At the time of writing, Ryan Lee Moore is one of just four jockeys still riding – the others being Frankie Dettori, Joe Fanning and Jamie Spencer – to feature in the top twenty most successful British-based jockeys, numerically, of all time. In fact, since 2000, Moore has ridden 2,117 domestic winners, placing him in nineteenth place in the all-time list.
Champion Apprentice in 2003, with 52 winners, Moore was Champion Jockey for the first time in 2006, with 182 winners. At that stage of his career, he was still with Wiltshire trainer Richard Hannon Snr., with whom he’d be enrolled by his father, National Hunt trainer Gary Moore, as an 18-year-old, in 2001. The highlight of his first title-winning season, though, was winning the Juddmonte International Stakes at York on Notnowcato, trained by Sir Michael Stoute.
A broken wrist forced Moore to sit out nearly three months of 2007, effectively surrendering the jockeys’ championship, but he gained just dessert when, at the end of the season, he was offered the job as stable jockey to Stoute. In 2008, Moore rode a total of 192 domestic winners, but his three biggest winners – Promising Lead in the Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh, Linngari in the Grosser Preis Bayerisches Zuctrennen at Munich and Conduit in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita Park – all came abroad.
Nevertheless, he became Champion Jockey for the second time that year and would defend his title in 2009, once again, thanks in large part to horses trained by Stoute. His globe-trotting exploits continued, though, and as early as April that year he’d already won the QE II Cup at Sha Tin, Hong Kong, on Presvis, trained by Luca Cumani. Domestically, wins at the highest level on Ask in the Coronation Cup, Conduit in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Beethoven, trained by Aidan O’Brien – to whom Moore would later become stable jockey – contributed to his seasonal total of 178 winners and clinched his third jockeys’ title.