'It's About The Horses': Ryan Moore, the Reluctant Superstar 

All season we seem to have been marvelling at 'another brilliant ride by Ryan Moore.' But the man himself chuckles at the idea that this has been a special year for him.

“I suppose looking back there've been good days, but you only remember the last day,” he says. “We didn't win the Arc – so it doesn't feel satisfying at the moment.” As he says it, he really is laughing at how a recent disappointment can obscure the glories.

This is life in the super-elite of world sport, where Moore belongs. Parts of racing have been slow to see that he shares the same small bracket of stars as Joe Root (cricket) or Antoine Dupont (rugby) – the ones several lengths clear of their contemporaries, and destined for reputational immortality. Moore is the best Flat race jockey on the planet: dedicated and deadly, relentless and artful.

We sat down at Moore's home in Newmarket a few days after he had been beaten into third on Los Angeles in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. It was still eating at him. Had he expected to win? “I thought I could win. I went there thinking he could win,” he said. “So, even when it looks like a good year there are things you feel you could have done better.”

The greatest names in sport share a characteristic. Winning a lot isn't good enough. They want to win every time. That insatiability burns in Moore's eyes as he looks back to Longchamp and ahead to a late autumn of mighty challenges: “Champions Day, Breeders' Cup, Melbourne Cup, Japan Cup. We've still got plenty to get done.”

Part of my intention in interviewing him was to place him in that special worldwide category of 'boss' athletes who could all fit round one dinner table, if you could organise it. It seems obvious that Moore is in that class. But you can guess how his modesty collided with my mission. He was having none of it.

“I dunno. The way I see it is that I ride for the best trainer who's given the best horses by a very supportive bunch of owners, at a fantastic facility,” he said. “So, it's what's behind me really – that's the proof of it. It's horseracing. It's about the horses, I always feel. They're the ones that will take you there.”

City of Troy and Ryan Moore win the G1 Coral Eclipse Stakes | Bronwen Healy

No problem. The praise can be ladled out on his behalf. A random sample might include Wigmore Street surging from near last to first in the Irish Cambridgeshire, Luxembourg's victory in the Coronation Cup, Kyprios holding off Trawlerman in the Ascot Gold Cup, or Fairy Godmother veering the width of seven backsides to fly up the stand-side and win the Albany Stakes.

 “Every year he's ridden for us he's got better,” O'Brien said at that Royal Ascot meeting. “He's the complete package in every way. He puts it all in, in every way. He's so committed, he's so straight, so dedicated, such an athlete.” 

If Moore, now 41, is reserved in his public utterances it's largely because he has no interest in performative chat. To see him at rest on an early midweek day is to realise how grounded he is in the challenge of working out in his head each race, each horse. The rolling conundrum, he says, is “different circumstances, different horse, different course, different ground, different jockeys.” The goal though never changes: “to get from here to there as fast as possible.”

With all that to consume him, he has little interest in the abstractions of greatness, stature or the skills involved in what he does. Which is fine, because there are plenty of specific topics to keep us occupied, starting with the three horses I try to cite as evidence that it has been a stellar year: Kyprios, City Of Troy, Auguste Rodin.

“He has that speed going forward. That's a good thing to have in his arsenal for America.”

– Ryan Moore on City Of Troy

The mountain tops laid out in front of Moore are Breeders' Cup Classic (City Of Troy), Melbourne Cup (Jan Brueghel) and Japan Cup (Auguste Rodin). This is Coolmore and Ballydoyle in full globetrotting mode. To be this intrepid, Moore will need to dash from Del Mar and the Classic on a 16-hour flight to Melbourne. Not forgetting of course Champions Day at Ascot.

Landmark tests abound. City Of Troy and Auguste Rodin will both retire after America (2 Nov) and Japan (24 Nov). And the Breeders' Cup Classic is one of the few defining races to have eluded Coolmore and O'Brien. The hype is building. It draws another smile from Moore: “The only thing I do when I get on the horse is concentrate on him. The rest of it is irrelevant. We have to go out there and execute it.”

At York in the Juddmonte International Stakes, the Derby and Eclipse Stakes winner City Of Troy forced a white flag up the poles of any remaining doubters. “Yeah, he did,” Moore agrees. “Ok, the Eclipse wasn't too pretty, but the form didn't work out too bad. His Derby win was good. We got it wrong in the Guineas. I thought his performance in the Juddmonte was top class. Everyone wants to see the next Frankel – but I've only seen one of them. That's the reality of it. I've seen a lot of good horses, but I've only seen one that's…” He waves his hand as if to say – beyond compare.

