Sporting Life
William Buick is all smiles on Masar after the Derby
William Buick celebrates his 2018 Derby win on Masar

William Buick becomes champion jockey for the first time

By John Ingles
Horse Racing
Mon October 17, 2022 · 2y ago

One man who will have gained more satisfaction than most from William Buick finally lifting the champion jockeys’ trophy for the first time at Ascot on Saturday is Ian Balding.

The former Kingsclere trainer had a verbal bet - £50 at odds of 100/1 - with Tote chairman Peter Jones back in 2001 that the then 13-year-old Buick would become champion one day.

That was clearly a long-term investment, though probably not even Balding imagined he would have to wait quite as long as 21 years for his faith in the teenager’s talent to be fully vindicated.

Buick had finished runner-up in the championship on three occasions, including in the previous two seasons when another former Kingsclere graduate Oisin Murphy had beaten him to the title. Buick had lost out by just two winners in 2021, and while Murphy’s absence in the latest season undoubtedly made life easier for Buick, the reigning champion would have had his work cut out keeping pace with Godolphin's jockey who finished 67 clear of nearest pursuers Hollie Doyle and Tom Marquand whilst recording his best ever domestic total – 179 at the time of writing – for the calendar year.

William Buick with his Champion Jockey trophy

After receiving the trophy at Ascot, even Buick himself had to admit that the ‘18-year-old me would say what’s taken you so long!’ The teenage Buick certainly made the sort of start to his career that suggested a championship might come sooner rather than later. Buick rode his first winner, Bank On Benny, in an apprentice handicap at Salisbury for trainer Paul d’Arcy in September 2006.

By the end of that year, Buick had ridden ten winners and, just two years later, he shared the apprentice jockey title with another of Andrew Balding’s apprentices, David Probert, having by then already ridden out his claim.

Balding’s stable also provided Buick with his first pattern winner, Buccellati, in the 2008 St Simon Stakes at Newbury, while the following autumn he landed his first Grade 1 success on the Mick Channon-trained Lahaleeb in the E. P. Taylor Stakes in Canada.

Buick’s international experience despite his young age – he spent winters riding in both the United States, for Todd Pletcher, and in Dubai – was a factor in him landing the position of stable jockey to John Gosden when he replaced Jimmy Fortune in 2010.

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It was appropriate, therefore, that Buick’s first ride for the new partnership resulted in a win in one of the world’s richest turf races, the Dubai Sheema Classic, aboard Dar Re Mi.

Buick made headlines again that summer with further exploits abroad, winning the Arlington Million for Gosden in Chicago and the Prix Morny at Deauville on the David Simcock-trained Dream Ahead on the same weekend. In his first year with Gosden, Buick also landed his first classic when Arctic Cosmos won the St Leger before winning the same race again a year later on Masked Marvel. That success was among 106 domestic winners for Buick in 2011, the jockey’s first century, with Nathaniel’s King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes victory another highlight.

In the following seasons, Buick had further Group 1 success on the Gosden-trained fillies Elusive Kate, The Fugue, Sultanina, Fallen For You, Izzi Top and Winsili, but it was a win on the Godolphin two-year-old colt Charming Thought, trained by Charlie Appleby, in the 2014 Middle Park Stakes which was to point towards the next step in Buick’s career, an important one to his eventually becoming champion.

Buick owes much of the success that has won him his first championship this season to Appleby who has supplied 81 of his winners to date (George Boughey with 21 winners and Andrew Balding with 10 are the other main contributors).

But there have been mutual benefits to Buick’s appointment as number-one jockey to Godolphin (initially a position he held jointly with James Doyle), bringing some much-needed stability to an operation which had struggled to find a permanent replacement for Frankie Dettori who ended up succeeding Buick as stable jockey at Clarehaven.

Godolphin might be firing on all cylinders again now, but that wasn’t the case when Buick first joined the team – Charming Thought had been their only Group 1 winner in Europe in 2014. Buick’s first major success in his new role actually came for Saeed bin Suroor when Prince Bishop won the 2015 Dubai World Cup, but it was Hawkbill’s success in the 2016 Eclipse – Godolphin’s first Group 1 winner in Britain since Charming Thought - which could be said to have kick-started Godolphin’s renaissance of which Buick has been an integral part.

Buick’s win on Masar in the 2018 Derby, which he described as ‘the be-all-and-end-all, the everything’, clearly meant a lot to the jockey who missed out on Godolphin’s most recent Derby winner Adayar in 2021 but rode that colt to victory in the King George, while his Epsom mount that year, third-placed Hurricane Lane, went to give Buick a third St Leger victory after another couple of big wins in the Irish Derby and Grand Prix de Paris.

Other highlights for Buick in the Godolphin colours in recent years have been hat-tricks on the Dubai World Cup card in 2019 – Old Persian became his fourth Dubai Sheema Classic winner and third in a row – and at last year’s Breeders’ Cup.

One of those Breeders’ Cup winners, Modern Games, provided Buick with a French classic earlier this season when winning the Poule d’Essai des Poulains, while fellow Godolphin three-year-old colts Native Trail and Coroebus were other big-race winners for the jockey in the Irish 2000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes respectively.

Not all of Buick's big wins this year have been for Godolphin, though, with his other Group 1 victories including the Prix Rothschild on Saffron Beach for Jane Chapple-Hyam and the Cheveley Park Stakes on Lezoo for Ralph Beckett.

But it was in the royal blue that Buick enjoyed much of his success in his first season as champion.

'He is a champion jockey for a champion owner,' said Godolphin MD Hugh Anderson after receiving the leading owner trophy at Ascot.

'He is at the very sharp end of Team Godolphin and all of us congratulate him on his outstanding horsemanship, determination, bravery and skill.'

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