IT’S often said that title talk can only ever really begin for the Irish Flat Jockeys’ Championship once the Galway Festival is in the rearview mirror, and a fascinating scene has been set for that battle in the aftermath of Ballybrit’s week-long bonanza.

Once Dylan Browne McMonagle had got his hands on the crown for the first time last year, many felt it would take a gargantuan effort to wrestle it from him again. Especially with Colin Keane being required for a considerable number of days overseas in his first full season as Juddmonte’s number one.

A fortnight on from Galway, however, neither of those champion jockeys are leading the field to land the 2026 title. Instead, it is a man who was three winners off the summit when missing two key months of action through injury last summer. He has returned with a vengeance and could prove a difficult opponent to rein in.

It feels as though Billy Lee has been riding multiples at a bundle of recent fixtures in Ireland and the Galway Festival’s leading jockey has put himself in pole position for a tilt at his first title.

Following another double at Gowran Park this week (and ahead of Friday’s action at Cork), Lee finds himself four winners in front of Colin Keane and 10 in front of Dylan Browne McMonagle - the trio are on 63, 59 and 53 winners respectively.

In the 2024 campaign, when Lee partnered a career-high 95 winners, he had ridden 56 winners by this point of the year, so - while already on 63 - he is giving himself every chance of pushing for a new highmark.

A total of seven winners at Galway (including a couple from right out of the top drawer) have been a serious catalyst for the Co Limerick native, who turned 40 on the eve of Ballybrit.

Numbers adding up

Lee followed that up with a double at Sligo, and had previously registered a hat-trick on Irish Oaks weekend at the Curragh. There were also braces for him in July at Killarney and Naas.

A total of 16 winners during that month represented Lee’s highest domestic return for any July in his career. Likewise, he is on seven winners for August at the halfway point of the month.

The most he has ever ridden in an August window is 12 winners, so he could yet best that too.

Another advantage for Lee in the early section of the season was an injury to Browne McMonagle that meant the reigning champion didn’t ride a winner in Ireland until May 3rd this year. However, Browne McMonagle has had the backing of a Joseph O’Brien yard in its hottest-ever form this summer.

That helped the 23-year-old ride no fewer than 24 winners in Ireland alone last month, though there has been another theme emerging with his main supplier this summer that could have implications for his own championship charge.

We are only into the middle of August and O’Brien has been by far at his busiest in Britain than in any other season. Having only had one, two or three flat winners in each year in Britain from 2021 to 2024 (and five winners from 50 British runners last year), O’Brien has already sent out an impressive 12 winners from 63 runners in the neighbouring jurisdiction (19% strike rate).

That level of success in another nation has been a big factor in Browne McMonagle missing Irish racedays to take 43 rides in Britain already this year. For context, he’d taken 28 and 29 rides there in the entire previous two years.

When O’Brien is making hay in high-profile British settings like Royal Ascot and Goodwood, it’s hard to see why his visits there will be quietening down any time soon - and why he wouldn’t want his elite-level stable jockey with him on those ventures overseas. Browne McMonagle won’t be going down without a fight, though.

Not lying down

We saw 12 months ago that Keane will be firmly in the shake-up at the back-end too; even with his established international commitments. The six-time champion jockey pushed Browne McMonagle all the way last season (seven winners the final margin between them) and we should expect the very same again in the closing stages of 2026.

Bookmakers have priced Browne McMonagle as the clear favourite to make it back-to-back championships at 8/11. Lee is next in the market at 5/4 and Keane probably isn’t getting enough respect at his current odds of 5/1.

When looking at the end-of-season standings, Lee has been a mainstay in the top half-dozen flat riders in Ireland for every year of the last decade. Nobody has supplied him with more winners in his career than Willie McCreery and Paddy Twomey, and both men are really coming into fine form at present.

Having finished second to Colin Keane in 2022, 2023 and 2024, few would begrudge the five-time Group 1-winning jockey, who notched his 1,000th Irish winner last September, a breakthrough championship.

Lee must keep two world-class riders at bay if he is to achieve it. Nothing worth having comes easy.

IT was a massive blow to the flat season when a mid-week setback meant Bow Echo will not be seen in action again, and therefore unable to build on what had been a momentous three-year-old campaign to this point.

Being by the all-conquering Night Of Thunder, a highly-exciting career at stud lies in store for the Sheikh Mohammed Obaid home bred. Even with a 2000 Guineas, St James’s Palace Stakes and Sussex Stakes under his belt this season, he departs the racetrack with a slight sense of what might have been this autumn.

It also served as a reminder as to just how special an achievement it was for the entire John Oxx team to pull off the unbeaten and historic three-year-old season they did with the spectacular Sea The Stars in 2009.

To rattle off six Group 1 wins in six consecutive months, at six different tracks, over four individual distances, in three countries… It was the type of campaigning that requires expert handling and a racehorse of the highest possible calibre in terms of constitution and talent. We may never see the like of it again.

This year also marks Sea The Stars’ 20th birthday and it is hard to believe how fast time has flown by in the years since that golden season.

While Bow Echo will be remembered as the brilliant horse he was, his absence through the final chapters of the season only serves as a reminder as to how incredible the 2009 champion’s achievements were. True greatness from start to finish.