IT’S 28 years to the day that a 23-year-old Joe Fanning rode his first big Saturday winner in Britain on Highflying in the 1993 Northumberland Plate.

The Co Wicklow native is slightly bemused when that piece of information is put to him, much the way anyone would be, when remembering something so significant from earlier days. Time flies when you’re riding winners, and Fanning has thousands.

The Northumberland Plate was a £100,000 handicap then, a significantly higher worth compared to today’s renewal when you factor in inflation. The Queen also attended the races at Newcastle that day, perhaps a more stark difference when you compare those times to now.

Highflying was part owned by Barry Batey, who sat on the board of Sunderland football club, and hence Fanning sported the red and white colours of the Black Cats, fierce rivals to local club Newcastle United. Indeed, a chain of boos could be heard as he passed the line six lengths clear on Highflying.

Undoubtedly, that mattered little to him, and to ice the cake, he rode another winner to complete a 135/1 double on what was a big day for him.

“He won easy alright,” Fanning recalls of Highflying. “He was my first big handicap winner. I rode him for George Moore. He was based Middleham and he was more of a jumps trainer but Highflying was a quality handicapper. It was my first big win after losing my claim and yeah I’d say it was a very important one.”

Nearly three decades later, racing has changed in many ways but the old British racing adage of the importance of a big Saturday winner, getting your name in the paper and face on television, has stayed true. Fanning has hardly looked back since.

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In another 28 years, Joe Fanning will still cherish the memory of winning the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot on Subjectivist.

When you think of Fanning, you think big numbers of rides and winners. He is second to only Frankie Dettori in terms of the active jockeys with the most wins and ninth in the all-time table. But now he is a three-time Group 1-winning jockey, two of those wins coming on Subjectivist in the last nine months, and arguably no other rider deserves it more.

It was a Saturday meeting at Goodwood at the end of August last season when something clicked with the son of Teofilo. Upped to a mile and six furlongs in the Group 3 March Stakes, he made the running for Fanning, continued to up the tempo throughout the race and then just went further and further clear in the straight. In the end, it was simply a procession, with all of 15 lengths back to the runner-up.

“I just think he has improved no end from that run,” Fanning says. “He just used to race quite keenly but he’s settled down now and has become a very straightforward horse to ride. He just wants to go that one gallop. You don’t complicate things with him.

“If there’s plenty of pace on, he can take a lead and if not, you can let him bowl along, whatever he’s comfortable with. Mark (Johnston) is good like that, he never ties you down to orders, he’s happy whatever you do and that’s a big help as well.”

Just 13 days after his Goodwood romp, Subjectivist took his chance in the St Leger but perhaps found that quick turnaround too much of a burden. But, freshened up, he went on to take the Group 1 Prix Royal-Oak at ParisLongchamp before going on to take the Dubai Gold Cup by a comfortable five lengths in March.

Those two victories marked him down as a stayer of serious potential but heading into the Gold Cup, naturally in many respects, all the talk was centred around the record equalling bid of Stradivarius. Frankie, at Ascot, in the Gold Cup, equals box office.

However, Fanning went into the race with confidence and rode the 13/2 shot accordingly.

“Before Dubai, we gave him three gallops with good staying horses over a mile and a quarter at home and he just absolutely killed them on the bridle,” he explains. “Coming up to Ascot, he had his rest after Dubai and Mark and Charlie (Johnston) had him in a very similar preparation in that he did the same three pieces of work.

“His weight was the same as when he was going to Dubai and his homework was similar if not better so I was actually expecting a very big run. Of course we were all fearing Stradivarius but I thought I’d give him a race.

“To be honest, in the race itself, I never knew where Stradivarius was, I never had a look around or anything but I was always going very comfortable, I was always happy. When I turned in, he was giving me the same feeling as he did in Dubai, where he was travelling so well and I was able to fill him up before the straight.

“There were plenty of good horses in behind me but I always thought it would take a very good one to get by me when I did ask him at the two-furlong pole.”

Subjectivist won by five and a half lengths in the end and though the crowd bayed to witness an historic Stradivarius win, in contrast, this success was greeted by mass acclaim from Fanning’s weigh room colleagues, who went out in numbers to applaud him into the winners’ enclosure.

That, Fanning says, was great, and for the many others just looking on, it was the moment of this year’s Royal Ascot meeting.

Opportunity

It was a long way on from when he first stepped foot in Britain as a tender 18-year-old, hungry for an opportunity. Fanning’s father, also Joe, trained a few point-to-pointers from the family home in Roundwood, Co Wicklow and it didn’t take long for the racing gene to pass on. It started with ponies, then to showjumping, then riding out racehorses and then to the RACE Academy.

He graduated from the latter in 1986 when he was in the same class as Johnny Murtagh. But, as Murtagh went about setting up a highly successful career based in Ireland, Fanning felt it necessary to go to Britain straight away, taking a well-trodden path earlier than most.

“I think I just felt right away that there would be more opportunities in Britain,” Fanning recalls. “I was only 18 when I left but it wasn’t a hard move, I don’t think it was anyway. I always found Yorkshire a bit like Ireland. I live in Middleham and it’s a nice little village.

“When I first moved over I joined Tommy Fairhurst. He was a jumps trainer and he had about 14 horses. Mark had just moved to the village as well and was setting up. As it happened, I came over in September, when the flat season was ending. Tommy had jumpers so he just put me on a few of them. I rode a winner but I ended up taking a bad fall at Newcastle. I broke two vertebrae in my neck.

He has great owners who have been there for years and it’s just a great yard to ride for.”

