apprentices. are they as old hat as starting barriers?

​In Edward Hide’s very fine autobiography, ‘Nothing To Hide’, the final chapter is titled ‘Reflections’ where he indulges himself in looking back at what he considers has improved during the length of a career that began in 1950 and the niggles that remained upon his retirement. I don’t know how much influence Mike Cattermole had with the writing of this book, whether Edward Hide told his story to Cattermole over a bottle of wine in front of a roaring fire, who then went to his typewriter in his cold attic abode and assembled and distributed his words into a flowing narrative or if Hide wrote the manuscript and Cattermole merely ensured the punctuation, spelling and grammar was up to speed? Whatever, ‘Nothing To Hide’ is a jolly good book.
Hide began by reflecting that the Jockey Club, they were still racing’s overlords back in 1989, should consider raising the minimum weight for races to take into account that boys were coming into stables much heavier than in his time. As he said, ‘since the welfare state came into being and the supply of skinny, under-nourished boys from deprived areas thankfully began to dry up, it has become harder to find true lightweight jockeys.’ Blessed with such insight and wisdom it was nothing short of reckless and insular that when the Jockey Club had the opportunity to employ Hide they chose to turn him away. Sadly, though not to the same extent, the same happens today, with jockeys and trainers of wisdom and practical experience allowed to retire without anyone in authority thinking that they may have knowledge that the sport might benefit from. 
Given the upset caused by the B.H.A. decision to change how apprentice jockeys are to be paid, with trainers losing their 50%, Hide was ahead of his time when he reflected that the abolition of the old-fashioned indenture system of apprenticeship was a cause of regret. As he put it, ‘Some people seem to think that training an apprentice is just a matter of giving him the odd ride now and then on one of the stable’s no-hopers. Nothing could be further from the truth’.
The fly-in-the-ointment here, with this debate, is that there is right on both sides of the argument. It is wrong that the majority of the fee paid to an apprentice to ride in a race should go to the trainer who employs him or her. But equally it is wrong that a trainer can teach someone to ride work and race-ride over a period of several years and then see his diligence come to nothing when the apprentice decides his particular pasture is better on the other side of the hill.
Personally, I would do away with the whole apprentice concept and not allow anyone to ride in a race until they reached the age of eighteen and then I would describe them as ‘conditional’, as inexperienced jockeys over jumps are called. An apprentice in a racing stable should be an apprentice stableman, someone being trained to look after racehorses. If this change was to come into force applicants for apprenticeships would not need to have the build of a Victorian chimney sweep, allowing young men and women of a sturdier build a career in the sport. 
I admit that I have often changed my opinion on this subject and now more understand the perspective of trainers like Andrew Balding. If the boys and girls who come into the sport with the ambition of becoming jockeys, who are sincerely taught by their employer to a standard where they are the equal of his work-riders, I now see no objection, in their first full season as ‘conditional jockeys’, to have 50% of their fees go their employer, with a sliding scale over succeeding years and the diminution of their riding allowance. 
Trainers who employ young men and women with the ambition to race-ride are supplying the sport with generation after generation of jockeys and there needs to be an incentive for them to carry on this vitally important element of the sport. In jump racing jockeys can come from the point-to-point field or from the pool of jockeys who get too heavy to ride on the flat. Generally speaking, though there are always exceptions to the rule, flat jockeys come from the stables of trainers prepared to encourage and train them up to something close to jockey standard. They need to race ride to learn the actual craft of jockeyship. 
The world in which we live-in, a world we all might like to change but cannot, there is no longer a large reservoir of undernourished boys and girls capable of riding at even 8-stone. I am of the opinion that we need highly trained stableman (grooms if you like) every bit as much as we need young jockeys to make their way through the grades to take the place of their elders as they retire. The apprentice stableman seems to have gone out of favour; yet in teaching someone how to properly care for a horse that person is being taught skills that could stand them in good stead for the rest of their working life.