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Seans Sunday
Get plane to Ireland
Get silks on
Ride the best of Ireland jockeys into the weeds
Get cheque and head home
The best …. It’s that simple
He was probably the difference between the winner and Waterford Whispers there. Walsh was travelling all over them and then made a meal of things from the second last onwards.
Proved again he can do it in their backyard, although somewhat ironic he got beaten by a horse called Bowensonfire. I expect to see him get some spares from those Irish trainers in March.
He has now ridden over 100 winners for Olly Murphy alone this season:
While I have no doubt of his ability, isn’t there a danger he could become a Champion Jockey in the Brian Hughes style? He gets the quantity, even more than Hughes did. But the quality isn’t really there. He still hasn’t ridden a winner at the Cheltenham Festival.
I believe Bowen to be a better jockey than Hughes but his lack of chances on the big stage is disappointing. And unless Murphy starts to get some better horses, it is difficult to see where the chances will come from.
Agree CAS. He wasn’t even in demand for better rides. I mean Haiti Couleurs is just a solid stayer with no real chance in a proper G1 and apart from him what else of Championship material did he get to ride?
Murphy is a very good trainer, but he has no real Cheltenham material. He doesn’t have the “expensive ones” with potential like Elliott, Mullins or Hendo have them and as CAS pointed out there seems no source to provide him exactly with that kind of material.Oh, and his ride on Haiti Couleurs in the Gold Cup was one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. He went a scorching gallop from the front and the horse was beaten a long way from one. He had no explanation for that and was quoted “jockey could provide no explanation for the poor form shown”. Of course not if you try to break the track record in the Gold Cup.
He is a quantity over quality rider much like AP was only without the JP retainer. Without doubt he will be multiple times Champion Jockey and ride a bucket load of winners like AP did (wouldn’t surprise me if he challenges AP’s total winners tally when all is said and done) but I am not sure he will be riding loads of quality G1 type winners.
I doubt you can really do both in the current climate, you either have to prioritise the daily grind of a Jockey’s Title challenge (travelling here, there and everywhere for winnners) or instead go down the quality route which is much more difficult now given that pretty much every trainer (and most top owners) have a retained jockey already, so it is much harder to consistently get on the favoured horses in the big races.
According to the RP Statistics page, Bowen has had 937 total rides in this current NH season which to the surprise of absolutely nobody is far and away the most rides by a NH jockey, to put it into stark perspective, only Brian Hughes (562) and Sam Twiston-Davies (544) have managed more then 500 total rides (although James Bowen is currently on 497).
Sean’s 937 rides is already 35 more than his total rides from last season so I don’t see him changing his mindset anytime soon – he will likely need to hope that his main source of winners (Olly Murphy) starts unearthing some higher class horses that can compete in the G1s that he can ride or alternatively get a big retainer…..but then the latter may affect his ability to keep being Champion Jockey.
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