Royal Ascot 2022: Moore and Buick lead open field in jockeys’ title race

Oisin Murphy, who was the top jockey at Royal Ascot for the first time last season, will be on the other side of the running rail when the most prestigious Flat meeting of the season opens on Tuesday, but even in his absence the race to claim to the prize for the leading rider looks unusually open this year.

The last Royal meeting with a full crowd in attendance, in 2019, had six races each day but the post-Covid schedule is up to seven, and 35 races in all over the five days, so this year’s top jockey is likely to need at least the five winners that Murphy partnered in 2021 to claim the prize.

Aidan O’Brien’s No 1 was the Royal meeting’s leading rider eight times in nine seasons from 2010, most memorably when setting a precord since the second world war of nine winners in 2015. As ever, O’Brien will supply the bulk of his fancied rides, including the up-and-coming young stayer Kyprios in Thursday’s Gold Cup, while a strong team of juveniles is headed by unbeaten Blackbeard, in the Coventry Stakes on Tuesday, and Alfred Munnings, the hot favourite for the Chesham on the final afternoon. This year, though, the resurgent Sir Michael Stoute yard will also provide some useful back-up, most notably as Bay Bridge, hugely impressive in last month’s Brigadier Gerard, sets off at around 5-4 to beat Japanese star Shahryar in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes (Wednesday).

The clear leader in the race for the 2022 Flat jockeys’ championship has never won the prize at Royal Ascot and he will probably need to beat his previous best total of four wins, in 2017, to break his duck this year. He can look forward to his best ever book on paper, however, with two real bankers in Coroebus, the 2,000 Guineas winner, at odds-on for Tuesday’s St