Horse racing analysis | Three conditional jockeys to follow

Luca Morgan

• Attached stable: Ben Pauling
• First ride: 2017
• First winner: Hoke Colburn, Ludlow (October 2018)
• Total winners: 70
• Best horse ridden: Top Notch

Luca Morgan is currently four clear of his closest pursuer in the conditional jockeys’ championship having ridden 27 winners in Britain this season. Morgan has really seized the initiative in recent days with four winners since a week last Saturday – three for Ben Pauling and one for Michael Scudamore.

Morgan is attached to the Pauling stable and the pair have teamed up to very good effect this season with both men enjoying a sparkling run of form. Morgan, for example, has already ridden more winners in 2022/23 than he did in the entire 2021/22 campaign and 21 of his 27 wins have been achieved on horses trained by Pauling. The pair have an impressive 30% strike rate when teaming up together this season, while Morgan has a 27% strike rate full stop which is symptomatic of a young jockey riding at the top of his game.

Morgan had his first rides under Rules during the 2017/18 season but had to wait until the following campaign for his first winners. He made the breakthrough when guiding the Brian Barr-trained Hoke Colburn to victory in an amateur riders’ handicap chase at Ludlow in October 2018 (replay below) and was again seen to good effect when doubling his tally aboard Johnny Farrelly’s Winter Spice in an amateur riders’ handicap hurdle at Plumpton the following month.

It was another nine months before Morgan was back among the winners, but he gradually improved his returns each season with two in 2018/19, eight in 2019/20 and eleven in 2020/21. His first ride at the Cheltenham Festival came in 2020 when he finished down the field on Australian raider Big Blue in the Martin Pipe, while he twice hit the frame at that meeting the following year when finishing third on Top Notch – the best horse he has ridden so far on Timeform ratings – in the Paddy Power Plate and fourth on Whatsupwithyou in the Martin Pipe.

Pauling has given Morgan more rides than any other trainer in every season since 2019/20. That association really started to pay dividends last term as Morgan achieved another personal-best tally of 22 winners, all but one of which was trained by Pauling.

Of course, that haul pales in comparison to what Morgan has already achieved barely seven months into the current campaign and, with a total of 70 winners on the board, he now needs just five more before he loses his claim altogether.

It seems only a matter of time before he achieves that milestone, particularly if the Pauling yard continues in the same rich vein of form, and it could be just the first of many with the conditional jockeys’ championship surely uppermost in his thoughts.

Harry Kimber

• Attached stable: Joe Tizzard
• First ride: 2018
• First winner: Buckhorn Timothy, Ffos Las (November 2018)
• Total winners: 41
• Best horse ridden: Mister Malarky

Harry Kimber currently sits third in the conditional jockeys’ championship with 22 winners from 92 rides at a strike rate of 24%. By contrast, the man who splits Morgan and Kimber, Philip Armson, has partnered only one more winner despite having had more than twice the number of rides (203), so it’s fair to say that Kimber has made the most of the opportunities he’s been given to put himself right in the mix.

Joe Tizzard (18 rides), Kieran Burke (17) and Bill Turner (13) are the three trainers who have given Kimber more opportunities than anyone else. Kimber is attached to the Tizzard yard and has ridden five winners for them at a strike rate of 28%, but it’s Burke with whom he’s developed a particularly noteworthy partnership having ridden eight winners at a strike rate of 47% when teaming up with that stable.

Tizzard’s father Colin was still in charge when Kimber had his first ride under Rules in October 2018 and his first two winners came for that stable in the space of a few days the following month. After getting off the mark on just his third ride when Buckhorn Timothy won a handicap hurdle at Ffos Las (replay below), Kimber then doubled his tally as Norse Legend ran out a determined winner of a handicap hurdle at Exeter just three days later.

Kimber partnered a total of three winners in 2018/19, and another four followed in 2019/20, but his fortunes then took a dramatic nosedive after that promising start. For context, he didn’t ride a single winner in 2020/21 despite having 85 chances and it wasn’t until July 2021 – fully 16 months since his most recent success – that his luck finally turned.

In fact, Kimber ended his drought in the best possible fashion by enjoying a 340/1 treble at Newton Abbot on that July afternoon, with all three winners coming on horses trained by Turner. “I haven't ridden a winner in a while, so it means even more for me,” Kimber told Sky Sports Racing afterwards. “I was over the moon that I'd even ridden a double. I've probably not even had three runners in a day before, it's absolutely fantastic.”

Kimber ended that campaign with 12 winners, but it’s this time round that the fantastic times have really started to flow and, when he enjoyed a double on Thursday’s card at Wincanton, it was the third time this season he’s ridden more than one winner on the same afternoon.

That double also took Kimber’s career tally over jumps to 41 winners which means his claim is due to be reduced from 5lb to 3lb. He still has plenty of time on his side – or another 34 winners to be exact – before he loses his claim altogether, though, and it seems certain that his services will continue to be in high demand in the short term.

Kieran Callaghan

• Attached stable: Willie Mullins
• First ride: 2020
• First winner: Jumping Jet, Gowran Park (March 2021)
• Total winners: 10
• Best horse ridden: Cash Back

The battle to be crowned champion conditional jockey in Ireland is a similarly closely-fought contest this season, with only three winners splitting the leader Kieren Buckley and the fifth-placed rider Michael O’Sullivan.

You have to look a bit further down the leaderboard to find Kieran Callaghan, who trails Buckley by nine on six winners, but he’s demonstrated his talents on the big stage on a couple of occasions and it’s worth taking note if a rider with as much as experience as Patrick Mullins describes a teenager as “a jockey with a big future”. Mullins was speaking after the Mayo National at Ballinrobe in May won by Rock Road (replay below), a horse trained by his father Willie and ridden by 7lb claimer Callaghan.

Mullins senior also paid Callaghan a big compliment when nominating him to replace stable jockey Paul Townend, who’d been stood down after sustaining an injury the day before, on Stratum in a race at Cork in August. However, the stewards intervened, ruling that substituting Townend with a 7lb claimer wasn’t a like-for-like replacement and Stratum had to be withdrawn. Mullins disagreed with their decision, explaining “Paul was injured and I felt Kieran was an adequate replacement. He’s ridden winners for me and I was very happy to give him an opportunity on a top-class horse.”

Callaghan has now enjoyed a total of 10 winners and eight of them have come on horses trained by Mullins having had his first ride for Closutton when third in a bumper at the 2021 Galway Festival. The first significant milestone in his career had come in March that year on a horse trained by Barry Fitzgerald, namely Jumping Jet who provided Callaghan with his first winner, when he was still only 17, by running away with a mares’ bumper at Gowran Park.

As for Callaghan’s biggest success to date, that came last month when he won the Cork National on the Mullins-trained Captain Kangaroo (replay below), a horse who had looked a less-than-fluent jumper in five previous starts over fences.

Afterwards Mullins paid tribute to Callaghan again, clearly still irked at the decision that had been made at the same venue a few months earlier. “The last time I brought this rider down here, they wouldn't let him ride,” Mullins said. “He is back and is good enough to replace any rider I have – he proved it there today.”

With Mullins in his corner, Callaghan is likely to get lots more opportunities to prove that point in the weeks and months to come, including in some of the most prestigious handicaps in the calendar where the margins are so fine that a good-value claimer can make all the difference.

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