Random Horse Racing Jockeys

So the tool gave you a jockey

You wanted a jockey and the tool up top gives you one, or several if you raise the number, from a list I keep by hand. It reaches across Britain, Ireland, America, Australia, Hong Kong, France and Japan, and across both codes of racing.

The tool is the simple part. Jockeys are the most misunderstood athletes in professional sport, partly because the horse takes the credit, and partly because the thing that makes their profession unique goes almost entirely unremarked.

The one sport where everybody competes together

Scroll this list and you will find Rachael Blackmore alongside Ruby Walsh. Hollie Doyle alongside Frankie Dettori. Michelle Payne, Julie Krone, Hayley Turner, Bryony Frost, sitting in the same list as the men, because they raced in the same races.

Horse racing is the only major professional sport in the world in which men and women routinely compete against each other on equal terms, in the same events, for the same prizes, with no separate category and no allowance. Not a novelty match. Every day, at every meeting. Michelle Payne won the Melbourne Cup, Australia's greatest race, and told the doubters what she thought of them on live television. Rachael Blackmore won the Grand National, and then the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the two hardest prizes in jump racing, against the best men alive. Nobody has ever suggested a women's Grand National, because the idea would be absurd. The horse does not know, and it turns out the horse was the only one whose opinion mattered.

The weight, and what it costs

The reason for that equality is also the source of the profession's cruelty. A racehorse carries a weight assigned by the handicapper, and the jockey plus saddle must make it. On the flat, that can mean riding at around fifty-two kilos, and a jockey must be at that weight tomorrow, and the day after, for twenty years.

The practice of getting there is called wasting: saunas, skipping in sweat suits, spitting, and eating very little. It is a sport whose athletes are simultaneously required to be extremely strong, because holding a half-tonne animal at forty miles an hour is a wrestling match conducted at the end of a rein, and extremely light. Jockeys are, kilogram for kilogram, among the strongest athletes alive, and they are permanently hungry. The physical toll is real. So are the falls: a jump jockey can expect to hit the ground roughly once in every dozen rides, from a great height, at speed, in front of half a tonne of horse that is still coming.

Flat and jumps are different careers

This list mixes two codes that share almost nothing but a horse, and the riders very rarely cross between them.

Flat racing is short, fast and about tactics and timing. The horses are young, the races last a minute or two, there are no obstacles, and the great flat jockeys are the lightest and the most cunning. Jump racing, called National Hunt in Britain and Ireland, sends older, heavier horses over hurdles or fences for as far as four and a half miles. The jockeys are taller, ride at higher weights, and take a physical beating that flat riders do not. A career in one is not preparation for the other. Lester Piggott and Frankie Dettori are flat men. Tony McCoy, Ruby Walsh, Richard Dunwoody, Rachael Blackmore and Paul Townend are jumps riders. Draw a name from this list and the first thing worth knowing is which sport they were actually in.

The numbers the greats put up

Because jockeys ride thousands of times, their records are enormous and rather beautiful.

Tony McCoy was champion jump jockey in Britain twenty consecutive times, which is to say for the entirety of his adult career nobody beat him once, and he rode more than four thousand winners while breaking most of the bones a person has. Bill Shoemaker, who stood a shade under five feet, won nearly nine thousand races in America. Lester Piggott won the Derby nine times across four decades, riding at weights that were barely survivable. And on one afternoon at Ascot in 1996, Frankie Dettori rode in all seven races and won all seven, at combined odds of many thousands to one, an afternoon that cost the bookmakers a fortune and is still simply called the Magnificent Seven. Draw one of these names and the record will be larger than you expect.

One rider, several names

A small warning about jockeys as a category, because it affects any list of them, including this one. Riders are known by nicknames, formal names and initials, often in the same career, and the sport uses all three interchangeably.

Frankie Dettori is Lanfranco Dettori on a racecard. Tony McCoy is A.P. McCoy in every newspaper in Britain and Sir Anthony McCoy since. Bill Shoemaker was universally called Willie. Racing simply never settled on one form, so a list assembled from different sources will accumulate the same person more than once under different names, and this list has done exactly that. It is worth knowing before you assume two riders are two people.

What a random jockey is good for

• Race day sweepstakes. Draw jockeys for a group before the Grand National, the Derby or the Melbourne Cup.
• Quiz and trivia prep. Ask which major sport has no separate women's category. Almost nobody says horse racing.
• Teaching and school projects. Draw a jockey and research the weights they ride at and what making them requires.
• Settling a debate. Pull two jockeys and argue the greater career, remembering to check whether they rode the same code.
• Discovering the sport. Draw a name and go and watch their most famous ride.

Jockey questions

Do male and female jockeys compete against each other?

Yes, routinely and at the highest level. Horse racing is the only major professional sport with no separate women's category. Rachael Blackmore has won both the Grand National and the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and Michelle Payne has won the Melbourne Cup.

How much do jockeys weigh?

Flat jockeys may need to ride at around fifty-two kilos including saddle, and must hold that year-round. The process of making the weight, called wasting, is one of the harshest physical regimes in professional sport.

What is the difference between flat and jump racing?

Flat racing has no obstacles, uses young horses and lasts a minute or two. Jump racing sends older horses over hurdles or fences for up to four and a half miles. The jockeys are different people with different bodies and rarely switch.

Can I pull several jockeys, or narrow the pick?

Both. Raise the number for a few at once, with none repeating in a single pull, and use the text boxes to narrow things, such as a starts-with letter or a keyword the name has to contain.

References

1. British Horseracing Authority. britishhorseracing.com
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, horse racing. britannica.com