Godolphin’s next star jockey is already here

Billy Loughnane is Godolphin's smartest piece of succession planning in years.

But William Buick isn't going anywhere.

Godolphin officially welcomed Loughnane into the fold this week as a retained rider for 2027.

The 20-year-old will ride in the royal blue colors of Sheikh Mohammed's global operation alongside Buick, not as an outright No. 1.

Two retained riders for Godolphin is nothing new.

The move has been in the works for months.

Loughnane has been playing an increasingly important role in Charlie Appleby's wing of the Godolphin empire since just after he first lost his 7lb claim.

He became a regular feature on the main work mornings at Moulton Paddocks after making his Group 1 breakthrough aboard Rebel's Romance in September 2025.

On the track, George Boughey has been a relatively flexible boss.

There have probably only been a few occasions when Loughnane has not been available to Appleby of an afternoon.

Loughnane is Britain's new champion jockey at 20 years old.

He has been swatting away comparisons with Frankie Dettori almost since his earliest days as an apprentice.

Dettori was Godolphin's first and most successful No. 1 rider, and a crossover talent with the charisma to build a public profile beyond racing.

Loughnane is engaging and articulate, with the same showman's instincts and ability to engage with the crowd.

He takes as much obvious pleasure from a big-race winner as the fans cheering him back to the winner's enclosure.

For a racing operation conceived as a soft-power advertisement for Dubai, it is a combination of prodigious talent in the saddle and easy likeability out of it that fits the brand ideally.

But he is not the next Dettori.

He is the first Billy Loughnane.

The racing, sporting and media landscapes have changed completely since Dettori achieved first-name status with the wider sporting public.

Dettori not only rode all seven winners on the card at Ascot early in his career.

He was also a familiar face for around 8 million BBC viewers each week as a team captain on A Question Of Sport.

At the time, he had never won the Derby, which was a running joke on the show.

It was a priceless — and free — weekly advertisement for Dettori, racing and the Derby on the national broadcaster.

In the fragmented world of social media and YouTube, such platforms no longer exist.

But there is still potential for Loughnane to be the first racing star of the TikTok era.

His new contract with Godolphin should soon enough see him competing for the biggest rides in the world.

Godolphin's Book 1 spending spree last month is another signal of the operation's ambitions.

The rivalry with Coolmore and emerging powers could lead to a return to cherry-picking the best horses from associates.

It has been quite the week for Godolphin.

The operation said goodbye to Sovereignty on the track.