Both at home and overseas, Godolphin’s first-choice jockey has enjoyed an annus mirabilis – and the bad news for his rivals is that he has no plans to ease off in 2023, as he tells Steve Dennis
GB: Ah yes, it was a very good year. When the past has been bottled the vintage of 2022 will still sparkle for William Buick, still have the power to intoxicate, will always evoke the memory of a year when everything fell sweetly into place.
The list of champion Flat jockeys in Britain contains names that have passed effortlessly into legend – Sir Gordon Richards, Lester Piggott, Pat Eddery, Steve Cauthen, Kieren Fallon, Frankie Dettori – and now freshly chiselled into the great honours board of the game is that of Buick, the latest of the line, the heir of the ages, the newest member of the club to have brought his boyhood dream to a table-topping truth.
And Buick didn’t just win the title, he took it by main force. He finished the championship season – in Britain it runs, slightly unsatisfactorily, from May to mid-October – with 157 winners at a 26% strike-rate, 66 wins clear of his nearest rival, a domination that gains further heft with the observation that Buick’s margin of victory alone equalled the number of winners ridden by the ninth-placed jockey in the table. A very good year indeed.
“To finally do it is a great feeling, gives me a huge sense of fulfilment,” says Buick from his car, on the way to another end-of-year awards ceremony, in the fast lane as ever.
Everyone’s big ambition
“Any young jockey starting out wants to be champion, it’s everyone’s big ambition. I’ve been close to winning it for a couple of years and it’s great to tick it off at last.
“It all just clicked into place. I was hoping to build up a gap around Glorious Goodwood time – my agent Tony Hind and I had made a plan, and things couldn't have gone better. I went well clear, but of course I wasn’t going to ease off; that wouldn’t be like me. I have obligations to owners, trainers. The work has to be done. It’s a personal thing, I don’t lose focus – I won’t drop the ball.
“I would have been a bit deflated if I’d been chasing me, though. I couldn’t quite believe it. I love being champion. Now for the next one!”
Buick, 34, the senior jockey for the Godolphin empire and trainer Charlie Appleby and a man who has almost as many top-level wins on the international stage as he does at home, is often in his car.
The jockeys’ title in Britain is earned by hard graft as much as by brilliance, an iron determination alloyed to a golden touch. In the US, riders might stay at Santa Anita or Saratoga for weeks at a time, a luxury of locality compared to their comrades in Britain, who rack up an annual five-figure mileage as they criss-cross the country on a daily basis.
Seven days a week
“Every day, seven days a week,” says Buick, the highway blues colouring his response. “It’s a lot of work before you sit on a horse, a lot of travelling, a lot of hours. I have a driver, which is a big help, but I’m still always in the car. Riding winners on a regular basis, good winners too, does make it easier to deal with.
“A typical weekend might be Ascot on the Saturday, Chantilly on the Sunday, Windsor or Wolverhampton on the Monday, and on it goes. There’s a lot of work that people don’t see, but this year I’ve never felt burnt out mentally or physically.
“Look, I’m in a very privileged position,” he adds. “I have a great job and I’m able to balance riding every day with still being at the top of my game for the biggest races, the top races around the world. I’ve managed to strike that balance quite well this season.”
Buick refers often to his privileged position, his good fortune, and of course that’s true – he rides some of the best horses in the world. You make your own luck, though, and he has been earmarked for great things from the very start. Born in Oslo, Buick is probably – depending on your metric – the third-most famous Norwegian sportsman behind goal-robot Erling Haaland and chess kingpin Magnus Carlsen.
He has steadily attained dominance in the racing world since joining trainer Andrew Balding at his famed jockey academy in 2006, and becoming champion apprentice two years later. The seeds go back further, though.
“Mum and Dad is where it all started,” he says. “They taught me to ride, introduced me to the sport. My dad Walter was champion jockey eight times in Scandinavia, and he has been reminding me that it’ll be a few years till I catch him up!
“But of course there have been key people along the way, Andrew Balding obviously and then John Gosden, it was a big step for me when I became first jockey for him, it took me to another level.”
