‘I’m bored when I’m not riding’: Billy Loughnane on drive that made him champion jockey at 20

Billy Loughnane’s mum wanted him to be a vet. “You’d have to ask her why,” he says with a smile that is rarely more than a second or two away. “I’d say money and an easier lifestyle, but I always wanted to be a jockey and made it very clear that was what I wanted to be doing. 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 famously 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 in October 2022, 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 at the outset proved to be anything but.

So the pressure was off as a relaxed and sunny 20-year-old 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.

“It’s a full-on season from the moment it kicks off,” he says. “Most days you’re riding out in the morning, so you’re up at 5.30 and on your first horse at 5.45, and riding anywhere from two to eight horses until 9 or 9.30. 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.

“But I’ve really enjoyed it, and I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. 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 as the son of trainer Mark Loughnane, who also supplied his earliest rides and winners, and pays great credit too to both Boughey and Tony Hind, his agent, whose track record for turning talented riders into champions is unrivalled.

“I’m lucky to have been supported by good people since I started,” he says. “I stepped straight in as a 7lb claimer with George and he’s gone from strength to strength with the horses in his yard, I’m just the lucky one that gets to partner good horses for good people. And Tony is a genius. 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.

“There had been a lot of preparation from all of us here,” he says, “and that was the best buzz I’ve ever had on a racecourse. 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 race-riding since the start of August, and while the title race runs from early May to mid-October, there was little let-up 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.

“Usually at this stage of the year, you’re winding down a bit,” he says, “but Sir Gordon Richards’ record [of 269 Flat winners in a calendar year, set in 1947] is the next goal and I’m just going to keep on blasting through until the end of the year to see how close I can get.”

So downtime and R&R must wait. “I’ve been with my girlfriend for the last two years and she sorts a lot of stuff outside [racing] and makes my life very easy,” Loughnane says, “and we’ll get a holiday at some stage but probably not until the end of the year.

“There’s the week off in [mid] November [when no UK Flat racing is scheduled, to give riders a guaranteed break], but there’s racing in Bahrain that week, so I imagine I’ll be there.”

It is an ever-turning treadmill but not one that Loughnane is about to abandon just yet. 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.

“It’s relentless, but you have to enjoy it if you want to do it,” he says. “It’s not possible if you don’t.

“And I’m still learning every day. You don’t stop learning and like there’s always people around to help and learn off. I’m definitely far from the finished article, but I’m only 20 years old, so I’ll just keep trying to learn off the best.”