Shadwell appear unlikely to appoint replacement for Crowley

Shadwell’s long-time racing manager Angus Gold believes it is “highly unlikely” the team will appoint a direct replacement for retained rider Jim Crowley following his retirement on Saturday.

The 48-year-old brought the curtain down on a long and illustrious career in the saddle owing to the injuries he suffered in a fall from the Shadwell-owned Almeraq at York in September last year.

Crowley was named as number one jockey for the late Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum in 2016, shortly after being crowned champion jockey for the first and only time, and Gold has nothing but positive words to say about their association.

“Time flies, I hadn’t realised it was 10 years,” he told the Press Association.

“It’s been fantastic, it’s been amazing. He’s done a brilliant job and obviously we’re going to miss him very much, but if I’m brutally honest I’m glad for his sake. I know it’s not the way he wanted to go out, but at least he’s up and moving so to speak.

“It was such a dreadful fall it could have been an awful lot worse. I was quietly amazed either horse or jockey walked away from it.”

Crowley rode a whole host of big-race winners in Shadwell’s famous blue and white silks aboard equine superstars such as Baaeed, Battaash and Hukum.

Gold admits picking out one day in particular as a standout is a difficult task, preferring to instead praise the rider’s role as the perfect team player.

He added: “Obviously Baaeed was a highlight from all our lives, but I see Jim has quite rightly said that day at Ascot when he won and we had three winners on Champions Day (in 2021) was remarkable and a special day. Eshaada won the fillies’ race and that nice horse of William Haggas’ (Aldaary) won the Balmoral Handicap.

“It’s hard to pick out one day. Hukum coming back from injury was fantastic and to be as good a horse as he was. Battaash was special and just watching it again this morning, Anmaat winning the Champion Stakes at Ascot (in 2024) – at the furlong pole you think he can’t possibly win even though you know the result!

“Jim rode a lot of good horses and good winners for us, but he was also a really good stable jockey from a Shadwell point of view. He bought into the whole ethos of our operation and loved riding work and riding the horses at home and getting a feel for them.

“He would work with the next generation coming through and go through the pedigrees. He was a real horseman as well as a very good jockey and he settled in very well, which is never easy.

“We still had an enormous number of horses and it’s never easy keeping a number of trainers happy, but Jim was his own man and able to do it and he did a fantastic job.

“When Sheikh Hamdan was alive he loved to talk to the jockey and he had a close relationship with Jim and that was passed on to Sheikha Hissa and her family after Sheikh Hamdan died.

“Obviously we have less horses now and we were hoping he was going to come back, but at this stage of his life with his training career ahead of him hopefully it certainly made sense from his point of view (to retire).”

With the Shadwell operation being scaled back significantly since Sheikh Hamdan’s death five years ago, Gold does not expect a new retained rider to fill the void left by Crowley.

“Obviously we haven’t discussed it. If you were asking my opinion I think it’s highly unlikely. We don’t have enough horses really to appoint a big name stable jockey, so I think it’s very unlikely,” he said.

“This year as you’ve seen we’ve been using the best available, in conjunction with the trainers, and I’m sure that will continue, certainly for the immediate future.

“We’ll sit down and have a discussion at some stage, but we’ve only got 15 or 16 older horses in work now, the rest are two-year-olds and the majority of them haven’t run yet, so at the moment it’s not really a role that’s conducive to appointing a big name.”