I was getting crap at work today about being too skinny. My weight at the moment is 127 lbs @ 5’7". I’m about to hit 28 years old, so I doubt I’m gonna get much bigger. I wrestled 119 in high school, I could probably reach that size again
While taking the aforementioned crap from co-workers, someone brought up the fact I should be a jockey. If tomorrow I woke up and decided I wanted my life’s dream was to win the Kentucky Derby, what kinda path would you take to get there? There’s not exactly a jockey degree at the nearest Community College.
What kinda training, size/height requirements would one need to say race some maiden horse race at the nearest race track?
If I really tried, I bet I could reach the 114 max requirement. Is there any advantage to being a “tall” jockey? I remember going to Penn National with my parents when I was a teen, and most jockeys were around 5’1" or so. I’ve got about 6" on them, any advantage there?
You cited Kentucky Derby standards, what’s about the average requirement for a fairly minor racetrack? Say a Penn National, or Monmouth or what have you.
I think getting started at your age would be as much trouble as keeping your weight down. Jockeys typically start riding in their teens, under apprenticeship of a trainer, and start working horses before getting their license to ride. If you have no riding experience to boot, I think your odds are quite high. Not impossible, but high.
114 is still a bit high weight-wise. The Triple Crown races have been run at 126lbs for decades, but they’re high compared to what you see on a typical race card. 110-115 is about average, and I’ve seen several in the 105-110 range. Keep in mind, that includes your tack (saddle), boots, helmet, etc. You rarely see horses running over 125lbs these days in handicaps…I think I saw a 132 a few years back, and that’s a huge weight in modern racing.
Jump jockeys, for whatever reason, are larger both in weight and height. Unsure why; I’d think a horse taking a 4 mile course with jumps all over the place would do better with less weight, but I’m not up on the steeplechasing world.
Got nuthin’ to add except appreciation for the fact that such an informative answer came from the Doper named Ruffian. The other Ruffian broke my heart, she did.
If you like eating then you might have a problem staying at 114 lbs.
You are the same height as Lester Piggott, arguably the most accomplished rider ever produced in these islands, with 11 jockeys championships to his name plus 30 classic wins (including 9 Derby victories) and a shedload of other Group Ones during a 45 year career.
Piggott’s riding weight during his career was roughly 112 lbs. In order to maintain this weight, his diet consisted of a slice of toast and a black coffee for breakfast, a cigar at lunch, a bar of chocolate at tea time, and a small piece of grilled fish for dinner. Not many riders could live on such meagre fare while maintaining the necessary strength to navigate half a ton of horseflesh round the track.
While height tends to govern weight, it also affects aerodynamics. A jockey needs to get low in the saddle, and the taller he is the more difficult it is to achieve that.
Steeplechasing has its origins in hunting and point-to-point racing. These were and are essentially amateur pursuits, and I can only assume that the weights carried by steeplechasers and hurdlers today (140 lbs - 170 lbs) continue to reflect the average weights of gentleman riders in the early days of the sport.
National Hunt racing has always been more of a home to the amateur rider than flat racing. The history of the Grand National is littered with victories by such jockeys, which detail provokes me to go off on a tangent and mention Beltran de Osorio y Diez de Rivera, the “Iron” Duke of Albuquerque.
The Duke was a true amateur of the old school. He never won the race, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. From 1952 to 1976 he rode in seven Nationals and completed the course only once. Generally he would start with the others, gallop briefly and then wake up in the intensive care unit of the Royal Liverpool Infirmary. If there was a bone in his body he didn’t break in his pursuit of glory, nobody knows what it is.
The stewards eventually revoked his riding licence, perhaps to ease the financial burden on a cash-strapped health service, but more likely for his own safety.
That’s not entirely coincidental. I chose this screenname (ay, a decade+ ago) in part as an homage to her. The other part is I fancy myself a bit of a ruffian–just, as I have gotten older, a milder one.
