“I want to be champion jockey,” Billy Loughnane says, with the grin that is already something of a trademark. “That’s my goal, my only ambition. I want to be champion jockey, I need to be champion jockey and hopefully I’ll be able to do it.”
From any other teenage rider bar the 19-year-old Loughnane, such a resolute statement of intent could prompt at least a niggle of concern that, with such a tight focus on the ultimate destination, he might not appreciate the journey. Loughnane, though, has been a little different from the earliest days of his riding career.
