Racing history is littered with apparent breakthrough moments that turned out to be as good as it ever got, but two years on from the afternoon at Ascot that made her name, Hollie Doyle can rest assured that Champions Day 2020 was only the start.
Well, not rest, exactly. “It’s weird how your goalposts change,” she said at Leicester racecourse on Tuesday, in the brief gap between her 957th and 958th rides of 2022. “When you’re young, you say: ‘I’ll be satisfied once I’ve ridden out my [apprentice’s] claim’. And once you’ve done that, you think: ‘I’ll be happy when I’ve ridden a Group winner’. But you’re still not happy, you want to ride 10. Your goalposts constantly change, and I think that’s the athlete’s mindset.”
