Meet the teenage star jockey in 'my dream job since I was a baby'

Billy Loughnane on staying grounded amid rapid rise at 19 and why he is happy to ride seven days a week

- Greg Wood

"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.

He was being talked about as a future champion well before he started to discuss the idea himself. He has also, quite clearly, been enjoying every moment of the ride and every fresh career milestone that has appeared in his rearview mirror at a remarkably early stage of his career.

Horses have always just run for Loughnane, as they did for Ryan Moore, Frankie Dettori and, way back in the 1950s, for a teenaged Lester Piggott who, like Loughnane, grew up in a racing yard and started out riding for his father.

"There's pictures of me a couple of days after I was born, perched up on a horse," Loughnane says. "I grew up around racehorses and it's been my dream job since I was a baby, as soon as I could imagine.