Richard Hughes
Richard Hughes watched as No Half Measures broke well on the far side and settled into her racing rhythm.
The far side was not ideal. Stall 15. Look at the other races at Newmarket all day, all week. They were all coming up the stands side. No chance from out there, Richard Hughes had said.
He was out playing golf with Mick Fitzgerald the week before.
RH: “Who am I going to get to ride this filly in the July Cup?
Fitzy: “Why not Callan?”
RH: “Yeah, he’ll do.”
Neil Callan had a plan too. I’m not going to be coming across, he had told the trainer. I'm not going to be messing, trying to get over towards the near side, dropping behind the leaders on the stands rail, breaking her rhythm. I’m just going to be going straight. It’s the shortest route. If we’re drawn on the wrong side, we’re drawn on the wrong side.
Richard Hughes had nodded. He doesn't ride them any more.
Then Inisherin was withdrawn before the start. The horse who the trainer thought might have taken them along over on the far side. That left stall 12 empty and three horses out on a limb on the far side, No Half Measures furthest out on that limb, stall 15 of 14 runners.
Neil Callan wasn’t joking. Arrow-like down the far side, closest of all to the far rail, but in a lovely racing rhythm and getting a nice lead from Spy Chief over there.
As Richard Hughes watched, he could tell that the near-side group had the overall lead, no question. Night Raider scorched the stands rail, fully three lengths, maybe three and a half lengths clear of Spy Chief as they raced to the two-furlong marker. Hughes watched as Neil Callan moved his filly slightly to her left, out of Spy Catcher’s slipstream and into the clear. She quickly navigated her way around the Godolphin horse and prepared for full flow.
Callan got lower in the saddle. Down the hill into the dip, and No Half Measures picked up well. It was difficult to tell in what position she was in the race from the stands. It was difficult to line them up. Hughes’ filly on the far side, in clear sailing but racing on her own. A gathering of horses on the near side, led by Night Raider, then by Notable Speech, then by Big Mojo. But it looked like No Half Measures was up with them at worst, maybe a neck in front of them at best.
And then up the hill.
“They say that Newmarket’s July Course is a fast track,” says Hughes. “But that final hill, there’s some pull up that final hill. You really have to be strong if you are going to see it out.”
The finish to the race lasted for ages. No Half Measures moved a little to her right and Big Mojo moved a little to his left so that they could go toe-to-toe. She was definitely in front as they raced deep inside the final furlong. Definitely a head up, maybe a neck up. She’s going to be placed anyway. She’s going to run a fantastic race.
You’re just waiting for the closers, you’re waiting for her to be swamped by the finishers on the far side or the finishers on the near side, but they’re not there yet. She’s holding Big Mojo and they’re going to the line together. The other horse is closing on the near side, but she’s stretching her neck out and the line is coming. Stride, stride, bing.
That feeling? Unreal, phenomenal. Unbelievable. A Group 1 win, a first Group 1 win. A July Cup. Really. You’ve just won the July Cup. Richard’s niece Alexandra, his sister Sandra’s daughter, watched the race with him, and she turned to him after the horses had crossed the winning line:
“Why are you shaking?!”
Riding Group 1 winners? Easy peasy. Well, not easy peasy, but it happened, they flowed. The Group 1 winners came along, you rode them through the winning line, you celebrated and you moved on. Coincidentally, Richard Hughes’ first Group 1 win in Britain as a rider was also in the July Cup, the 2003 renewal which he won on Oasis Dream, rode him clear of Choisir and Airwave. But he had ridden plenty of Group 1 winners before that. Posidonas and Bahamian Knight and Mistle Cat in Italy, Invermark and Observatory and Zenda and Nebraska Tornado in France. He won 42 Group 1 races in his career as a jockey, 41 more than he has won as a trainer. Lots of time to bridge that gap now though.
Can you compare the two?
“This is 10 times better,” he says.
No hesitation.
“As a jockey, you are privileged to be getting on good horses. And when you do, you have a job to do. You try to do it as well as you can do it. When you win, it’s great, but you move on to the next one. Same as when you lose. As a trainer though, you live it and you breathe it. You’re living with them, you’re all-in, every day, 24-7. You live with all the issues and all the heartache, you know how difficult it is to find a good one. So, when you do find a good one, when it does happen, it goes deep.”
It took a little while for it all to reach those depths. You drop a stone into a deep clear pond, you can watch it as it makes its way down, but it takes a little while for it to settle at the bottom. It takes a while for it to sink in.
He stood in the stands for a little while, incredulous. What just happened? The back-slaps and the bear-hugs. Delighted for himself, his team at home, delighted for the filly’s owner Richard Gallagher. He made his way down off the stands, more back-slaps and well-dones, and into the winner’s enclosure at Newmarket’s July Course, as the enormity of the achievement started to wash over him. All the calls, all the messages. Over 300 WhatsApps.
“All the support was incredible,” he says. “Lads like me, they know how hard it is to get a good horse, to have a chance in a Group 1 race. Aidan O’Brien grabbed me at Ascot to say well done. He said that people have no idea how difficult it is.”
No Half Measures provided Richard Hughes with his first Group race win as a trainer when she won the Group 3 Dubai International Airport World Trophy at Newbury last September, and now, almost 10 months later, she has provided him with his first Group 1 win.
“I didn’t take it for granted,” he says thoughtfully. “I’m not taking it for granted. We always thought that we were doing the right thing, we just needed it to happen. In one sense, we thought that it might never happen. It’s so difficult. But now that it has, it’s huge. A Group 1-winning trainer. That’s massive.”
***
As a youngster, all Richard Hughes wanted to do was ride horses. You can’t grow up around horses, a son of Dessie Hughes, and not have horses running around your DNA.
