Billy Loughnane: Racing's Luke Littler on taking the sport by storm at 17

The same evening that Luke Littler was playing in the World Darts Championship last week, racing’s child prodigy Billy Loughnane was riding a treble under floodlights at Kempton to keep up the momentum of winning last year’s apprentice championship just a year after he started race-riding.

“We were gripped by the darts that night,” recalls Loughnane. “We were huddled round watching on an Ipad between races and then in the car on the way home. Because I’m quite tall I have to be very careful about what I eat so unfortunately I wouldn’t be out celebrating a win with a kebab and can of Fanta!”

Teenage talent coming to the fore is not such a strange phenomenon in racing and its history is scattered with examples; Lester Piggott rode his first winner in 1948 aged 12 while, 10 years earlier, Bruce Hobbs had landed the Grand National on Battleship aged 17.

Since 16 has been the minimum age for a riding licence we have had Walter Swinburn winning the Derby on Shergar as a teenager while more recently James Bowen won the Welsh National on Raz de Maree before he was old enough to take a driving test.

Perhaps the best example of the last 50 years is Steve Cauthen who, aptly, presented racing’s latest Billy Whizz with his trophy on British Champions Day in October. The ‘Kentucky Kid’ rode 487 winners in his second season riding when he was just 17 and, in 1978, aged 18, had the US Triple Crown all wrapped up on Affirmed.

Loughnane, 17, who spent the first seven years of his life in Ireland before moving to Stoke with his family when his father Mark – who has 50 horses – started training there, only had his first ride on October 24 2022.

Now he is already out-earning his dad and drives an Audi A3 when it is not being chauffeured by his part-time driver.

Still young enough to be ‘protected’ by safeguarding laws, he rolls his eyes and laughs when asked if he uses it. “Well, you’d be offered a cubicle to change if you were bothered about it but there are a lot of young lads and no one really seems to mind the changing room environment,” he points out.

Winning the apprentice title so early is one indication of his precocity but other records include taking less time to ride out his claim (novice rider’s weight allowance, 95 winners in 11 months) than any other jockey in recent history and riding an astonishing 130 winners in the calendar year of 2023 despite spending three weeks at Gulfstream, in America and three weeks in the summer sidelined with a broken thumb.

Last May, six months after his first ride, he became the youngest jockey since Piggott to ride in a Classic when he rode Sweet Harmony in the 1,000 Guineas. With everything else in place and incredible professionalism, he just now needs to get on a good horse.

“It’s all I ever wanted to do since I could walk and talk,” he says after an equicizer session with his jockey coach, Rodi Greene, a man he speaks to twice a day. “I was never one for messing about with mates when I was young, I was mucking around with horses and ponies pretty much since I was born. Now I’m doing it, it is an all-day every-day thing. You can’t turn it off or on. It’s all worth it.

“And if there’s racing on a Sunday evening (undergoing a trial period but not universally popular in the weighing room) – I’m available. I’m sure it would be different if I had a family and kids but I’d be doing nothing.”

So committed to being a professional jockey he saw the sports nutritionists at Liverpool John Moores University when he was 15.

His father had held him back from pony racing until he was 13.“The first year was slow, then the second year was wiped out by Covid but I had three good ponies and was champion. It was a massive help. It teaches you about the tracks, you get practice in a race situation and the bigger ponies are essentially small racehorses.”

Geography for him now might be where Ascot and Ayr are situated on a map but his mother Clare, was insistent he pass all his GCSEs before becoming an apprentice. “She doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean!” he explains. “It was an incentive.”

So what makes him so good? That is something he cannot answer but George Boughey, who burst on to the scene as a trainer in similar fashion in 2019, and now uses him regularly recalls Loughnane’s father telling him before he became an apprentice saying his son was a ‘good kid who, he thought, could ride a bit’.

“He’s been riding out for me ever since,” says Boughey. “It’s his attitude which is the most impressive thing – it’s well beyond his years and he gives the sort of feedback that you’d expect from a 30-year-old who had ridden thousands of winners.

“He’s well able to ride, he thinks about the game and he’s a form student which suits what we do. He’s got great hands, is tactically good and I don’t have to speak to him much because he knows what is going to happen.

“Feedback is a huge part of it. I’ll often be looking back about what he said about a horse on a certain day to work out what we do with it next. You build a portfolio of information like that.”

Covid, explains Loughname, was that game-changer. With owners unable to attend it became the norm for trainers to film the jockey’s debrief on their phone. “Dad has been sending a copy to the owners and another to me since I was 12,” he recalls. “As they were talking about horses I was riding at home so it was massive to learn what they were saying. It gave me a huge head start.”

His aims for 2024 are simple; over 100 winners again, to get on a better horse or two, to get into the property market and get a bigger car.

“You can’t have a mortgage until you’re 18,” he points out. “I’ll start looking in March. Since I’m pretty much living out my car, spending three or four nights in Newmarket and the rest of the week at home, I’d also like to get a bigger car.”

In a results driven industry Loughnane is a young man going places – and hitting the bullseye.