Moore makes big races the priority above title chase

Champion jockey seeks further success at the highest level on board Conduit, left, in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park on Saturday.
In many ways, Britain's two champion jockeys are uncannily alike - not just supremely gifted but so driven and single-minded they tend to look miserable even when inwardly content. Impossible, though, to imagine Tony McCoy uttering the phrases that tumbled from Ryan Moore's mouth this week.
Moore dismissed his three Royal Ascot winners as “not big races”, described the type of challenges so key to McCoy's mentality as “only numbers” and indicated that he was not unhappy to be starting a suspension today. “It's good to have a break,” he said.
It was a rare unburdening by a man as famous for buttoning up his feelings as for being the most prolific and coveted rider of his generation. And it might hint at a change in his personality and approach.
Moore was talking at Brighton, on the track where he grew up, cutting his teeth with morning gallops on horses from his father's yard across the road. He still feels at ease here, no matter that home is now Suffolk, with a partner and child to care for. This, like the demands of being champion, came early to Moore.

His son, Toby, will be a year old this month and Moore reflected: “It's not so much changed my outlook on the job as my outlook on life, if that makes any sense. Your priorities change.
“People say 200 winners should be my target this year but you have to be sensible - it's only numbers. You can't ride at two meetings every day and stay sharp. Overdo it and it wears you down. I'm trying hard not to do too many meetings.”
McCoy starts each year obsessed by remaining champion and pledges to retire when he loses the title. Moore admires him for it but begs to differ. “It's amazing what he does but his is an entirely different job to mine. The jumps boys ride all year round in England and have nowhere else to go. We're always off overseas.
“I love being champion but it's not my first priority. For me, it's all about the bigger races, the group ones.” Races such as the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, which he won on the recalcitrant Spanish Moon last Sunday, and the Coral-Eclipse, which he hopes to win on Conduit on Saturday.
Spanish Moon has misbehaved at the stalls often enough to find himself banned in Britain and briefly threatened to repeat his obstinacy in France. “I thought it was going to be a very bad day,” Moore recalled.
He expects no such difficulties with Conduit, who heads the older generation's challenge against the stellar three-year-olds, Sea The Stars and Rip Van Winkle, at Sandown. “You can't be sure about them yet,” he said. “I thought Sea The Stars looked good in the Guineas and the Derby was a great performance, but this will tell us where he stands.
“The Eclipse has been a strong race the last few years and this one is no different. My horse is very solid and I'm sure he'll run well. He got beaten a nose in the Brigadier Gerard but that was his first run of the year, he had a 7lb penalty and he wasn't tuned up at all. I rode work on him last Saturday and he's come on a lot. He won the Breeders' Cup [Turf] on quick ground, so he'll love the conditions.”
More sensitively, he also won a St Leger under Frankie Dettori, Moore having chosen to partner the other Sir Michael Stoute runner, Doctor Fremantle. It was a missed chance to clear a monkey off his back with that elusive first classic, an omission of which he attempts to make light.
“I know you guys write about it a lot but I've never felt I should have won one, other than choosing wrong in the Leger. It's just one of those things, they're not easy to win and there are plenty of other jockeys who won't have won a classic at 25.”
This touch of huffiness extended to a rebuttal of the belief that he snubbed a press conference after winning the Coronation Cup at Epsom. “I did the presentation then got called into the stewards' room - the criticism was unfair,” he said, with an expression that suggested he feels the world remains united against him.
Mellower he may be but the prickliness remains in Ryan Moore as he craves the constant palliative of his next big winner. It may not be a long wait.
Source:The times