@davidc4430 wrote:
a bond between horse and rider? are you kidding? the jockeys in 99% of cases dont know a horse personally, they dont get up every day and take the horses out and feed em and excersise em and wash em ect ect.
they turn up at the track, climb on board and start hitting em with a whip until the race ends, then they get off and get on another horse!
Have you ever had anything to do with race horses? Have you ever worked in a racing stable?
My daughter was a stable hand for Gai Waterhouse.....she cleaned out stables, fed horses, washed them down after exercise. She also rode the horses from the stables to the race track every morning so the race jockeys could exercise them on the track.
There was a bond between the stable hands and the horses and the jockeys and the horses.
The jockeys do know the horses personally as you put it. When a jockey starts out he is expected to front up 7 days a week in the early hours of the morning to exercise the horses on the track. Race day jockeys have well and truly put in the hard yards every day of the week....they do not just turn up at the track, climb aboard and hit the horse with a whip till the end of the race.
Most of the top jockeys turn up at the race track and the first stop is the stables to check on the horses they will be riding that day. They talk to the stable hands to see if there is anything that they need to know. And they don't just hop off one horse onto the next one....who do you think saddles and unsaddles the horses? Yep, those uncaring jockeys who just hop aboard. No jockey worth his salt would let someone else saddle the horse he is going to ride....it could mean the difference between life and death if it is not done properly.
Most trainers have a couple of Stable Jockeys who ride the majority of their horses and the trainers soon work out who rides a certain horse best. They ususally put the same jockey on that horse for all it's races. The top horses are always ridden by the same top jockey and they develop a very close bond. The top jockeys often follow horses from one stable to another, especially if the owner requests it.
Most jockey's are real horse lovers.....racing is more than just a job to them.
When we were showing there were a few children always looking for a lift to local shows. One young lad was always wanting a lift as his father worked on Saturdays. The kid was a lovely kid and always very grateful when we took him and his horse to the shows.
It was a while before we realised what his full name was and that his father was a well known jockey. One Sunday morning after a very big race meeting the boy called us to come and look at his new pony....and there was his father mucking out the stable just like any other parent. That year he won the Premier Jockey Award.
Before you start knocking the racing fraternity maybe you should talk to some of them and understand that it is not just about money.
Most horse people really do love the animals in their charge.