“I know that I was very lucky,” he says. “There are not many people who go to school saying that they want to be a jockey, and then actually become a jockey.”
Champion pony racing rider twice, he rode his first winner on the track in August 1988, and he burned through his claim. Things started to get a little quiet for him in Ireland though once his claim was gone.
“I remember being at the Derby meeting, shortly after losing my claim,” he says, “and I had no ride. I had hit a bit of a standstill. I figured that there were more opportunities in Britain, more horses, more racing, and I thought that, if I worked hard in Britain, I could make a go of it. So I began riding for Mick Channon and for Richard Hannon, and that was the start of it.”
The big-race rides and the big-race wins followed, and he was crowned champion for the first time in 2012.
“I really wanted to be champion,” he says. “I thought that if I was champion jockey, it would help my career. But then, when I won it the first time, I wanted to win it again. And again.”
And he did. He was champion again in 2013, and once again in 2014.
The Juddmonte job followed and the high-profile horses, Oasis Dream and Nebraska Tornado and American Post and Passage Of Time. Then the big Richard Hannon horses, Canford Cliffs and Paco Boy and Indian Ink and Dick Turpin. It took him a little while to land his first British Classic, Sky Lantern in the 1000 Guineas in 2013, but he landed his second less than four weeks after that when he drove Talent to victory in The Oaks. And he bagged a Grade 1 win in America when he won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita in 2013 on Chriselliam.
“I got great satisfaction out of that one,” he says slowly. “I had been beaten in the same race the previous year on Sky Lantern, when I rode her in behind and she got no run. I gave Chriselliam a very similar ride, in behind and delivered late, and she won easily. I’m glad that I had the confidence to give her the same ride, I knew that it was the right ride to give her and, I’m sure if I had been beaten again, I would have got a lot of stick. So it was great that it worked out.”
Weight was always a thing, as it is for most flat jockeys. You don’t squeeze a 5ft 10in frame into less than nine stone without stretching the rules of nature. But he had it well under control so that, even on his last day as a jockey, on the final day of the Glorious Goodwood 2015, he was able to ride at 8st 12lb in the 12-furlong handicap.
“I gave up the drink 20 years ago,” he says, “and my weight stabilised more. They were different times. Times change. In Dad and Tommy Carberry’s day, it was on a different level. We weren’t as bad as they were, and now, it’s on a different level again, you just can’t do that any more. I suppose the fun has gone out of it in lots of ways, even if it is for the best. These are different times.”
He is certain that his choice of lifestyle held him back for a few years.
“My drinking cost me,” he says. “No question. But I was talented, and I was able to get away with it to an extent. Ryan Moore was in Richard Hannon’s at the time, he was only a young fellow, but I was drinking, and I knew deep down that I wasn’t riding as well as he was. Then I gave it up, and everything changed. I was sharper, stronger, more astute, more aware. I was just a better all-round rider.”
He could have gone on riding for longer than he did but, in the end, he didn’t want to leave it too long before embarking on his training career. During his years in India, Dr Ramaswamy would bring some of his good horses from Bangalore to Mumbai, and he would look after them. That gave him a flavour for it and, of course, the fact that he is Dessie Hughes’ son.
“I could have ridden for another eight years or so. And I would have. I loved being a jockey. But I needed to start training if I was going to give it a real go. I think that’s why ex-jump jockeys are more successful as trainers than ex-Flat jockeys. National Hunt jockeys generally stop riding at an earlier age. Flat jockeys can go on riding until they’re into their mid or late 50s, and that is very late to be starting on a new career.”
He gave up one career in order that he could embark on another.
“As well as that, Dad died in November 2014. That was a big factor. He was such a big part of it. You’d ride a winner and you’d ring him for approval. I miss him terribly.”
***
Last season, Richard Hughes had 64 winners in Britain, more winners than he had ever trained in a year before, and this season promises to be even better. It’s not just about the quantity either. The quality runs deep too. He has assembled the best team of horses that he has ever had since he took out his licence to train horses in 2015.
Circus Of Rome has won three times so far this season, as has Nago’s Dream, as has Rare Change. Fair Angellica won the Listed Cathedral Stakes at Salisbury in May, and wasn’t beaten far in the Group 3 Hackwood Stakes at Newbury in July.
America Queen won her maiden at Haydock on her racecourse debut by 12 lengths, and she confirmed her class when she finished second in the Group 2 Lowther Stakes at York two weeks ago, just a length behind Royal Fixation, who had run the Prix Morny winner Venetian Sun to a neck in the Duchess of Cambridge Stakes. It’s rock solid Group race form.
Sayidah Dariyan won the Group 3 Summer Stakes at York in July, and was beaten just four lengths in the Nunthorpe Stakes, when she had excuses. Rose Of Ghaiyyath won the valuable Arqana Series des Pouliches at Deauville in August on her racecourse debut. Star Of Mehmas, winner of the Listed Rosebery Stakes at Ayr at the end of last season, won the big fillies’ sprint handicap at York’s Ebor meeting, just getting up close home under Ryan Moore to win by a short head.
The last-named quartet are all owned by Jaber Abdullah.
“Jaber has been a brilliant supporter of mine since the start,” says Richard. “We go back a long way, back to Youmzain and Music Show when I was riding. He’d always send me two or three when I started training, and if one was no good, he’d send me another. Now I have 20 horses for Jaber. He has always had huge belief in me. We have a lot to look forward to for the rest of the season.”
Jaber Abdullah is not alone there, as Richard Hughes, trainer, continues his upward surge. Today he runs Sayidah Dariyan and No Half Measures in the Group 1 Betfair Sprint Cup at Haydock. The rest of the season starts here.
© The Irish Field, 6th September 2025
Back