Moore after riding City Of Troy to win The Juddmonte International Stakes at York Racecourse. | Getty Images

From Moore's view in the saddle, City Of Troy's front-running performance at York was an insight into his chance at Del Mar: “He has that speed going forward. That's a good thing to have in his arsenal for America. It's a good trait to have.” And the encore of his jockey trying to pull him up after the line is for real: “Once he gets into his rhythm he can maintain his gallop. When he gets it right he will keep going. It's like an elite athlete who can keep going at 800m pace and keep timing it out.”

Mechanically, Moore says, City Of Troy “has an extraordinary action. He seems to throw his front legs out and almost extend them – from the shoulder. Aidan was telling me how straight he is behind. He's almost like a deer. They think that's what makes him so brilliant.”

So can he transplant Yorkshire form to California? “You don't know. Aidan has trained him since York with America in mind, and has been tweaking things, mentally preparing him. We don't know if we will handle the surface because we just don't know. Del Mar is a unique surface. He [Aidan] has gone close with horses in the past and he feels he can prepare him and give him the best shot he can have.”

Moore speaks with equal fondness of Auguste Rodin, who is way too good to be called an enigma but has his quiet days. Wins in the Derby, Irish Derby, Irish Champion Stakes, Breeders' Cup Turf and this year's Prince of Wales's Stakes will be remembered long after his no-shows have been forgotten.

“Auguste Rodin is a horse I rate really highly. I was annoyed with myself in the Irish Champion Stakes [where he was narrowly beaten by Economics]. He won the Prince of Wales which was great. I sat on him last week before the Arc and Aidan said – 'gun to your head now, which one do you want to ride?' And I said I'd like to ride him [Auguste Rodin]. But the way the weather came it was the right thing not to run him.

“I'd love to see him finish off well in Japan. He is a very good horse. Very good horse. He has everything. He's always shown that he has everything. I saw him in that February when he was a two-year-old, and the first time I sat on him I told Aidan – this will be the Derby horse. He's been beaten but he's come back and won. Aidan's not afraid of him being beaten, so he's run him. It's going to happen.”

Recent conversations with ex-jockeys suggested that many think, like O'Brien, that Moore continues to improve, year after year, even from an already extraordinarily high level: another idea he would rather not dwell on.

“It will end one of two ways. Either I'll get told I'm not good enough,

or I'll get carried off. I doubt it will be my decision.”

He says: “I don't know, really. All I can do every day is try my best, eliminate mistakes. Riding the horses has always been the same. I've always enjoyed the actual race riding. I've always enjoyed riding good horses and I've always enjoyed riding in big races. So I suppose I'm probably doing more of that now than Mondays and Tuesdays at Windsor and Brighton. Now it's more focused on the Ballydoyle horses at the weekend, I suppose.”

Ah, Brighton, his birthplace. Can we expect him back there for a cameo? Here he vents his frustration with race scheduling that condemns quiet mid-week days to only low grade racing (he thinks racing has an opportunity there to fill an entertainment void). 

“I'd like to go back [to Brighton] one day,” he says. “It's the quality of the race programme. If there's good horses to ride at those places you'd go. If the races aren't there for the better horses it's hard to have a reason to go there, which is a problem.

“It is frustrating. Race programming…it's irritating when you have so many meetings on a Saturday afternoon, and it's competing with every other sport, no one seems to notice it. We've made changes, maybe some of them aren't working, so maybe we try others.”

Forty-one is a late age in most sports but Moore's extended prime is a long way from fraying. A reminder though of time's inexorable march came with Sir Michael Stoute's decision to retire at the end of the current season. Stoute was the main mover behind Moore's graduation to the heights he occupies now.

“Sir Michael is a lovely, lovely man,” he says. “He gave me great advice. He still does. I learned so much riding for him, and he gave me an opportunity very young, which took me to the next level. He developed me a lot. He'd say the things at the right time. He'd reassure you, if you needed it. He'd ring me up if I had a good day, ring me up if I had a bad day.”

He believes Stoute will stick around in Newmarket but has no plan for himself when race riding leaves him behind. He does however speak of that day with gallows humour. “I certainly don't have an idea when it will end. It will end one of two ways. Either I'll get told I'm not good enough, or I'll get carried off. I doubt it will be my decision. I wouldn't put any date or goal on it. I'll just disappear.” He's laughing again – enjoying the darkness of it.

 “I used to see lads retire and think – you've got to be organised, you've got to know what you're going to do. You start work [in a new job] the next day. I really believed that was the way to do it. I've now reached the point where I don't have the energy to put into thinking what I'm going to do next.

“But I do spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm actually doing now, rather than thinking too far ahead. You have to think about the next race, that's the immediate one. You can't get too far ahead. Or, I can't any more.”

The amount of thought he puts into it couldn't be more apparent, as Ascot, Del Mar, Melbourne and Japan swarm in his mind. Generational supremacy is a full-time job, and Moore's grip on it remains unbreakable.