Flat Jockeys' Championship: Can Moore pull off the perfect crime?

Ryan Moore is raring to go in the jockeys' championship

Even at this early stage, the jockeys' title looks like it could develop into one of the stories of the season. Keith Melrose looks at the fledgling tussle between a past champion and the present one.

Calling any contest containing hundreds of runners and staged over more than seven months a two-horse race just weeks after it's begun is playing a dangerous game, but when we're talking about the 2013 Flat Jockeys' Championship we can be reasonably confident. Only two jockeys in the country realistically have the means, motive and opportunity to take the title: defending champ Richard Hughes and three-time winner Ryan Moore. Let's weigh the pair up on those three counts.

Means: From the baldest of facts, this round would be won comprehensively by Hughes. His attachment to the Richard Hannon yard, a hothouse of two-year-olds in particular that has sent out north of 200 winners in each of the last three years, is likely to give him a steady stream of winners throughout the campaign. Conversely, the flow from Moore's main benefactor, Sir Michael Stoute, has slowed to a relative trickle, with his totals struggling to come up to a third of Hannon's in recent seasons. However, where less than three in 10 of Moore's winners in 2012 came from Stoute, Hughes relied on Hannon for a good deal more than half his tally. That could give Moore an advantage later in the piece, but with the idiomatic bird in hand Hughes must be taken as the stronger at this stage.

Motive: Before he was drawn into a protracted duel with Paul Hanagan for the 2010 title, Richard Hughes was seldom seen as a leading contender for the jockeys' title; not down to any lack of ability, or indeed ambition for the most part, but quite literally because of his standing. At 5'10", Hughes has to work especially hard to make racing weight, and it should be pointed out that 2010 is the only time he's really pushed himself towards the end of a season: last year the championship was his before the leaves had browned. Moore is hardly petite himself as far as Flat riders go, but after four years without a title, having at one stage looked set to impose a McCoy-like hegemony on the Flat championship, he's likely to have the greater hunger, both literally and metaphorically, for a long battle. Round two to Moore.

Opportunity: Last spring, the controversial ban Hughes incurred riding in India appeared to give the opportunity to Moore, who was still four ahead in the title race when a broken wrist suffered in August swung things firmly back in Hughes' favour. The message from that topsy-turvy tale is that we just don't know who'll have the opportunity this year: Stoute's fortunes may recover; Moore's arrangement with Ballydoyle may eat into increasing amounts of his British rides; either Hughes or Moore could suffer an injury. It's this round that may well decide the jockeys' championship, but short of having a crystal ball we simply can't call it one way or the other. 

With Moore and Hughes taking up so much of the betting market, some may be looking for value elsewhere. It's not unknown for a third party to arrive on the scene unannounced: Moore for one knows all about that, having widdled on the bonfire made for Authorized and George Washington aboard Notnowcato in the 2007 Eclipse. 

It'll probably take similarly extraordinary circumstances to derail the Moore/Hughes clash, but if it happens it will probably, like Notnowcato, come from somewhere on the other side of the course. While both the leading contenders are battling in the South, Graham Lee is likely to have the northern Flat circuit all to himself this year; as Paul Hanagan twice showed, that can be a huge advantage. The idea that one man and his agent can slug it out with the very biggest hitters down south, though, is probably on the fanciful side.

As the 2013 Flat season wears on, the race for the title of Champion Jockey could become one of the biggest running stories. The chances are that champion Hughes is shading it on points as things stand, but not to the extent that current odds imply. Former champ Ryan Moore could justifiably feel that he's never really lost his title, rather having it taken from him by a string of injuries, and with a clear run in 2013 he's likely to take the titleholder the distance at least.

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