Adam Houghton charts the rise of Sean Bowen, who holds a healthy lead over Harry Cobden as he bids to win his first British jump jockeys' championship.
The youngest champion conditional in history
A star on the pony racing circuit – and later in points – Sean Bowen was successful on his very first ride under Rules when guiding the Bernard Llewellyn-trained Kozmina Bay to victory in a novice handicap hurdle at Uttoxeter in December 2013, less than four months after his sixteenth birthday.
The eldest son of Pembrokeshire trainer Peter Bowen and his wife Karen, Bowen had ridden winners for the likes of John Ferguson and Gordon Elliott, as well as his father, before he’d turned seventeen, but it was when he linked up with the Ditcheat yard of champion trainer Paul Nicholls during the 2014/15 campaign that his career really went to the next level.
Bowen was still claiming 7lb and having just his fourth ride for the Nicholls stable when Ulck du Lin provided him with a notable Saturday winner by landing a Listed handicap chase at Ascot in November 2014, while an excellent run of results the following month (nine winners from 34 runners at a 26% strike rate) gave a major boost to his hopes of being crowned champion conditional jockey.
That dream was realised on the final day of the season at Sandown, a memorable afternoon which saw Bowen having to share the spotlight with A. P. McCoy, who took his final mount on the appropriately-named Box Office shortly after being crowned Britain’s champion jockey for the twentieth season in a row.
It was McCoy who presented the trophy to Bowen as he clinched the conditional jockeys' championship with a double on the afternoon which took his tally for the campaign to 51 winners, seven more than his closest pursuer, Nico de Boinville.
The youngest rider ever to be crowned champion conditional, Bowen demonstrated just what a prodigious talent he was when winning the feature race on that Sandown card, the bet365 Gold Cup, on the Nicholls-trained Just A Par, producing an inspired effort in the saddle which would later win him the Lester Award for Jump Ride of The Year.
Tale of steady progress with Nicholls support
It was shortly after his eighteenth birthday in September 2015 that Bowen rode out his claim, reaching 75 winners with victory on the Jamie Snowden-trained Fact of The Matter in a Chepstow bumper, and he continued to reap the rewards from his association with Nicholls, riding bags of winners – and some good horses to boot – despite him never being the stable number one.
Bowen spent the next three seasons riding primarily for Nicholls – ably supported by his father's yard – and it was a tale of steady progress with 58 winners in 2015/16, 79 in 2016/17 and 82 in 2017/18.
The famous names Bowen teamed up with during his time at Ditcheat included Clan des Obeaux, successful in a Grade 2 novice chase at Newbury in November 2016, while he also played a significant role in the early career of Cyrname when that horse won a pair of similar events at Kempton during the 2017/18 campaign.
Another notable success came over the Grand National fences at Aintree as Bowen won the Grand Sefton Handicap Chase on As de Mee in 2016, while a second bet365 Gold Cup also came his way in 2017 when he caused a 40/1 upset on his father's Henllan Harri.
It wasn't until the 2018/19 campaign that Bowen's number of rides for Nicholls started to drop off, with the likes of Harry Cobden, Bryony Frost and Lorcan Williams all starting to come in for more support from the champion trainer. Bowen and Nicholls teamed up only 15 times in 2018/19, though their three winners together still included a second Grand Sefton win courtesy of Warriors Tale.
Instead, Bowen owed the majority of his success that season to his father, with 45 of his 91 winners – another personal-best tally which saw him finish seventh in the jockeys' championship – coming from the Pembrokeshire base where he grew up.
Lean Fry years before freelance revival
Another turning point in Bowen's career came at the 2019 Cheltenham Festival when Noel Fehily announced his imminent retirement after partnering Eglantine du Seuil to victory in the Dawn Run Mares' Novices' Hurdle. That left a job going begging as number one jockey to Harry Fry and Bowen gave the perfect audition when gaining the first Grade 1 success of his career aboard If The Cap Fits in the Liverpool Hurdle at Aintree.
Bowen went on to spend two full seasons as the number one at Higher Crockermoor with mixed results. There were other high-profile wins with the likes of If The Cap Fits, who followed up his Aintree victory in the Ascot Hurdle in the autumn, and Metier, another Grade 1 winner for Bowen and Fry when landing the Tolworth Novices' Hurdle at Sandown in January 2021.
Bowen wasn't so prolific as he had been previously, though, with his tally of winners falling to 54 in 2019/20 and 68 in 2020/21.
A broken collarbone suffered in February 2020 – closely followed by the shutdown of racing due to the Covid-19 pandemic – probably cost him a handful of winners during that period, but it's fair to say that the move didn't pay off in the way he might have hoped and it wasn't the greatest surprise when Fry announced in August 2021 that Bowen would no longer be his stable jockey.
The freelance Bowen was galvanised during the 2021/22 campaign and he ended it with 94 winners on his way to finishing fifth in the jockeys' championship, including 19 for his father, 16 for Martin Keighley, 11 for Fry – with whom there had reportedly been no falling out – and 10 for Gary Hanmer.
It was on his father's Mac Tottie that Bowen gained another victory over the National fences in the Topham Handicap Chase, that coming just a few days after he'd won the Scottish Champion Hurdle at Ayr on John McConnell's Anna Bunina.
Bowen had celebrated another notable winner earlier in the season when he struck in the Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury on Thomas Darby. That was one of four winners he rode in 2021/22 for Olly Murphy, a trainer he'd teamed up with on a relatively infrequent basis up to that point in his career.
Murphy association and champion jockey push
It was all change in September 2022 when it was announced that Aidan Coleman would no longer be riding as Murphy's retained jockey, with more opportunities set to go the way of the title-chasing Bowen instead.
In the event, the jockeys' championship soon became an unachievable goal for Bowen, who ended the campaign 40 winners behind Brian Hughes. His tally of 125 was still a big improvement on anything he'd achieved previously, though, and the relationships he established then have served him well this season when it's been his turn to act as the clear front-runner from an early stage.
Murphy provided Bowen with 38 winners in 2022/23, but their tally together is already up to 32 since the start of the current campaign, while the rider was helped no end by the golden summer his father's yard enjoyed, giving him a leg-up of 27 winners before we'd even reached September.
Elliott was another steady of source of winners with his British raiders during the summer, notably providing Bowen with a 103/1 four-timer at Perth in June, while the two winners the rider partnered on just one afternoon at Lingfield in November really had to be seen to be believed.
In winning successive races on the card with Theyseekhimthere and Dysania (replay below), Bowen produced two efforts in the saddle which would be equally worthy of another Lester Award for Jump Ride of The Year.
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According to Timeform's post-race analysis, Dysania "shaped no better than fourth best for most of the way, his rider – not for the first time on this card – deserving plenty of credit for his perseverance and strength in the finish".
It was a few days later that Bowen brought up his century of winners for the campaign when Murphy's Booster Bob won a novice hurdle at Uttoxeter. The same horse then completed his hat-trick in a Listed novice event at Sandown on what proved to be another memorable afternoon for Bowen just a couple of weeks ago.
With Jonathan Burke taking the ride on Love Envoi in his role as Fry's current stable jockey, Bowen was left to pick up the plum spare mount on the veteran Not So Sleepy as he ran out a commanding winner of the rearranged Fighting Fifth Hurdle, a third career Grade 1 success for the man with one hand on the jockeys' championship.
28 winners clear of Cobden (114-86) at the close of racing on Saturday, Bowen certainly shows no signs of slowing down and all roads now lead back to Sandown in April for the season finale, bidding to become the fourth different champion jockey since McCoy retired on that memorable afternoon nearly nine years ago.
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