No athlete works harder than jockeys and few athletes are less knowledgeable. According to a study, which ranked sports based on the number of deaths per 1,000 participants, thoroughbred horse racing is the most dangerous athletic activity, surpassing skydiving, hang gliding, mountaineering, scuba diving, college football and boxing, among others. In an average year, the Jockeys’ Guild receives 2,500 injury notifications, and a typical jockey will be sidelined with injuries at least three times.
It’s not just luck that keeps a great jockey in the saddle of a 1400 pound Thoroughbred horse while racing at speeds of up to 55 MPH. These highly coordinated men and women must remain upright in the chair, striking an exquisitely difficult balance to avoid falling forward or backward in the chair (which could easily prove fatal). While making this tremendous effort, they must simultaneously keep a cool head, make strategic calculations “and read” the horse’s mood, processing enormous amounts of microsecond-by-microsecond information. They must practice consummate athleticism, combining strength, coordination and calculation at the same time.
And then there’s the whole weight thing.
Like wrestlers, jockeys’ lives are governed by a scale. If you don’t make weight, you can’t compete, and the weights jockeys must maintain are almost unimaginably low for most average-sized adults. Horses are assigned to carry riders in different graduated weight classes, called “imposts,” and in the 1920s the imposts ranged from 83 to 130 pounds. Jockeys during this period, “the heroic, tough-as-nails era of American horse racing”, were known to live on 600-calorie-a-day diets, depriving themselves so much of water that they had to lie in vats. of ice cubes to prevent overheating and return to work minutes after suffering near-fatal injuries. Some of them ran for hours in the scorching sun under layers of clothing, hoping to lose that last crucial ounce.
And those were the less extreme expedients that the jockeys of the thirties resorted to. As Laura Hillenbrand recounts in Seabiscuit, her fascinating 2001 account of the great late-1930s racehorse by that name, jockeys were known to use homemade diuretics in prodigious amounts, purging what little they ate with Epsom salts, water and other potent concoctions that occasionally exploded bottles of them. Bulimia was common. So were pneumonia and tuberculosis, caused, some historians believe, by weakness due to the traumatic effects of malnutrition. Most terrifying of all, some riders willingly swallowed tapeworms. After the intestinal parasite had helped them ‘shrink’, they went on a hospital visit and lost the worm ‘until it was time to ‘shrink’ again.
Today’s jockeys still need to be on the lookout for anorexia and bulimia, frequent occupational hazards in this sport as well as in many others with weight requirements (dance, gymnastics, running, wrestling). Most apprentice jockeys can’t afford to go over 105 pounds, and very experienced Thoroughbred horse racers should keep it around 113, hard to believe. (Naturally, tall people are rarely allowed to participate in thoroughbred horse racing.) travel schedules’ up to twelve races a day, for some. Above all else, jockeys must love their horses, displaying the same insight and sympathy for them that great trainers are known for. That skill alone can allow them to make the split-second judgment calls that win races. And only that love could make the pain, the deprivation, the hard work, and the sacrifice worth it.
Watching thoroughbred horse races, on the other hand, can be as exciting and enjoyable as practicing it can be exhausting. Whether you’re a fan of horse racing betting or just love the thrill of live horse racing, the sport is as full of drama and passion as any. Tip services can help you maximize your enjoyment of Thoroughbred horse racing by clarifying the details and letting you know who the favorites are.