Snow Pea, it takes a tremendous amount of upper body strength to wrangle a 1200lb animal going 40mph. Typically, female riders by design lack the strength to (for example) keep a rank 3yro who’s going to the lead, NOW, no matter how many furlongs are left, under wraps. But, what they lack in upper body strength, female riders can make up with finesse.
Successful female jockeys aren’t unheard of, just uncommon.
Personally, I think the whole “upper body strength argument” is crap. Handling a horse takes leverage, not just raw pulling power. There are women at every level of eventing, and half the horses in that sport are Tbreds off the track. Regardless, historically, it was considered “much too dangerous for a woman.” And the backstretch (the stables at a racetrack) was “no fit place for a lady.” Girls would enjoy the more genteel sports of showjumping (which to this day is about 90% women) and dressage. Julie Krone, one of the most successful women jockeys, has talked about the extreme sexism she experienced in her career (Krone is 4’10" by the way, and began riding at age 2. She started as an exercise rider at Churchill Downs at age 15). http://dir.salon.com/people/bc/2000/12/19/krone/index.html
To the OP, your added height is a disadvantage - you’re going to catch too much air and your center of gravity is further away from the horse.
That’s something I’d love to be wrong about, so thanks for the correction, Hello Again. I just know it’s the standard argument against it–but knowing how archaic (and sexist) the racing world is, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was more myth than fact. Work it, girls!
This is true of riding in general - a rider’s ability to control a horse and stay in the saddle has much more to do with the rider’s ability to position his or her own body than it does with the rider’s ability to pull on the reins or swing a whip. It’s easier to maintain a correct position if you’re in good shape, but brute strength isn’t enough.
Since Hello Again mentioned dressage and jumping, I’ll also point out that there, too, the rider’s weight is less important than the rider’s ability to maintain an appropriate position. A lightweight rider who flops around like a sack of potatoes is actually harder on the horse than a heavy rider who has a good seat.
I used to teach horse back riding and I used to tell my kids - you can’t win a pulling contest with a horse; a large human bicep is 1/5 the size of a horse’s neck muscle. Jockeys don’t really have huge upper bodies - for the most part they are tough and wirey, with a physique that is very possible for a woman to attain.
Hello Again, I’ve always wondered how jocks manage to steer their mounts when they have almost no leg contact (well, from my limited understanding). Do you have any experience/insight on that? Everything I’ve learned about proper riding is about using my seat, my legs, and my core to direct my mare, but with the perched position jocks take in a race, it appears they have almost no contact with their mounts beyond feet in the stirrup and hands on the reins. From what I’ve observed, jocks ask their mounts to “go” by moving their hands forward and back with the horse’s natural head bob, rather than holding the hands still and (presumably) holding the horse in by keeping hands static.
I am really curious how jocks steer–I do get the impression they hang on a horse’s mouth (the “yank and pull” approach) quite a bit more than a pleasure rider would, out of necessity, but I have no experience riding a racer so it’s all conjecture.
I would really love to know–I find it all fascinating. Obviously.
There isn’t really a lot of ‘steering’ needed. They are on an oval track, with fences on either side, similar to the tracks the horses have been training on for a year or more.
Most of the work done by the jockey is to slow down (maintain the pace) or speed up the horse at specific times. Steering is just to go around or between horses, to get an open spot to run in – and thoroughbreds are pretty good about seeking an open running space on their own. (There are a fair number of cases where a jockey has fallen off, and the horse continued to run and finished the race – sometimes even being the first across the finish line. But not the winner, because losing a jockey is a disqualification.)
It’s my understanding that those that buy an off the track Thoroughbred to retrain as a pleasure or show horse have to get the horse to understand that pulling back on the reins means STOP. On the track, a jockey pulling back is a signal to speed up.
That’s one reason OTT TBs are difficult to retrain.
I just know it’s the standard argument against it–but knowing how archaic (and sexist) the racing world is, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was more myth than fact. Work it, girls!