Changing circumstances for the first two riders in last year’s title race will make for an especially fascinating Flat season One week after it formally began, the new Flat season still appears to be in the “phoney war” stage, with only a handful of cards having taken place on turf. That is also true of the battle to be this year’s champion jockey, which, partly thanks to the changing circumstances of the leading contenders, should be one of the most interesting and least predictable for many years. It is barely a month since Paul Hanagan, a narrow winner of the title race in the past two years, announced he was to move to Newmarket to become the first jockey for Hamdan al Maktoum, a decision he described as “the toughest in my life”. Although his former employer, Richard Fahey, is an upwardly-mobile trainer, whose team are improving in quality each year, the new contract ensures that Hanagan will have chances to shine in Classics and Group Ones, races that would not otherwise have been on his agenda.

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Full field of jockeys plan to separate Paul Hanagan from his crown