Billy 'The Kid' Loughnane signs Godolphin retainer and will be retained alongside William Buick
On Wednesday, 4 November 2026, Britain’s 20-year-old champion jockey Billy ‘The Kid’ Loughnane signed a retainer to ride in the royal blue colours of Sheikh Mohammed’s global Godolphin operation next year, the news confirmed. The agreement will see him contracted alongside William Buick as one of two retained Godolphin jockeys rather than as an outright No 1.
Asked last month to name his main ambition for 2027, Loughnane said: "I want to ride more Group One winners," a goal that underpins the significance of the Godolphin deal. He has ridden for Godolphin since his apprentice days and recorded his first Group One success on their Rebel’s Romance in Berlin in August 2025. The retainer moves him into an elite pool of riders who can expect regular top-class opportunities.
Loughnane’s rise has been rapid: he rode his first winner shortly after his 16th birthday, sealed an exceptional 2026 season with his first Classic success on Bow Echo in the 2,000 Guineas in May, and added his first Breeders’ Cup winner at Keeneland in Kentucky five days ago. Those results helped deliver his jockeys’ championship in 2026 and underpinned the case for a formal contract with Godolphin.
His combination of on-track performance and off-track appeal has prompted comparisons with Frankie Dettori, though Loughnane has been deflecting them. Dettori’s wider public profile was aided by television appearances — he was a team captain on A Question Of Sport watched by around eight million BBC viewers each week — and that form of exposure is less available in today’s fragmented media environment.
Godolphin’s retention places Loughnane among riders such as William Buick, Ryan Moore, Oisin Murphy and Colin Keane who regularly contest Group One races. Buick had 32 rides in Group One races in Britain in 2026, with only Ryan Moore recording more at 34, and Buick’s six winners started at 5-4, 3-1, 4-9, 9-4, 11-10 and 2-1. Even within Godolphin, the distribution of prime Group One rides is unlikely to be straightforward given the operation’s existing use of top riders.
On performance evidence, his ride on Libertango — after sweating down to 8st 5lb — was cited as confirmation of his big-race composure. The victory on Libertango was described as having "more than a touch of Ryan Moore about it," with Loughnane guiding a confident path from off the pace aboard the hot favourite. The article also noted the prospect of regular head-to-heads between Loughnane and other leading riders "in the colours of Flat racing’s twin superpowers" next year.
His new contract with Godolphin should soon enough see him competing aboard runners with a leading chance in all but a handful of the season’s showpiece events, and fancied horses and favourites in races like the Derby and Arc lie ahead. The retainer will increase the scrutiny and selection decisions — for example when Charlie Appleby next has a fancied runner in a Classic or Group One and must decide who will ride — shaping Loughnane’s programme in 2027.