Lexington, Ky.–“Simple,” said a man who would know, raising a finger to both temples. “Here. Between your ears.”Picking his way through the Bluegrass crowd, Michael Owen was able to enjoy a degree of anonymity he can rarely have experienced these past three decades. He was still virtually adolescent when becoming one of the most precocious stars in the history of English soccer: winning the Premier League Golden Boot as a teenager, when also the youngest ever to play and then to score for England. Since his retirement, however, Owen has pursued another sporting passion–one that had brought him here as co-owner of a runner later on the card. And his presence in the winner's circle, after the first Breeders' Cup race, ensured that at least one other was present who had gone through something comparable to the latest, dazing chapter in the emergence of Billy Loughnane; and eligible to identify the bridge that leads from elite potential to elite accomplishment.For Loughnane's success on Libertango (Ire) (No Nay Never) in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint aptly complemented the way he has more or less risen without trace: his name had only been inserted next to that of the filly 45 minutes beforehand. By the same token, he had arrived here as champion jockey of Britain, barely four years after riding in his first race, and the youngest in more than a century.This latest breakout, bookending a season that had opened with a first Classic, was contingent on an unusually literal hunger for success. His partnership with Libertango having been severed by a weight 3lbs lighter than Loughnane had managed all year, her trainer George Boughey was stunned and delighted by an 11th hour text that the racetrack scales were putting him unexpectedly close.It is safe to surmise that only one of those adjectives applied to Flavien Prat, his intended deputy, when told the news. But Loughnane had been tormented by the idea of watching this cherished filly dancing the dance of her life with a new partner. And, with his innate freedom from inhibition duly honed by a sense of reprieve, he pulled the race out of the fire with all his trademark insouciance. Caught on the rail from her low draw, Libertango still had plenty to do when switched out on the home turn but ran them down with all the exuberance of her rider. It was as though the pounds he had shed in the sauna must have contained all the anxiety and stress that might have burdened lesser riders in those white-knuckle moments.It was precisely this weightlessness that Owen emphasized, when asked about a transition that has derailed so many other young sportsmen anointed for stardom. He had rushed down to the winner's circle with Hugo Palmer, who trains at Owen's stables in Cheshire, to congratulate the “boys”: Boughey, after all, is himself barely started on his own career, having learned the ropes for six years as assistant to Palmer at his former base in Newmarket. It was touching to see the pride with which his mentor enfolded Boughey in a long embrace, its warmth plainly undiluted by watching his protégé hurtle past him in the trainers' standings.Libertango rules | Walter WlodarczykBoughey would doubtless have loved to bring Bow Echo (Ire) (Night Of Thunder {Ire}) here, too, but for losing his services to injury. In the singular circumstances, however, it was the younger man who proved the inevitable focus.“Either you've got it or you haven't,” Owen remarked. “I could go to the World Cup as an 18-year-old because it didn't bother me, mentally. Because at that age you don't have the scars. You think you're Superman. It's only later that you start to think about the importance of what you're doing. Experience is obviously a fantastic thing. But it's funny, it's in gaining experience that you run the risk of losing that fearlessness.”But Owen was not the only bystander who could identify with what was unfolding. For it was impossible not to be reminded, watching Loughnane joyously showering petals from the winner's blanket, of Frankie Dettori's first Breeders' Cup win in the GI Mile down the road at Churchill Downs in 1994. He, too, had been feted as a champion in the making from the very earliest days; but “Billy the Kid,” at 17, was a year younger than Dettori when champion apprentice in 2023.Dettori, who proved so reluctant to give up the elixir of their calling, duly watched this new incarnation with a nostalgic smile.“Does this remind you of Barathea, Frankie?”“Yes, of course,” he replied. “Remember I haven't been in England these last three years but he came out while I was riding here so he got a little taste of American racing. But he's been a natural from day dot, a born talent. Very polite, too, it's all in place. He obviously has a very bright future. Let's just hope his weight doesn't become an issue. He's still a young man. Fingers crossed, because we need him.”Both testimonies, then, carried a light note of caution: not even the Kid can be Peter Pan. On the day, however, perhaps nobody condensed his current state of mind better than Loughnane himself, in praising Libertango. “She's got such a good racing brain,” he said. “She went to sleep, and there was a little bit of interference on the turn, but it didn't even break her stride.” For he, too, seems able to do things more or less without thinking, with an instinctive alacrity. But that's not to suggest that he might duly remain prey to ingenuousness or naivete. For most of us, as Picasso said, “it takes a long time to become young.” We learn our lessons, our technique, with clumsiness and caution; and only when truly seasoned do we unlearn those accompanying constraints that have dragged on our fulfilment. And maybe that's the paradox of the Kid. People speak of an old head on young shoulders. Let's hope that simply means he will never lose the freedom, curiosity and adventure of his innocence.The post Libertango Shares The Liberation Of The Kid appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.