Ryan Moore is regarded by many as the best jockey in the world and broke a modern day record last week at the world’s most prestigious meeting, Royal Ascot, when riding nine winners over the five days.

The legendary Fred Archer holds the all time Ascot record, riding 12 winners 137 years ago in 1878. However, Moore’s victory on the Aiden O’Brien-trained 5-2 favourite Aloft in Friday’s Listed Queen’s Vase over two miles, saw him surpass the modern-day record of eight winners in a single Royal Ascot meeting, achieved by Pat Eddery in 1989 and by Lester Piggott in both 1965 and 1975.

There were 30 races over the five days of the Royal meeting last week, which ran from Tuesday through to Saturday, and Moore rode in 29 of them. He recorded nine wins, four seconds, one third, four fourths, two fifths and two sixth places, meaning he failed to earn connections a cheque on only seven occasions.

He had one Gr 1 win, on the brilliant Aden O’Brien-trained Galileo colt Gleneagles in the St James Palace Stakes, which was the fourth race on day one and his first winner of the meeting.

He also had three Gr 2 wins and two Listed wins.

Moore rode 12 favourites and won on four of them. However, his return on the Tote for a R1 stake on every ride would have been seen a profit of R30.70.

It looked unlikely Moore was going to break the record on Friday as he came into the home turn well back on Aloft in the Queen’s Vase. However, the Galileo colt finished strongly to win by half-a-length.

Moore said: “It was a very messy race. I got into a bad position and I had to pick my way through.

“He’s a fair horse this fellow. He’s open to all sorts of improvement, it’s his first run of the year and you wouldn’t know where he could end up.

“I’m very lucky, I get to ride the best horses and that makes a big difference.”

The question was now whether he could challenge Archer’s record on the final day as he had some good rides, including three favourites.

However, the three-times champion jockey had added after the Queen’s Vase victory, “The record is not something you think about, we’ll think about rides tomorrow then worry about this.”

As it happened he scored a blank on the final day.

Aiden O’Brien said after Moore had equalled the record on Thursday when winning the Britannia Stakes on 10/1 shot War Envoy, “Ryan was superb he’s a marvellous jockey, the greatest I’ve ever seen.” That is quite a compliment from one of the most successful trainers in the history of the Sport Of Kings.

By David Thiselton

Picture: Ryan Moore at Royal Ascot last week (Press Association)