titled ‘Champions Day’ even though no horse is crowned a champion on the day.
One idea I would like to put forward, an idea that does not take the ceremony away from ‘Champions Day’, is for the jockeys’ title to start the day after ‘Champions Day’ and finish on ‘Champions Day’, taking in every flat race, turf and all-weather, over the intervening twelve months. A fairer method, I contest, than the present one.
Luke Morris, of course, would lose his title as all-weather king but if my idea were adopted he would stand a greater chance of becoming champion jockey, a title his effort day-to-day would justify. There certainly would not be a worthier title-holder.