Perfection is almost inevitably absent in sport. There can be the occasional hour or day, statistically at least, when a performer is without blemish; a baseball pitcher’s no-hit game; a golfer who plays four rounds of a major championship without dropping a shot or even a jockey who rides the card, as Frankie Dettori did so memorably at Ascot in September 1996.

But are all the constituent parts of that statistical run in themselves great or merely very good?

Compared to other elite sportsmen and women, jockeys deal with failure on a maddeningly regular basis, with even the most dominant in their jurisdictions suffering defeat on more occasions than victory.

Ryan Moore approaches perfection on at least one metric. He has learned over the years that the circumstances in a race can get the best horse beaten.

And during his long association with Aidan O’Brien and the Coolmore partners, what all parties have come to value is the pursuit of minimising such events.

2022 has seen another rich harvest of big races success for Moore, bookended by Tuesday’s wins in the Oaks at Epsom and the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Keeneland.

There have been stretches of the year when the 39-year-old has looked head and shoulders above his rivals, though he would be the first to admit that at the Breeders’ Cup, he was trading shots with a rider at the very top of his game in William Buick. 

Has he been doing anything different? Not remotely. Moore’s strength is strategic, not tactical, and like the best golfers or pitchers, his muscle memory makes repeat success more likely.  

In level weights races where O’Brien plies his trade, there are fewer variables.  A cardinal rule is to save ground. 

There is probably no such thing as a bad winning steer in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe but his trip on Found when leading home an extraordinary O’Brien 1-2-3 when the race relocated to Chantilly, was the archetypal Moore ride. Dropping across from an outside draw, Moore had got to one off the rail after less than 400m and was only three back from the lead wave and on the paint by the start of the single long sweep of the turn that took the field in front of the royal stables and the chateau.

One multiple French champion jockey said the next day the aerial film of the race should be shown to every apprentice that passes through the country’s AFASEC riding academies. 

The philosophy is geometrically flawless; how many horses wide you are makes no odds in straight line but can be the difference between winning and losing around a bend. 

At Keeneland there was more of the same; down on the rail was not the place to be up the straight but there was no chance of Moore being trapped three wide around the tight turns before the race properly unwound. 

There is much more to winning races than going the shortest way round. But as a reflexive base on which to embroider with variations in pace and positioning, it has stood
Moore in excellent stead. 

The laws of racing dictate he will still lose more than he wins, mostly because on that given day, another horse outruns his.

But compared to almost all his contemporaries, the number of mistakes he makes that could contribute to defeat are vanishingly rare.

The length of his relationships is another mark of just how consistent he has been over two decades. 

When Blackbeard sprinted to success in the Prix Morny at Deauville in August, he became Moore’s 100th Group 1 victory for O’Brien. 

In the maestro of Ballydoyle’s storied career, his next most fruitful relationship was with Mick Kinane, who clocked up 62.

Before Coolmore came calling, Moore’s main source of success in Europe was courtesy of Sir Michael Stoute and it is notable that on the rare occasions that O’Brien does not field an opponent, that old alliance is rekindled. 

Moore has also been travelling east over the winter for most of his career and in Noriyuki Hori has found another sponsor who appreciates his sheer reliability. 

If ever there was a horse that matched Moore’s combination of talent and simplicity, it was surely the Hori-trained Maurice, who twice took the LONGINES Hong Kong International Races by storm.

In the 2015 LONGINES Hong Kong Mile it looked like anybody’s race 300 metres from home, with the home crowd lifting along with the great Able Friend. By the line there was only one horse in it.

Moore was back on board when Maurice took the step up to 2000 metres in his stride in the Tenno Sho Autumn in 2016, the launchpad for an ‘almost’ perfect display in the LONGINES Hong Kong Cup six weeks later.

Behind a relentless pace set by Yutaka Take on defending champion A Shin Hikari, Maurice still had it all to do turning in.

This time Moore didn’t give up the paint until halfway home in the straight but the response when he angled the son of Screen Hero out was immediate and decisive. 

In an interview for the Japan Racing Association and the Racing Post, Moore said he felt Maurice would have been even more dominant had Hori and Kazumi Yoshida elected to run him one more time in the Arima Kinen over 2500m, concluding: “He would have really beaten them up.” 

LONGINES HKIR has not always been the easiest of hunting grounds for O’Brien but Highland Reel’s run of first, second and first in the Vase was a highpoint, while Danon Smash’s win in the LONGINES Hong Kong Sprint was another masterpiece painted on the Sha Tin turf. 

And if you think Moore is only one-dimensionally interested in collecting Group 1s, his run of appearances at Wednesday night’s feature LONGINES International Jockeys’ Challenge would suggest otherwise, with a record of two wins and four podiums from 15 appearances and another tilt lined up for next week. 

And come LONGINES Hong Kong International Races a week on Sunday, Moore won’t be thinking about his own personal tally; rather he will have the career achievements of the four horses he rides foremost in his mind.

Because in the short career of a top-class racehorse, opportunity may only knock once or twice. In Moore’s mind it is simply a case of getting as close as possible to eliminating pilot error.