Brian Hughes not focusing on jockey title race ahead of Tingle Creek ride on Waiting Patiently

Brian Hughes is refusing to get carried away by talk of a first Champion Jockey title, as he prepares for his most high-profile ride of the season so far in Saturday’s Tingle Creek Chase.

Hughes will be reunited with the horse that gave him his first ever Grade 1 win, Ruth Jefferson’s Waiting Patiently, for the Sandown showpiece, and comes into the race lying second in the jockey’s championship, having ridden 87 winners already this campaign.

The championship race has been something of closed shop for the best part of a quarter-of-a-century, with the legendary AP McCoy winning 20 titles in a row between 1995 and 2015, and Richard Johnson dominating the four editions since his retirement.

As December arrives, Hughes is applying genuine pressure, trailing Johnson by just two wins despite having had more than 50 fewer rides, but insists title talk can wait.

“I don’t think any differently about anything else,” Hughes, who is a general 7/4 chance for his maiden crown, told Standard Sport. “Obviously, everyone wants to be Champion Jockey. At the minute, that’s Richard Johnson, but I’m not going out every day watching what he’s doing.

“There's a lot of the season left to get through and I'm only trying to do the day-to-day job as best as I can. Obviously, after Christmas in the New Year, if you're in with a chance you can concentrate more on it, but I'm just trying to ride as many winners as I can, as any other jockey in the weighing room is. And to stay in one piece!”

This afternoon’s contest will mark Waiting Patiently’s seasonal reappearance as he looks for a return to form following a disappointing 2018/19 campaign, which saw him unluckily exit the King George at Christmas, before sub-par runs at Ascot and Aintree in the spring.

“The King George was the plan and a horse fell in front of him, brought him down, and it was disappointing because he felt great,” Hughes said.

“But look, that's behind us now. I didn't feel he was at his best the next twice, although he was second to Cyrname in the Ascot Chase. I just didn't think he was himself, he didn't travel with the same exuberance and he didn't jump as well as he can. He wasn't overraced and the owner looked after him, put him away, and started afresh this year.

“I schooled him a bit now and he feels good, he feels like his old self. He's fit and well and he looks great.”

The Tingle Creek will see Waiting Patiently drop back to two miles for the first time since his novice chase days, with the majority of his subsequent starts, including a landmark Ascot Chase success last year, coming over intermediate trips.

Connections are not alone in looking to make their mark in a division that, for now at least, is without Altior, the horse who has dominated it in recent seasons. Willie Mullins’ Un De Sceaux returns after finishing second to the aforementioned in a terrific renewal last season, while the Paul Nicholls-trained Politologue, runner-up to the same horse in this year’s Champion Chase, will be looking for his second success in the race.

Defi Du Seuil, winner of the two-and-a-half-mile JLT Novices’ Chase at Cheltenham last season - and antepost favourite for the Ryanair Chase over course and distance at the Festival next spring - is also in the mix at the start of his first season in open company, and Hughes believes the stage is set for a new standard-setter to emerge.

“[These races] were always very one-sided with Altior because he could beat every one of them,” Hughes said. “Yeah, you could say this division's opened up now, but it's only opened up for another horse to come and take the top ranking, if you like.

“All these are good horses in their own right and any one of them could step up to that plate. They're all going there and connections feel they've got every chance. It's a Grade 1, there's no such thing as an easy one.”

While Waiting Patiently has provided Hughes with some of the best days of his career to date, there is reason to believe that Brian Ellison’s exciting novice Windsor Avenue may hold the key to many more.

Though yet to try his hand in graded company over fences, the seven-year-old has won both of his chase starts to date in impressive fashion under Hughes, with the promise of more improvement to come.

“The northern horses always get a bit overlooked in my opinion - I'm probably a bit biased towards northern racing because I live up here,” Hughes said. “But yeah, if he was with Paul Nicholls, Nicky Henderson, Willie Mullins, he'd be a lot more talked about. Luckily enough, the horse can't read so he's not bothered about it.

“Brian Ellison and [owner] Phil Martin have always liked him, since they bought him. After he won his point-to-point and won his bumpers, his hurdling career was always geared towards chasing, he wasn't overraced.

“There's been three or four races talked about [as targets], between two, two-and-a-half and three miles, but I'm not 100 per cent sure which he'll go for. That's the owner and trainer's decision and I'll just be delighted to be on him.”

Brian Hughes is 2nd in the 2019/20 Jump Jockeys’ Championship with 87 wins this season. For more information please visit: http://gbraci.ng/JumpChamps