Cliff Williams

The exploitation of the generous apprentice weight allowance by the trainers since the 2006 Jamaica Racing Commission (JRC) Riding School graduation exercise has left the greater number of long-serving jockeys further out in the financial cold.

Eighteen apprentices were passed fit to commence riding on July 29 and since then what has transpired is a revelation.

Eligible to claim four kilos, it was clear that any of these riders showing promise would be winning regularly. As a young race analyst, I used to spend a lot of time with Leslie B. McCrae. The late JRC Chief Handicapper was always at pains to point out that the apprentice claim, if the boy has competence, could make a huge positive impact on performance of the horse.

As things stand, many of the trainers from more prolific winner-producing stables are working with these young riders almost to the exclusion of the more experienced jockeys.

Since July 29, this batch of latest graduates has secured 744 rides. These mounts have yielded 71 winners, 62 second-place finishes and 88 third spots. This, against a background of only 727 races completed since New Year's Day 2006 with just about 6,000 mounts available.

New kids

What this means is that having started at the end of July, these new kids on the block have already won nearly 10 per cent of the year's races with only 14 weeks experience of public race riding.

Already, half-a-dozen of these riders have shown the kind of aptitude that is likely to ensure that they are going to be attracting live mounts with increasing frequency going forward.

Apart from the top flight jockeys, the others are going to be hard put to make ends meet for the foreseeable future.

There is a school of thought that this jurisdiction with less than a hundred racedays annually has always had too many licensed riders. In fact, there was a time, about a decade or so ago, when there were nearly 130 licensees but this has been reduced to a more sensible figure of about 80 capable of attracting rides.

As far as this group of professionals is concerned, it is important that the numbers of licensees be controlled to give each member the opportunity to earn a decent living from known income.

Trainers' permits are quite a different matter as the presumption is that they are capable of identifying new investors, hence there are around 140 in this category.

We have seen bizarre situations over the years where a number of riders have had to be scrambling during the last month of the current year to get the number of mounts so that their permits can be renewed for the following year.

Certainly if local racing is to shed its amateur status then a smaller, more highly-skilled jockey colony is going to be one of the key ingredients.

A VIEW FROM A CLIFF