How I made £35,000 in just 90 SECONDS
Jockey Jim Crowley can earn a fortune but for him it’s all about the sport
Q What did your parents teach you about money? A TO BE careful with it. My parents did not have much money so they tried to teach me to look after it. Even when I was young, I was always a bit of a saver. My parents owned horse livery yards and trained horses for point-to-point, which is a type of amateur racing over fences. That was not well-paid. We could not afford holidays and luxuries. Whatever money was spare went on my riding. I could not afford a pony of my own – I used to have to borrow other people’s.
Q What was the first paid work you ever did? A WHEN I was 12, I started breaking ponies in. That is how I earned my pocket money, along with two gruelling half-hour paper rounds before school.
Q Have you ever struggled to make ends meet? A YES. I left school at 16, moved out of my parents’ house and got a job as a stablehand for a local racehorse trainer. I enjoyed it, but it was hard work, riding four or five racehorses every morning and mucking out the stables.
I would start at 6am, finish at 1pm, then go back between 4pm and 6pm to groom the horses. My pay packet was £120 a week.
While I was doing that, I worked as an amateur jockey, which meant I took part in races across the country but I did not get paid to ride. It was a good experience, but I had to use the money I earned as a stablehand to pay my travel costs. I was so hard-up I once had to borrow £20 for petrol to get home from a racetrack.
Q Have you ever been paid silly money for a job? A YES. Three years ago, I won a Champion’s Day race that lasted about 90 seconds. My jockey’s commission for the prize I won was £35,000 – that is the most I’ve ever earned per minute. Of course, it is wonderful to earn that much money, but you do this job because you love the sport. Winning £35,000 was obviously nice, but it did not make a huge
difference to me. It might sound blasé, but it is just a part of my job. It is the prestige of winning the race I care about, rather than the money.
Q What was the best year of your life, in terms of the money you made? A LAST year. It has been widely reported that my winnings amassed more than £1.9million in prize money. I do not want to say how much my share of that prize money was, but I rode 187 winners and was paid to do more than 1,000 rides. Flat jockeys typically get 7 per cent of the prize money for a win and around 5 per cent for a place, plus you earn £120 per ride.
Q What is the most expensive thing you have ever bought just for fun? A AN AUDI A8 I bought for £40,000 two years ago. It is important to me to have a comfortable car, because as a jockey, I live on the road. I usually have to drive between 40,000 and 60,000 miles a year. But I hate driving. I would much rather be riding a horse.
Q What is the biggest money mistake you have ever made? A TAKING the wrong course in a jump race in Italy. The jumps are not numbered over there, which makes it confusing for British jockeys. I won the race, but was disqualified. The prize was £200,000 and I would have got £20,000 as my cut. That was quite a boob. To this day, I cannot even take comfort in the fact that I won the race. That just makes it worse.
Q What is the best money decision you have made? A SWITCHING from being a steeplechase jockey, riding over jumps, to flat racing on a level racecourse, ten years ago. That had not been done before and many jockeys think it does not make sense to do it because steeplechase jockeys get paid £150 a ride, so £30 more than flat jockeys. But there are a lot more races for TREAT: Jim enjoys the occasional meal at a Thai restaurant
flat jockeys and the chance of injury is lower. I realised I could increase the amount of rides I was doing from 400 to 1,000 a year, which would increase my earnings overall. By running in more races, I would also have a greater chance of winning more prize money. I had to lower my weight though.
Q Do you save into a pension or invest in the stock market? A FORTUNATELY, the Professional Jockeys Association has set up a pension scheme for all jockeys, which is funded by a deduction of 0.6 per cent of racing’s overall prize money pool. It means every time I ride in a race, I effectively earn a contribution to my pension.
I do not invest in the stock market. I do not know enough about it so I steer clear. Instead, whenever I have spare cash, I usually invest in my own property – either my stables or my home, by doing home improvements.
Q Do you own any property? A YES, my home in Sussex. My wife and I converted it from an old stone barn into a five-bedroom family home ourselves. As a result, we have increased its value since we bought it ten years ago.
It has land around it so we have added a swimming pool and paddocks. All three children collect ponies. It is fantastic I can provide that for them. I am aware that they are lucky compared with what I had when I was young and I try to tell them that.
Q What is the one little luxury you like to treat yourself to? A EVERY now and again, a meal at a Thai restaurant. Obviously as a jockey I have to watch my weight. Most of the time I eat really healthily – fruit, vegetables and fish are the main basis of my diet – and I do a lot of exercise. I run three or four miles a day and ride in anything between six and ten races a day. So I do enjoy it when I go out for a meal – and Thai is my favourite.
Q What is your number one financial priority? A TO BE so financially secure that when I finish racing, I can make sure my kids grow up happy and healthy. Jim Crowley was talking to Donna Ferguson.