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Horses For Courses: Young jockeys stake their claim
ONE TO WATCH: Maurice Linehan, left and fellow jockey Richie McLernon chat with trainer Jonjo ONeill at Warwick. Linehan has already proved himself to be one of the top young jump jockeys.
Monday’s winning YEP nap Storm Survivor went in by an easy seven lengths and obviously had tons in hand of the handicapper.
Mind, young Maurice Linehan’s 8lbs claim certainly helped and finding a jockey better than his claiming allowance can be a valuable tool to derail the bookmakers.
Linehan is one and in Conor Quish, William Twiston-Davies, Kielan Woods and Lucy Alexander it should pay to follow four others.
Everything about punting in racing concerns trying to get one up on the bookmaker and the dream scenario is a horse that is well handicapped – e.g one carrying less weight than it ought to.
Follow a talented young jockey before they ride out their claim and it’s much the same with Linehan, Quish, Twiston-Davies, Woods and Alexander – all having at least 5lbs claims at present.
As all five are just as good as most of their weighing room colleagues, in theory every one of their mounts is 5lbs well-in.
Strike
Unquestionably, top of the list is Linehan who amazingly still has an 7lbs claim. To clarify, a conditional jockey can keep claiming weight or taking weight off a horse’s back until they get to 75 winners with the pilot allowed 7lbs until they have 20 wins, 5lbs until 40 wins and 3lbs until 75 wins.
Conditional jockeys with fewer than five wins can also claim an extra 3lbs when riding for their stable, meaning they have a 10lbs claim.
Linehan has still only ridden nine winners meaning he will have a 7lbs claim for the foreseeable future, though such are his talents it will not take long for him to ride that claim out.
So now is the time to strike while the iron is hot as out of the five highlighted conditionals he is by far the best and in my book he would already be in the top 15 or so jumps jockeys in the country.
Linehan, a feature of these pages some weeks back, didn’t need to do anything special to get Storm Survivor home on Monday but his rides last year on a few Jonjo O’Neill fancies were superb and very reminiscent of a young Tony McCoy, especially as he was wearing those famous green and gold JP McManus silks.
He will quite simply make hay while having his claim, especially riding for the O’Neill stable.
It should be a similar story for Twiston-Davies whose older brother, Sam, is considered by many to be the heir to McCoy’s throne.
Sam has long ridden out his claim and is a wiser and more polished jockey than his younger brother, but the younger Twiston-Davies is more than capable and crucially will get no better upbringing with his older brother such a good rider and his father, Nigel, such a good trainer.
He broke his ankle last summer but the teenager is now back in action and I had to rub my eyes when discovering that he is still eligible for an 8lbs claim.
That is, though, indeed the case and young William has only ever had six winners.
Bucket loads will follow in no time at all with his valuable claim.
Linehan and Twiston-Davies by far top my list of young jumps conditional jockeys to side with but another even further under the radar could be Quish, who rides for the Emma Lavelle yard.
He has only ever had two winners but his effort on Zarrafakt at Wincanton the other day was exemplary and crucially he rides for a decent stable.
Quish can obviously ride and as Zarrafakt was well handicapped anyway, it’s little wonder that with the jockey taking another 10lbs off that the Lavelle runner hacked up.
The last two to strongly consider are Woods and lady sensation Alexander, though they have already ridden 24 and 22 winners respectively meaning the cat is out of the bag somewhat with both now down to 5lbs claims.
Still, it means another 16 winners or so until they lose that and both are very talented – Alexander definitely the best female National Hunt jockey at present and Woods looking extremely decent and operating from the shrewd Charlie Longsdon yard, which is key.
There are others – Dean Pratt is a claimer who has looked a natural but who is still only on five winners while Henry Brooke and David Bass are as good as most jockeys now and thus still attractive even with only a 3lbs claim.
And there’s the Flat apprentices, though, we’ll leave a piece on a five to follow in that sphere until the season really gets going in March.
Hopefully, we can find a similar group to Linehan and co who have already literally staked their claims as young pilots to follow.
* Follow Lee on Twitter @LeeSobotYEP
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