“I was keen, mad keen. I had to be,” William Buick says as he remembers how, as a boy in Oslo, he was desperate to ride racehorses before school every freezing day. Buick, who has just become Britain’s champion jockey for a second successive year, would cycle to a racecourse despite the brutal winter mornings. “I was about 12 and I’d be riding out for Wido Neuroth, who is the biggest trainer in Norway, and Scandinavia.
“One morning it was pitch black and my bicycle tyres were making that creaking noise you get when you hit compact snow. It was below -20C soon after six and I thought: ‘Wow, this feels cold.’ I got to the racecourse and thought: ‘Gosh, it’s quiet this morning, there’s no one out.’ Wido’s office was above the stables and he said: ‘William, when it’s -20C, we don’t ride out. It’s too cold, even for us.’”
On a balmy October afternoon, at his home near Newmarket, Buick laughs in the sunshine. His accent still carries echoes of Norway and, while taking a brief break from his relentless schedule which culminates in Flat racing’s final day of the season at the Qipco Champions Day at Ascot next Saturday, Buick is amused by the memory. He will soon tell me about the private challenges his family face, but that dark Oslo morning was meaningful.
“I was skinny and tiny but my mum says that she knew from that day on that I was mad about horse racing. She had to get on board because, after that, she said: ‘I couldn’t stop you.’”
Yarmouth
1.55 Gracious Leader
2.25 Mukaafah
2.55 Stintino Sunset
3.25 Total Lockdown
4.00 Serendipitous Lady
4.35 Okeanos
5.05 Dream Pirate
Musselburgh
2.05 Luna Magic
2.35 Edge Of Darkness
3.05 Sixcor
3.35 Without Delay
4.10 Shades Of Summer
4.40 Cantalupo Bella
5.10 He’s An Angel
Windsor
2.15 Hackman
2.45 Pianoforte
3.15 Doha
3.45 Amazonian Dream
4.15 Khinjani
4.50 Exquisitely
5.20 Asense
Kempton Park
4.26 Palazzo Persico
5.00 Kings Valley
5.30 Extra Beat
6.00 Ivory Madonna
6.30 Enchanted Life
7.00 Hieronymus (nap)
7.30 Buccabay (nb)
8.00 Rose Light
8.30 First Company
Did his friends have any understanding of his obsession? “Zero,” Buick says with a smile. “In Norway there is only one racetrack and there’re only about 200 horses in training. So it’s not looked upon as an industry. But everyone knew what I was doing and it didn’t isolate me from my friends. I had a social life but my interest was 100% on racing.”
Buick’s mother is Danish, and steeped in equestrian sport, while his Scottish father, Walter, was an eight-time champion jockey of Scandinavia. “When I started I didn’t realise how fortunate I was to have him in my corner,” Buick says of his dad. “He was very – how would you say? Direct. If I made a mistake he’d tell me in no uncertain terms. I look back now and think: ‘How lucky was I?’”
His father arranged for him to spend his summers in England at Andrew Balding’s yard. When Buick was only 13, Ian Balding (the retired trainer and Andrew and Clare’s father) placed a bet, at 100-1, that the tiny boy from Oslo would become champion jockey. Buick pauses when asked what he thinks Balding Sr saw in him to prompt that wager. “He must have seen talent but, God, I was so small. I was six and a half stone. Maybe less. I was riding racehorses and I struggled. I fell off a lot, got run away with a lot. I couldn’t always handle it but every day, every week, was a stepping stone.”
He did so well that Buick left school when Andrew Balding offered him an apprenticeship. “Ian took me under his wing and it was a very good place for me to be. I suppose for a normal lad at that age, moving away from your friends and everything at home would have been very hard. But I never found it hard. I had to do it. I remember when I moved to England I was 16 but I wanted to do it sooner. I was thinking: ‘I’m running out of time.’ I wanted to run before I could walk.”
Ian Balding collected his winnings last year, donating the £5,000 he made to the Injured Jockeys Fund, when Buick won the first of his two championships. Buick was driven by the fact that in the previous two years he had lost out to Oisin Murphy, by two winners in 2021 and eight in 2020. Murphy admitted to breaking Covid protocol rules in September 2020 and, after also being found guilty of two alcohol breaches, he was banned for 14 months.
York: 1.15 Esquire 1.50 Whiskey Pete 2.25 Pendleton 3.05 Colorada Dancer 3.35 La Yakel 4.10 Punctuation 4.45 Toshizou
Newmarket: 1.25 Per Contra (nb) 2.00 City Of Troy 2.40 Jesse Evans (nap) 3.15 Gasper De Lemos 3.50 Real Gain 4.25 Welcome Dream 5.00 Embrace
Hexham: 1.35 Choose A Copper 2.10 Mumford’s Magic 2.45 Overcourt 3.20 Our Sam 3.55 Without Conviction 4.30 Kickaftersix 5.05 Kandor
Chester: 1.45 Running Star 2.20 Kingswood Flyer 2.55 Individualism 3.30 Revich 4.05 Reel Rosie 4.40 Gentle Ellen 5.15 Granny B 5.45 Wade’s Magic
Chepstow: 1.55 Balboa 2.30 Tea Clipper 3.10 Knappers Hill 3.40 Garincha 4.15 Benassi 4.50 Afadil 5.22 King Of Tara
Chelmsford City: 4.20 Royal Hussar 4.55 Lady Bouquet 5.30 Nouveaux 6.00 Run Boy Run 6.30 Amasar 7.00 Kodi Noir 7.30 Labiqa 8.00 Riot 8.30 Giselles Izzy
Last year, a consumed Buick won with 157 winners, 66 clear of Holly Doyle and Tom Marquand in joint-second place, and his hunger for the title had been sharpened by those past disappointments. “For sure,” he says, “after those two years it became very important and something that had to be done.”
