Casting trainers as Scrooges is humbug
Yards must be allowed to benefit from all the cash and effort it takes to train aspiring jockeys
The cup of Christmas cheer in the racing world is not flowing over this year, in spite of “Nightmare on Corbyn Street” being averted. But there is at least a festive theme to the spat between the Flat trainers and their apprentice jockeys.
The trainers have been cast as grasping scrooges, purloining the hard-earned wages of their Tiny Tim apprentices; convenient stereotypes, of course, for the usual suspects to use but in reality an utterly unfair comparison.
When an apprentice signs up with a trainer, he/she is buying into the brand of that yard. They are, in effect, trying to use it to further their careers.
An obvious example of this is the Hannon yard in Wiltshire. Richards senior and junior have produced stars such as Ryan Moore, Dane O’neill, Pat Dobbs, Tom Marquand and Sean Levey from their production line. So, any young aspiring jockey following in their footsteps inherits a certain amount of credibility and kudos when chasing rides on the racetrack. And like champion jockey Moore, they aspire to moving on to other opportunities once they have surfed the wave of opportunity that the Hannons lent them.
But it should be acknowledged that young, inexperienced wannabe jockeys are a liability. Even if they have talent, they have no experience or knowledge so need to be taught pretty well everything. But teaching takes up time, either of the trainers in a small yard or experienced staff in bigger yards. And time is money.
We are not talking simply about training them not to fall off every time a nag has a buck and a kick. There are skills of communication that are required to impress intimidating clients and levels of deportment needed to smooth over disappointing efforts.
For a variety of reasons, however, most apprentices will not make it; lack of ability, deficiencies of physical and mental prowess and weight problems are insurmountable for many. But the financial burden of giving them a go is still born by the trainers. The Hannons have tried to launch the careers of 22 apprentices since 2012. Most of them were not profitable. But all of them had to be sent on the required training courses, be accommodated and provided with the necessary equipment to ply their trade.
For those apprentices who do have the ability to be let loose in public, there is the significant task of marketing them either to other trainers or the owners of horses in the master trainer’s yard, who may well be resistant to putting “some kid” on their expensive fourlegged pride and joy.
There is then the ultimate financial irony, examples of which are hard to find in any other sport. The trainer who pays the wages of the apprentice to work with his horses in his yard day in, day out finds that his budding star rider has gone to Redcar for the day to ride for another trainer. As absurd an idea as a youngster in the Manchester United academy taking time off on full wages to go and play for one of Chelsea’s teams.
Of course, there may have been trainers in the past that locked their apprentices in the hayloft, fed them bread and water and treated them like slave labour. It was not unusual to dine with a swell of a trainer and find that the champion apprentice was doubling up as his butler. But those times have long gone. They are also not shoving them up their chimneys any more.
So, the question that racing has to ask itself is: who is going to train the jockeys of the future, and what is the cost of that function? But trust me, a jockey nurtured in the rough and tumble of a racing yard will always be superior to one produced in the contrived atmosphere of a racing school.
But if transparency is what is required to ensure apprentices get a fair deal, perhaps the British Horseracing Authority should require trainers with apprentices to produce accounts relating to them. Not that trainers should not be allowed to make a profit from this endeavour. The election result last week endorsed that we are not yet a Marxist state.