The FanSided guide to Horse Racing: How old are Jockeys?

All of the horses racing in the Kentucky Derby may be the same age, but their jockey’s won’t be.

Horse racing, and essentially all of the sports involving horses, is unique in that the humans who participate don’t really lose any standing as they get older. The National Thoroughbred Racing Association regulates when and how jockeys can compete. Each jockey has to be licensed in order to ride in a race, and most states don’t grant those until the jockey in question is 18 years old.

Quite a bit of work has to goes into getting a license, though, so people as young as 16 can start riding horses on the track in the mornings, working them out. Once a jockey gets their license they have to convince a trainer to give them a ride. This is where the relationships, built by working horses in the early morning, come into play. Trainers need to have a certain amount of trust in the rider: to ride the race smartly and bring the horse back healthy. Some of that is luck, but a bad jockey can doom a horse before the race starts.

Racing itself is a little different, just because jockeys have to stay on such a strict regimen to maintain their weight. However, you still see a much wider variety in ages among the jockeys than you do in most other sports.

In the Triple Crown races, the full breadth of youth and experience can be seen. The youngest jockey to win the Derby was Alonzo Clayton. He won the event at 15 years old in 1892. Obviously a few things have changed since then. Jockey’s at that time were not necessarily even required to wear helmets. Another youngster, Steve Cauthen, won the whole Triple Crown at the age of 18, in 1978 on Affirmed.

On the other end of the spectrum, the oldest jockey to win the Derby was Bill Shoemaker. He won in 1986, at the age of 54. Shoemaker had a very long and successful career, winning the Kentucky Derby 4 times over the span of three decades, and held the record for total wins for nearly 30 years.

Next: 20 short stories about the 2018 Kentucky Derby horses

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