💥Tony Piccone was left off the top talent list and overlooked for 10 years – And it was the biggest mistake in horse racing!
For more than a decade, Tony Piccone lived in the shadows of the spotlight, ignored by the media, underestimated by trainers, and virtually wiped off the radar of major international stables. Yet, in 2025, the name of this French jockey resonates like a slap in the face in the closed world of horse racing. After ten years of silence and struggles away from the cameras, Piccone has now established himself as one of the most feared riders on the world stage. And what many considered a simple “oversight” is now perceived as the biggest strategic error that the horse racing authorities have made in recent years.
Those who knew him in his early days remember a discreet but determined young man, ready to ride any horse, in any condition, just to stay in the saddle. At the time, he had no flamboyant sponsors, no influential agents, and even less access to the most competitive mounts. The big races were inaccessible to him, reserved for “bankable names,” for jockeys who sold papers and bets. Piccone, for his part, advanced in silence, accepting secondary races, horses known to be difficult, and ungrateful tracks. But each stride he took was not in vain: it built a rigor, a resilience, a reading of the terrain that few of his colleagues possessed.
What is striking today is not only his presence in high-level competitions, but the way he dominates them. Piccone doesn’t race to please, he races to win. And he wins. This meteoric rise is not the result of chance, but the result of iron discipline, in-depth work, and unwavering loyalty to his art. Where others have lost their way in the glare of easy success, Tony Piccone has remained on the track, every day, every morning, tirelessly repeating the same movements, learning the horses, listening to their breathing, their rhythm, their fears.
There are whispers that several American teams have publicly regretted not having recruited him earlier. One race director, speaking on condition of anonymity, even confided: “We thought he didn’t have the profile. In reality, it was us who lacked the vision.” Worse still, experts are beginning to reevaluate some past rankings, admitting that Piccone, with better horses, could have ranked much higher in the previous decade’s statistics.
Today, every time Tony Piccone takes the ring, an entire system trembles. Not because he makes noise, but because he has demonstrated that authentic talent always ends up rising to the surface, no matter how long it’s kept underwater. The jockey no one wanted yesterday has become the one everyone fears. And the horse racing world will now have to live with this bitter truth: for 10 years, they turned a blind eye to a phenomenon. And now that he’s here, they can’t stop him.
