Joint champion apprentice, alongside David Probert, as long ago as 2008, Norwegian-born William Buick subsequently became stable jockey to now five-time champion trainer John Gosden between 2010 and 2014, before being offered a lucrative retainer with the powerful Godolphin organisation, under the auspices of Sheikh Mohammed, in 2015. A first jockey to top Godolphin trainer Charlie Appleby, who is based at Moulton Paddocks in Newmarket, Buick won the British Flat Jockeys’ Championship for the first time in 2022 and retained his title in 2023.
Indeed, his 2022 total of 157 winners – in the ‘window’ between the Guineas Festival at Newmarket in early May and British Champions Day at Ascot in October, on which the championship is nowadays decided – left him fully 60 winners ahead of his nearest rival. His 2023 total, of 135 winners in the same period, has not gone unnoticed by the bookmakers either and, at the time of writing, the 35-year-old is a top-priced 8/13 to win his third jockeys’ title in a row.
Again at the time of writing, Buick has a total of 78 Group 1 victories, worldwide, to his name. He has ridden four British Classic winners, namely Arctic Cosmos, Masked Marvel and Hurricane Lane in the St. Leger in 2010, 2011 and 2021 respectively and Masar in the Derby in 2018.
