FEATURE BRIAN HUGHES
North star
An ever-present figure on the northern racing circuit, Brian Hughes became just the fourth jockey to reach 200 jumps winners in a season when sealing his second jockey’s title last term, and as he gears up for a tilt at title number three, Nick Seddon speaks to a man who might not be getting the credit he deserves…
I f you head to a jumps fixture in the north of England this season, there is a pretty strong the northern racing scene. However, to dismiss his success as dominance in just one corner of the UK is to overlook the thousands of miles the 37-year-old clocks up each year and the winners that have helped him lift the Champion Jockey trophy twice in the last three years. At Sandown Park’s bet365 Jump Finale fixture in April of this year, Hughes finally got to share his success with friends, family and his weighing-room colleagues. Because while the trophy for his 2019-20 championship was presented to him in his garden due to Covid-19 restrictions, his 2021-22 achievements were celebrated in front of thousands at the Surrey racecourse. chance that you will see a winner ridden by Brian Hughes on the card, such is his stranglehold on And while he was able to reflect on his success and acknowledge the congratulations of his peers, Hughes has the kind of drive and determination to win that means he does not sit still for long. As we speak on a warm summer’s afternoon at Market Rasen – where he rode two winners, incidentally – Hughes is showing no signs of resting on any laurels or taking a break. Picking up wins early in the season can prove decisive in the race for the jockey’s title, and no jockey is more likely to remind you that a winner at Cartmel is just as important in the Champion Jockey standings as one at Cheltenham. He considers this concept for a moment, before explaining: “I enjoy every winner I ride. Some jockeys don’t enjoy riding average horses and winning an average race. They enjoy riding the big winners. I do, too, of course, but I enjoy every single winner because it means something to somebody. I just enjoy riding winners and I want to get as many as I can.” Such a mentality might explain why Hughes is already well placed in the standings for this year’s title race,
with 33 winners from 157 rides at the time of writing – two behind the early leader Sean Bowen. At this stage, he is also one of only three jockeys in the top 10 to have had more than 100 rides already – Bowen and Sam Twiston-Davies are the other two – epitomising a mindset that has taken him to the very top. But as well as being prolific, Hughes is understated in almost everything he does, so perhaps his own garden was the ideal place to be given his first title trophy? He recalls: “It was weird to be honest and I suppose everyone was naïve about Covid and the pandemic at the time. We all thought we’d be back sooner rather than later at first, and then of course, we saw how serious it all got, so I think it pushed everything else into the background. “I think everyone found life at the time fairly difficult, so I didn’t have the cheek to think I should be worrying about things like that. It was nice in a way, though, as the announcement fell on my daughter’s birthday, which has been a day of mixed fortunes for me. The day she was born in 2019, I had a nasty fall at Newcastle and
Brian Hughes was crowned Champion Jockey on bet365 Jump Finale Day at Sandown Park in April, watched by wife Luci and children Rory and Olivia
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