fair play to all jockeys.

​When I see jockeys riding at Kempton in the afternoon and then travelling on to a racecourse perhaps a hundred miles away to ride at an evening fixture, especially when their reward for such dedication is only a riding fee or two at each racecourse, a work schedule that jockeys adhere to for most of the months of the year, I truly wonder how their minds and bodies cope and how much profit there is for them when expenses are taken from their riding fees. Is there any other group of sportsman who must work so hard to pay the bills or to achieve their ambitions?
It is no wonder, is it, that mental health has become an issue over the past few years, with burn-out yet another health concern that jockeys must contend with?
I believe that during the summer months, and perhaps too through the winter, jockeys are only allowed to ride at two meetings a day four times in a seven-day period. This addresses the problem to some extent, though for the jockey classed as ‘journeymen’ that can, I suppose, remove opportunity on occasion and gives cause to have to make choices between the one ride at one racecourse in the afternoon and another ride in the evening.
Here I offer a slightly improved solution to all this environmental-unfriendly car rides about the motorways and A-roads.
Although in truth it is a case of a jockey fulfilling contractual and promised commitments, it does come across as greed when a top jockey riding at Royal Ascot, for instance, goes on to ride at an evening meeting. Our top jockeys are elite athletes; it seems madness to me for them to commit themselves to the unnecessary risk of injury and the mental anguish of ensuring they make the evening fixture on time. After all, they don’t need the money.
In Ireland they occasionally stage meetings where the participating jockeys are what we might term ‘journeyman’. Last week at Limerick they held a meeting where the likes of Paul Townend, Rachael Blackmore, Davy Russell, Robbie Power, etc, were excluded as they have ridden too many winners, thereby giving the lesser lights of the weighing room a day in the sun, when they might expect more than the single ride.
During Royal Ascot, as an example, why can’t there be an evening meeting restricted to jockeys who have ridden a limited number of winners during the past twelve months? Indeed, why can’t there be similar fixtures once a month? Or at least once a month. On the flat this might be better applied during the summer and in National Hunt it might be better applied during the winter.
It would do no harm to the top flat and jumps jockeys to have a day off once a month and would give the lesser lights both a boost in income and open up opportunities that otherwise would not present themselves. And opportunity, here, is the optimum word.
The cream will always rise to the top, so it is said. But what is increasingly happening, especially in National Hunt, is that being a son or daughter of an established trainer is the golden highway to the top of the ladder, which can make the journey to success that much harder for anyone not born and bred into racing. A Monday at Leicester restricted to the ‘journeyman’ would only put a bit of jam on the bread and butter for the individual but for the sport it could bring big benefits, especially when it come to integrity. A starving jockey with unpaid bills will always be more susceptible to criminal intent than the jockey happy in his work.
And if you tell me spectators want to see the top jockeys, I will reply that the few in attendance at Leicester on a Monday would hardly notice their absence.
This proposition has one factor in its favour, if the B.H.A. should give it their consideration; it would cost nothing to implement. The races are already in place; the prize money already allocated. Our jockeys put their bodies on the line every day of the week – remember these people do not only ride horses on the racecourse, they are schooling and riding work also – it is mean and distasteful for the powers-that-be to overlook them, to see them solely as cannon-fodder. This is not about bank-rolling the less talented. Or taking money from the successful and handing it to the lesser light as the Queen hands out Maundy money at Easter.
If we can justify races restricted to amateurs and apprentices, female jockeys and celebrities, why not the men and women who are the backbone of the weighing room?