The start of the Flat turf season may be two months down the line but the line-up of one of the powerhouse stables has changed with the news that William Buick has been appointed stable jockey to John Gosden, replacing Jimmy Fortune.

That Buick has claimed one of the major jobs is hardly a surprise because he has been noted by just about everyone who has seen him since he rode his first winner, Bank On Benny, at Salisbury in September 2006, when the 18-year-old apprentice had to pack over two stones of lead into the saddle cloth to make the weight of 8st 8lb.

But there were few who were not prepared to bank on Buick making it to the top, least of all trainer Andrew Balding, where Buick started his career. Balding, like his father Ian before him, has produced his share of promising jockeys and he fully expects to reap his own reward having placed a wager – at odds of 500-1- that Buick will be champion jockey before he reaches his 26th birthday.

Those odds will look somewhere between skinny and anorexic in comparison now as the jockey prepares for his new role, with rides on horses like Showcasing and Dar Re Mi to look forward to. He will start his position in earnest at the start of the turf season and will ride the stable’s runners on Dubai World Cup night at Meydan on March 27th.

Buick is currently riding in Dubai and has also travelled to America to further his education. He spent the winter of 2007 riding work for Todd Pletcher. After riding work upsides one of the great American horsemen, Angel Cordero, the three-times Kentucky Derby winner was keen for Buick to stay in America and book rides for him as his agent. Asked what made Buick stand out, Cordero simply smiled and said: “he’s got the hands of a jockey”.

One of the reasons that Buick has been handed the Gosden job is because of his early international experience – his biggest win came last year in the Grade One E P Taylor Stakes in Canada on Mick Channon’s filly Lahaleeb – which is something that Fortune lacks.

It was the reason why Fortune was passed over for the mount on the Gosden-trained Raven’s Pass in the 2008 Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita, when Frankie Dettori came in for the winning ride, and Fortune was also left back in Britain 12 months later when Dettori rode Pounced to win the Juvenile and Dar Re Mi to finish fourth to Conduit in the Turf.  

As ever in these splits both sides have a point and, while Fortune may be in a position where he could feel he has the weight of the world on his shoulders there will never be a chip there. As he told the Guardian: “Mr Gosden phoned me today, we had a little chat and it’s been decided that I won’t be riding for him this year.

“I didn’t have a retainer and there has been no falling out, but John felt that since the situation with the jockeys at the Breeders’ Cup had arisen, there had been a bit of a wedge driven between us.

“Of course I am extremely disappointed,” he added. “It has been a good job and we have had five or six very successful years together but I feel as I am leaving on a high. Greater jockeys than me have lost their jobs before – Kieren Fallon and Mick Kinane have both experienced the same sort of thing and both of them didn’t look back afterwards.

“I’m only 37 years old, I feel good physically and, as they say, as one door closes another opens. I was planning to return in the ­middle of next month and that’s still what I would hope to be doing.

“Even in the last few hours, I have already had a couple of offers for other jobs. I am a very positive person and I am very positive about what the future holds for me.”

It is not in Fortune’s nature to be lying in his bed moping and ever since the day five years ago when he was able to rise from one in a hospital, after a career-saving operation, he has worked relentlessly to reclaim his position as one of the country’s top jockeys.

To see Fortune’s aggressive style in the saddle, one of the strongest jockeys in a finish, it is easy to forget that he was almost crippled out of the sport after years of riding in pain from a back injury sustained after a crushing fall in India 18 years ago. “It was a five-furlong race, 24 runners, round a bend and I was up the front when a horse broke its leg,” Fortune recalled later. “I hit the ground very hard and then I got kicked about. The ground in India is like the M4,” he added, with humour fresh from the gallows, “and we didn’t wear back protectors then.

“I was in hospital for four days and it took over a month to get myself right again. That was where the initial damage was done to the discs and it had been wear-and-tear ever since and it just gave away at the Curragh in 2003. I went completely dead from the waist down – I could barely walk, let alone ride.”

The following February, Fortune travelled to Cape Town for a three-hour operation that gave him only a 50-50 chance of success but, in the state he was in, that represented the best odds available. “I’d done everything I could to get it right. I’d rested, I’d had physio and eight different injections to try and get it right but nothing had worked and, in the end, I had no choice. As soon as I woke up from the surgery I knew it had worked. I was still full of drugs but I knew I was out of pain for the first time in a long time and within two days I was up walking around.”

Expect him to be riding into the winner’s enclosure many times this season.

Paul Wheeler