Femur Injury Stole Horse Racing Season but Jockey Finds Support in Belgian Rider

The horse racing injury couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Coolmore barn or Ballydoyle stables. However, it isn’t a horse injury. “He had a scan yesterday, and when they did the scan, they found the fracture in his femur,” Aidan O’Brien had shared with Racing TV on August 30. The Irish trainer was really put in a spot after his most trusted jockey, Ryan Moore, was ruled out for almost the rest of the flat season.

With big races coming up, O’Brien had to respond. And within days, the trainer has found a solution to salvage his season. Racing Post’s X handle shared the update on September 1: “CONFIRMED: Aidan O’Brien has revealed Christophe Soumillon will be a big part of the Ballydoyle team in the coming months while Ryan Moore is out of action with a broken leg.”

Which means the upcoming Irish Champions Festival and the Irish St. Leger are set to see Belgian star jockey Christophe Soumillon in the saddle of many of Aidan O’Brien’s trainees. Notably, this isn’t unknown territory for either O’Brien or Soumillon as far as horse racing is concerned. The 44-year-old jockey has ridden for the Ballydoyle trainer throughout the year. Only this time, the Prix de Diane winner will take on a more prominent role for Ballydoyle.

Soumillon’s aid becomes more crucial as Ballydoyle’s second rider, Wayne Lordan, would be serving a ban from September 9 to 18 for using the whip in an incorrect place while aboard Prestige Stakes champion Precise. The idea is that Lordan and Soumillon would share the workload of the Irish Champion Stakes and St. Leger, both of which are scheduled next week.

O’Brien’s Delacroix is planned for the Irish Champion Stakes, while Scandinavia is a short-priced Leger favorite. So, he will need multiple big-race jockeys. And Christophe Soumillon fits the bill perfectly. Aidan O’Brien only has good words for the Belgian jockey who operates mostly out of France. Previously, Soumillon was retained by the late Aga Khan. “He’s a world-class jockey everywhere he’s been riding for us a lot since he’s been released,” O’Brien said to Barry & District News on September 1st.

Well, the 55-year-old trainer will be a bit relieved to have sorted this out. Because the Ryan Moore setback won’t be solved short term.

Ryan Moore’s troubles while chasing horse racing glory

As the injury reports have come out, the Hall of Fame has been quite straightforward in his approach. “I don’t know how long Ryan is going to be but we will tell him to take as much time as he wants,” O’Brien has said. In fact, talking to Racing TV, the trainer was practical about the looming scenario. “The biggest bone in your body, and he can’t take any chance with that. He (Moore) said he was very lucky it didn’t break.”

In fact, the superstar jockey had been dealing with a pain in the right thigh since the Irish Derby weekend. As for how he may have sustained the injury, Aidan O’Brien thinks the jockey’s off-the-tracks could have been the cause. “Ryan runs a lot and they think it could be running and that might have originally started it,” the Ballydoyle trainer said to Sky Sports.

But his horse racing commitments could have aggravated it. “Then in Germany, when he was going to the start on the filly (Garden Of Eden at Dusseldorf), she whipped around and he landed on his feet and it could have aggravated it and opened it up.”

And they have been trying to find out the root cause for a while, thinking it to be ligament damage or any other issues in the knee or the heel. It was only after Moore decided to go for a scan on August 29 that the real issue came to light. Now, it’s a waiting game for the 2025 Epsom Oaks winner, who is probably restless to get back on the saddle.