Now, as Champions Day approaches, he is on 133 winners, 30 ahead of Murphy. “This year has been more of a race the whole way through. But you have to have a large volume of rides to become champion jockey. You’re riding pretty much every day throughout the season and you go to meetings with six, seven rides a day. When you have that volume of rides and you’re in the firing line in nearly every race, you have to really focus.”
This season has been unusual as, riding Charlie Appleby’s horses for Godolphin, Buick has not reeled in any Group One victories. Last year he had Group One wins, in the most prestigious races, in six countries. But Appleby does not have any entries in the Group One juvenile races at Newmarket this weekend or in any of the five main races at Ascot next Saturday.
Buick is naturally disappointed but, he says: “Last year I was blessed with so many good horses and I nearly got a bit spoilt. You’ve got a genuine chance in every Group One and that’s not been the case this year. You retire good horses like Modern Games, Native Trail, Adayar and Hurricane Lane in the space of a few weeks and that’s always going to leave a void. So we need to find others to replace them. We have a slightly different bunch as they may be maturing later.”
Is Appleby feeling the pressure now that the dearth of quality winners has been felt so acutely this season? “I’m not comfortable answering that question,” Buick says. “I think you could be asking him that.”
Buick says that his 2018 Derby win on Masar matters more to him than being champion jockey: “Do I think the quality is more important than quantity? Yes. I learned that when I was apprenticed to Andrew and when riding for John Gosden. They always emphasised the quality. Obviously to be champion jockey you need quantity. But last year I had an amazing balance of big wins and a large quantity of winners at smaller meetings. But being champion jockey has given me and my family immense satisfaction.”
Even Buick shakes his head at a recent schedule when he raced in New York on the Saturday, Toronto on the Sunday and Wolverhampton on the Monday. “I was tired,” Buick says. “I’m tired now, but it’s part of the job. Ryan Moore [his fellow jockey] was in Australia on the Saturday and at the Curragh [in Ireland] on Sunday. That’s tough. I think that’s why jockeys are incredible people as we’re all relatively underweight and we have a busy working schedule which means we are all round the country, all round the world. Jockeys are unique in having that adaptability.” As Buick points out, even as champion jockey, “You lose more than you win”.
That philosophical approach has been accentuated for Buick and his wife since becoming parents to their eldest son, Thomas, who has just turned four. Thomas is autistic and usually non-verbal but the way in which they have supported and encouraged their little boy is moving. Jane joins us on the patio and, holding one-year-old Oscar, she agrees that it is important to talk about Thomas and how he is slowly making progress.
Jane explains: “Even though the consultant who diagnosed him has obviously seen hundreds of autistic kids, he said: ‘I’ve never met anyone like Thomas and I don’t know if I ever will.’ Thomas is so unique, so incredible.”
For Buick, “One thing about Thomas is that he is always happy. He’s been that way since day one. But of course being new parents we were quite naive and we didn’t see the early signs, and so we travelled a lot. Everything we did, he did. So we chucked him in the deep end from day one and he’s a pretty resilient boy.”
But now that they understand Thomas much better Jane says: “It’s made us live our lives differently. We are a lot quieter at home, we don’t have people around the house because it suits Thomas not to have a noisy house. It’s made us more aware.”
Thomas says only the occasional word but there are breakthroughs with a speech therapist and Jane is visibly touched when she recalls the day that the silence was broken at a session by her son saying “blue racing car”. “I wasn’t there, as I was working,” Buick says, “but it’s fascinating. The most important thing is that Thomas is a very happy boy and he’s got a brother now and they get along great.”
Thomas is also a little like his dad. “He loves it,” he says of Thomas’s pleasure in sitting on a pony. “He could be impossible to deal with in the house and it’s like, right, we just have to get out and get him on the pony and, boom, he’s fine, 100%. He could stay on it for hours. He’s quite brave and he’s had a few falls and he doesn’t seem to mind.”
Ffos Las: 1.35 Reine Fee, 2.10 Support Act, 2.45 Beau Balko, 3.20 Nemean Lion (nap), 3.55 Coal Fire, 4.30 Lusitanien, 5.05 Call To Duty.
Goodwood: 1.50 Cherry Cola, 2.25 Al Shabab Storm, 3.00 Hierarchy (nb), 3.35 Amancio, 4.10 Black Run, 4.45 Kathab, 5.20 Dream Of Mischief.
Buick’s own passion runs as deeply as it did when he was that boy riding towards the racehorses in the freezing dark of Norway. “Why would you not work your arse off at what I’ve got?” he says when we are alone again and Buick considers the possibility of riding for another 15 years. “It’s something I love and it’s such a privileged position.
“When I grew up, this is all I ever wanted and I couldn’t believe I was going to end up here. I’m sat here talking to you like it was always going to happen. But, no, when you’re a kid you can only dream and hope. Now I am here and I’m champion jockey, with my family, it feels very important to live in the present and make the most of every moment.”
