Top jockey James Doyle will be among the leading candidates to ride most winners at Royal Ascot next week.
As the retained rider of the Emir of Qatar ’s emerging Wathnan Racing team he will have a host of top notch chances for Group race honours.
Doyle, 36, has ridden over 1,600 winners in Britain, won four Classics in Britain and Ireland, 18 Royal Ascot winners and a Breeders’ Cup Turf. when retained by the powerful Godolphin stable. But at the start of his career he has admitted that trying to establish himself was a struggle.
“It’s hard when all I dreamed about was being a jockey, but being a good jockey and suddenly I found myself riding 20-odd winners a year,” he said in an interview with Sky Sports Racing.
“It doesn’t mean you are a bad jockey but at the end of the day I purchased a house when I was quite young and there were financial pressures.
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“I loved doing what I was doing but it became crazy driving four hours to ride one horse up at Beverley, driving home and doing it all again the next day. It just didn’t seem to me to be making sense.
“So I gently touched on the idea or sought advice on what other things would likely to be available to me and suddenly this whole plumbing thing went crazy.”
Doyle comes from a racing family. His mother Jacqui was a racehorse trainer and sister Sophie, who is now based in the US, is also a jockey.
Jockey James Doyle celebrates his first winner at the Breeders Cup aboard Rebel's Romance (Getty)Taking up the story, Jacqui Doyle said: “This stupid idea came up - it was a stupid idea - about being a plumber because there was no danger in the world of James Doyle ever being a plumber.
“Putting a plug in the sink would be about as near James would get to being a plumber, but he did book on a course through the PJA but it gave him a light at the end of that tunnel. He knew the date that course started and I knew there was no danger of him going on it.
“Literally about two weeks before the course was starting he rode 11 winners in nine days from not having ridden a winner in 70-something rides. As that course date loomed up he suddenly changed.
“He just couldn’t stop riding winners and he never looked back after that.”
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