Jason Watson: A future Champion Jockey?

In football, a club’s academy is the system in which budding young players can plot a path into the senior team, and the Apprentice Jockeys’ Championship plays a similar role in horseracing – with several of the sport’s current big names having earned their stripes in the traditionally junior code.

Of course, like in football, it isn’t a guaranteed – nor only – passage to the top table, but the likes of Paul Hanagan, Ryan Moore, William Buick and Oisin Murphy have all been crowned Champion Apprentice this century. The latest name to appear on the roll of honour is Jason Watson, who racked up 77 wins between 5 May and 20 October – a tally large enough to place him tenth in the overall jockey rankings, above some much more prestigious names, including the likes of Moore, Hanagan, Buick, Jamie Spencer and Frankie Dettori.

It is an impressive feat for an apprentice, particularly when you consider that this was just the fourth season of the new, streamlined championships, which run from 2000 Guineas day at Newmarket to Champions Day at Ascot; Watson’s tally is at least 20 higher than the previous three champions (Tom Marquand 54, Josephine Gordon 50, David Egan 53) and the highest since Hanagan’s 2002 total of 81.

Watson has enjoyed a season which suggests he could be out of the ordinary – he has since eclipsed the 100 winner mark for the calendar year, in just his second season. This, coupled with a clear statement of intent by the rider himself, has led to bookmakers shortening his odds to become next year’s Champion Jockey.

Watson’s career so far

Watson’s rise as a jockey has been a meteoric one, considering he only turned 18 this May, and his first ride came less than two years ago when finishing second aboard the Gary Moore-trained Breakheart at Kempton in February 2017.

It was his first boss Moore for whom Watson rode his first winner on just his fourth ride, aboard Many Dreams at Salisbury three months later, and the young jockey finished the year having ridden two winners from 41 rides. The yard of Andrew Balding, a trainer who has given opportunities to plenty of talented apprentices in recent years, was the next step for Watson, whose number of rides quickly increased.

Indeed, Watson has had 633 rides in 2018 at the time of writing, with 107 winners, an eye-watering increase from the year before. He had a considerably higher number of rides compared to his rivals during the Apprentice Championship, too, with his tally of 77 winners from 463 rides eclipsing his three closest rivals; Rossa Ryan (53-396), Callum Rodriguez (45-353) and Nicola Currie (45-420).

Watson has quickly hit racing’s mainstream, undoubtedly helped by the fact he won the Stewards’ Cup aboard Gifted Master in August, but it’s far from the only Saturday triumph he has enjoyed this year. Watson has ridden more winners on a Saturday (24) than any other day of the week in 2018 and wins in competitive handicaps at courses including Newmarket, York, Sandown, Ascot and Newbury have endeared him to both punters and trainers alike.

WOW! Gifted Master takes the Stewards' Cup Handicap in a photo finish at @Goodwood_Races

Watch the action LIVE on @ITV now #GloriousGoodwood pic.twitter.com/r99iYYaXPk

— ITV Racing (@itvracing) 4 August 2018

The Balding effect

The chance to ride Gifted Master may have come from Hugo Palmer, but the main source of Watson’s ammunition this term has come from Balding, for whom he has had 89 rides this year at the time of writing, delivering 22 winners (20.75% of the jockey’s total). This is considerably more than any other trainer, ahead of Saeed bin Suroor (32 rides, 11 winners), Amanda Perrett (32 rides, six winners) and Mark Usher (27 rides, five winners).

The support from Balding is notable, and Watson’s 89 rides account for just over 12% of the yard’s runners this year, with only Oisin Murphy (195) and David Probert (146) getting more opportunities than the Champion Apprentice.

Both Probert and Murphy won the apprentice crown when based with Balding, in 2008 and 2015 respectively, while William Buick, who shared the title with Probert, began his career at Kingsclere and had a large number of rides for the yard that year.

Unfortunately for young riders coming through, contention over the alleged exploitation of apprentice riders led Balding to declare last year that he would take on fewer apprentices in the foreseeable future. 

"Apprenticeships nowadays are far less restrictive than they were even ten years ago, and both the apprentice and the trainer should be able to make their own arrangements and decisions as to what's mutually beneficial,” he said.

“If there's now going to be an effort to reduce the percentages owed to the employer of the apprentices, then where's the benefit of taking them on in the first place?"

Stepping into the title race

After losing their claim, most jockeys traditionally suffer a bit of a lull immediately after turning professional, but that hasn’t been the case with the Champion Apprentice in recent years. 2015 champion Marquand rode four fewer winners the following year, but his tallies have steadily increased since, while Gordon attracted plenty of plaudits in 2017 after recording 106 winners. The most recent champion David Egan has already surpassed last year’s tally of 61.

Though, perhaps, as you’d expect, history is against Watson should he set his sights on the title next year. In the post-war era, no rider has become Champion Jockey the year after being crowned Champion Apprentice, though AP McCoy did achieve the feat in the National Hunt sphere.

Ryan Moore, seen by many as the best around, got closest to achieving the feat, having been crowned Champion Jockey in 2006, three years after winning the apprentice title.

Since the championship was restructured four years ago, the Champion Jockey has averaged 146 winners from 782 rides, at a strike rate of over 18%. Watson’s strike rate for 2018 stands at 17%, which isn’t too far off target, but in theory he would need to find an extra 320 rides, and around 70 winners, if he is to be a serious title contender next season.

Encouragingly, Watson has picked up rides for a variety of trainers this year, and it is worth noting that he has had one ride for 55 different yards in 2018. Clearly, his agent Tony Hind, who has a reputation for developing the careers of young jockeys, has been instrumental, while Watson also credits his Derby-winning jockey coach John Reid for helping him ride out his claim by early-October.

But Watson will need to broaden his horizons further yet – perhaps literally – if he is to launch a realistic challenge to three-time champion Silvestre de Sousa. The vast majority of Watson’s rides have come at southern racecourses, but he might need to travel north more often if he is to pick up those much-needed additional opportunities.

And with Murphy and Probert ahead of him in the pecking order at Kingsclere, it wouldn’t be the biggest surprise to see Watson, despite his relative inexperience, land a role as stable jockey elsewhere, particularly if he enjoys as much success without his claim this winter as he did with it. That was the case with William Buick, who became first jockey to the John Gosden yard the year after winning the apprentice title, which in turn provided him with over 250 rides in each of the next two seasons.

There’s no doubting Watson’s ambition – he declared that he wanted to become Champion Jockey next year when collecting the Tom O’Ryan Trophy for Champion Apprentice on Champions Day – and it will be fascinating to see just how far his drive, and undoubted talent, can take him.