“In hindsight, I was too light to be a jumps jockey but I had to learn it the hard way. I stayed apprenticed to Tommy and started to get a few rides for Mark as well. I think we just built the relationship up gradually from there.”

On Mark Johnston’s website, the first graphic you see reads: ‘Over 100 winners for 27 consecutive seasons’. The Scottish trainer has been an immensely successful story and broke the record for the highest number of winners trained in Britain in 2019.

Joe Fanning debriefs with long-term employer Mark Johnston and his wife Deirdre after a Group 2 win at the Curragh \ Healy Racing

Fanning has been with Johnston for 26 of those 27 years, having joined the yard full-time in 1995. It has been one of the longest serving relationships in British flat racing.

Indeed, Johnston’s appraisal of Fanning after the Gold Cup last Thursday was most insightful when he said: “Everybody talks about Steve Cauthen as a great front-running jockey, and I always put Jason Weaver up in the same sort of league, although he wasn’t around for so long, but I don’t think there’s anybody better than Joe Fanning.

“He is absolutely perfect at setting the pace. People kept saying is he going to lead today, is he not going to lead today? However many thousands of runners Joe’s had for us, we never tell him where he’s got to be in the field, and it was just a perfect pace all the way around.”

Any jockey desires to have that level of a trainer’s confidence in their riding, to be the master of their own destiny in a race. It’s simply not something that just happens overnight.

“I haven’t ridden out for any other trainer in the 20-odd years,” Fanning says. “Loyalty has always been the thing. I always give Mark first shout on me and I respect the loyalty he has shown me. It works both ways.

Fanning gained his elusive first Group 1 win on The Last Lion in the Middle Park Stakes in 2016 \ Healy Racing

“I don’t know what it is, it just seems to work (their relationship). The yard is very well run and the standards are always kept high. He’s never really given me any orders when I’m riding, he just lets me get on. He likes horses to run in a don’t push/don’t pull sort of way. He has great owners who have been there for years and it’s just a great yard to ride for.”

Incredible

The relationship has been one factor in a fabulous career for Fanning, whose numbers are incredible. He has ridden 2655 winners and counting in Britain alone. Last year’s truncated turf season brought to an end an incredible run on two counts – he had ridden over 100 winners every year since 2009 (85 last year) and ridden for over £1 million in prize money every year since 2012 (just over £900k last year).

Fanning has nine Royal Ascot winners, two All-Weather Jockeys Championship titles, two classic wins – both in the German 1000 Guineas – and has ridden winners in seven different jurisdictions. He scored a belated first Group 1 win on The Last Lion in the 2016 Middle Park Stakes and he has come back to win big races in Ireland, most notably Shakespearean in the 2009 Goffs Million.

As early as 1999, he was taking 600-plus rides a season, travelling relentlessly around the country. His performance in the saddle is one thing but the fortitude to drive himself six hours to get to Lingfield from his Middleham base, all times of the year, surely takes an incredible mindset and is as, if not more admirable.

It’s about 280 miles to Lingfield. Kempton is 240 miles. I suppose once the horses are winning, it makes it easier.”

“Mark always had so many horses that you’d be driving everywhere,” Fanning says. “Like, a lot of northern trainers wouldn’t go south of Doncaster, but we have to go everywhere. I’d say I’ve done 750,000 miles in the last decade. I tend to keep cars for three or three and a half years. Once I get to 200,000 miles, I get rid of them.

“It used to be easier but now, the roads are getting worse. Going north to Scotland is great, it’s a piece of cake but just going down south now, you’d know the difference. It could take you five or six hours. It’s about 280 miles to Lingfield. Kempton is 240 miles. I suppose once the horses are winning, it makes it easier.”

Fanning says that willingness to work hard was borne out from his upbringing. His father was builder as well, and having horses at home just meant everyone had to dig in. He cultivated his dedication further by aligning his cart to the Johnston train that just goes and goes.

Britain has always been that land of opportunity for the young Irish jockey hungry for rides and winners. It likely always will be but Fanning says it’s probably harder for the young jockeys coming over now.

“You’ve got a lot of jockeys here now,” he says. “You’ve got the big yards like Richard Fahey and Kevin Ryan, Mark – you’ve eight or nine jockeys riding out at these yards. I think it has tightened up the outside rides a lot.

“I think when I first started, the southern jockeys wouldn’t come up and ride the southern horses up north at the likes of Ripon and Thirsk. Now there are so many jockeys down there, they’re coming up here as well.”

And any advice for a young jockey making the move?

“I suppose just get your head down and work hard. You need a bit of luck. Just get those first few winners. You need to be riding winners to get the rides. You need to be getting winners.”

Currency

Winners is the currency Fanning deals with and there will be a fair few more of them to come. The big total of 3,000 wins is edging closer but ask Fanning about any sort of aims or plans to retire, and he bats it away gently.

“I think this game gives you up doesn’t it?” he replies. “If you’re not riding winners and getting rides, I think you know yourself that you’re not enjoying it, but I’m enjoying it at the moment. I think if you stopped riding winners or the rides dried up then you’d decide to call it a day I think.”

When it does stop, he is very likely to stay in racing, in some shape or form. His wife Sarah has already sent out a point-to-point winner recently at Hexham and has consigned yearlings at the sales last autumn and has a few National Hunt foals for sales this August.

In the meantime, he’ll keep trucking. And there’s the small matter of a rematch with Stradivarius to look forward to in the Goodwood Cup.

“Subjectivist is a very good horse, and he just keeps improving so it’s exciting really,” Fanning says. “The longer gaps between the big stayer races seem to suit him well so there is lots to look forward to.”

In the twilight of a fabulous career, Fanning has hit Group 1 gold and there could well be more to come.