FEATURE BRIAN HUGHES
MAN ON A MISSION Fresh from a record-breaking campaign in 2021-22, when he became just the fourth jockey to ride more than 200 winners in a season, Brian Hughes wrapped up title number three last season. However, that isn’t enough, as he sits down with Nick Seddon to explain
T he April Meeting is perhaps a strange time to sit down and review a season with a jockey, but with Brian Hughes you take any opportunity you can get. Clocking up around 75,000 miles in his car each year, the 38-year-old is a difficult man to catch, so an afternoon when he has just the three rides on the card at Cheltenham feels as good an opportunity as any. It means that, as we chat, he is still around a fortnight or so away from collecting his third Jump jockey’s title in four years at Sandown Park’s Jumps Season Finale, though there is still plenty to discuss. As we take a seat just inside the weighing room at Prestbury Park, Hughes is asked to reflect on the fact that he has surpassed 150 winners for the second time in his career, a tally of victories that would eventually stand at 165 for the campaign. It’s a stunning number that deserves celebrating, though ever the perfectionist, Hughes is quick to reveal that it is a tally with which he isn’t completely satisfied – having become just the fourth jockey in history to ride 200 winners in a season the year before. He explains: “I thought the summer was quite good and I got to 100 winners quicker [than last year], but then I’ve just felt very frustrated from October time onwards. I just never felt as though I’d got rolling the way I’d have liked to. “It was things like the weather and other factors. It meant I had a slower time. I suppose I’m getting a bit greedy, but when you’re setting that sort of pace, you just want to maintain it. “To hit 160-plus winners is great, but when I got to 100 by the end of October, I did think that 200 was
definitely on the cards. It didn’t happen, but there’s always next year!”
Based in North Yorkshire, Hughes is a jockey who has great success on the northern circuit, but he has come in for criticism for not being an ever-present figure at some of the bigger meetings last season. That is perhaps shown most by the fact that his sole Grade one success remains his victory in the 2018 Ascot Chase on Waiting Patiently – a rather unique fact for a three-time Champion jockey. It’s a frustration that he in part shares, though he explains that his main drive has and always will be to ride winners, regardless of the level. “Everyone wants to ride big race winners and take part in the competitive races and it’s not that I don’t want to,” he says. “Donald [McCain] buys a lot of horses and we’re hoping to drop on a couple of good Graded horses, but if you don’t ride for the people who have them, it makes it fairly hard to get on them.
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