Another world
Not only another level, but another world. It wasn’t Buick’s first international G1 winner, but his victory aboard Dar Re Mi in the 2010 Dubai Sheema Classic raised his profile immeasurably and helped pave the way towards his current role with Godolphin, and his position among the exclusive band of jockeys who are at home far away from home, who jet in to every jurisdiction and jet out again with big-race glory in their carry-on luggage.
That ability, that adaptability, was on show again this year and never more so than on Buick’s visits to the US. Two rides and two wins at Saratoga in midsummer – including the G1 Saratoga Derby aboard Nations Pride – were followed by substantial success at the Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland, Buick taking his tally at the year-end championships to seven. Little wonder he loves riding in the US, loves Saratoga.
“It was my first visit to Saratoga, and it’s the kind of place that makes you wax lyrical,” he says. “I felt this was proper sport, a proper atmosphere, phenomenal. Big crowds, good prize-money, a great vibe. And two winners made it even better.”
And on the international circuit, there are friends everywhere. “I’ve known Johnny Velazquez since I was an apprentice – he knows my dad – and he’s a great guy, very helpful to me when I’m over there and an unbelievable rider.
“I have a good relationship with several US jocks, Irad and Jose Ortiz, Javier Castellano, Joel Rosario, the ones who come over to Britain now and again. They have to adapt to our conditions and I have to adapt to theirs.
Breeders’ Cup is the pinnacle
“It’s not that easy to fly in and ride at an unfamiliar track, even if all US racecourses are similar. I need to soak it all up, take it all in, get a feel for what’s happening with the pace, the different speeds, the different rhythms between racing on dirt and on the turf.
“But I love it out there. I spent two winters in Florida with Todd Pletcher when I was a kid and it really captured my imagination. And the Breeders’ Cup is the pinnacle.”
Yes, the Breeders’ Cup. He says it took him long enough to get off the mark at the Breeders’ Cup, but he’s making up for lost time now with three wins last year and two more last month, on Mischief Magic in the Juvenile Turf Sprint and the mighty Modern Games in the Mile.
“Modern Games, what a superstar,” he says. “He is very, very good. Very good at two, very good at three, so adaptable with an unbelievable temperament.
‘Nice to win without being booed!’
“I can put him anywhere, he’s easy to ride, a very well-balanced colt who comes off the turn and just changes gear. He jumped a stride slow at Keeneland but it didn’t matter, he was comfortable, he got a bit of room in the stretch and took off.”
Referring to Modern Games’s notorious victory in the Juvenile Turf in 2021 when the horse was removed from betting pools following an incident at the gate, he add: “It was nice to win without being booed! The plan is to go to Santa Anita next year, see if he can win three years running.”
Santa Anita is home to Frankie Dettori this winter, Buick’s usual championship rivals Tom Marquand and Hollie Doyle are riding in Japan, but Buick himself has stayed close to home, working the short days and cold nights on the all-weather (‘synthetic’ in US parlance) at unglamorous Lingfield, Chelmsford and Wolverhampton. He’s happy to leave the passport in the drawer, though, for the best reasons.
“I’d usually be in Japan, but [wife] Jane and I had another baby in October, a brother for Thomas called Oscar, so I want to spend more time with them,” he says. “I’ll be in Dubai again early next year so this was a good chance for some family time.”
And, because a winner is a winner and jockeys are ravenous for them: “I only need a few winners to reach 200 for the year, so it would be nice to tick that off as well.”
Tick, tick, tick. 2022 has been like that for Buick. A flying visit to Hong Kong marks the end of the international campaign, and then he will get ready to start all over again, Dubai, Britain, Europe, the US, wherever the big races and the best horses are. The promise of another year is ripening on the vine.
“People say it’s hard to get to the top but harder still to stay there. I’ll do my best,” he says. “I’ll be trying to retain my title and will take a similar approach next year – I’m going to do as much as I can for as long as I can, that’s the mantra.
“Look, I’m in a great place at the moment. I’m very happy at home, very happy with my career. It’s everything I worked for as a young lad, and I’m not going to let go of it.”
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