What Does It Take to Become a Jockey?

Article by Ken Snyder

Getting on a 1,100-pound Thoroughbred to race in traffic takes far more than diminutive size, weight and out-sized courage. 

It is telling that when asked if the Ortiz brothers, Jose and Irad, showed ability when entering Puerto Rico’s famed jockey school, the director, Ana Velázquez, responded “Not really,” adding they were at the same level as most of the other students. 

Yes, courage and natural athleticism must transfer to riding, but the skill to succeed as a race rider, as in the case with not just the Ortiz brothers but all aspiring jockeys, is learned…either on the job or, alternately and fortunately for some, in jockey schools. Velázquez expresses it succinctly but with dead-on accuracy: “It’s more than climbing on a horse and you go.”

Three schools in Puerto Rico, Canada and the U.S. are prominent in training jockeys. In fact, they are the only jockey schools in those countries. They are the Escuela Vocacional Hípica (the Vocational Equestrian School of Puerto Rico ((VES)) at the Hipódromo Camarero racetrack in Canóvanas; the “Professional Racetrack Exercise Rider/Jockey Program” at Olds College in Canada (in partnership with Horse Racing Alberta); and the Bluegrass Community and Technical College’s (BCTC) Equine program in Lexington, Kentucky, founded by Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron in 2006. 

Future jockeys at each school don’t come from where you would think and most surprisingly, in the case of VES in Puerto Rico, don’t have the background you would expect. 

“Students have to have a solid foundation as riders because of our short course [fifteen weeks],” said Theresa Sealey of Horse Racing Alberta, who directed the Olds program for sixteen years through last December. 

That doesn’t always mean, however, a solid foundation in horsemanship.

In the past, rural kids showed horses or barrel raced, according to Sealey. “Now we’re getting urban kids that have maybe taken a lesson here and there, learning how to ride—that kind of thing,” she added. 

“When we first started the program, we assumed [that] if you could ride a horse, you knew how to take care of it and knew something about injuries, feed, grooming, and wrapping legs. Now, lots of these kids go and take a lesson and never do any of that…never even tacked a horse.” 

Amazingly, Kendall said some students entering the BCTC Equine program have “little to no riding experience.

“I’ve had several students come in, and they just have a natural seat to them; they’re natural athletes so they breeze past the fitness part of the tryout, they score perfectly, and then they kind of muster their way through the basic riding. They actually get into the class, and some of them have gone on to do very, very well.”

Corinne Andros is a professional jockey who has riden in Abu Dhabi, Poland, and the U.S. as a graduate, she is now an Olds College instructor.

The biggest surprise is that Ana Velázquez at VES disregards a riding background altogether. “They know how to ride sometimes, but it’s not required. 

“Sometimes they bring with them things that belong to other horse disciplines.

“We like them more if they don’t know anything. We start from scratch,” she said.

Student size varies between the three programs. BCTC accepts only six students into its riding program and Olds, a maximum of fifteen students. The current class at VES is nineteen students in the jockey program. 

The students, of course, need horses. VES has eleven stabled in the school’s own barn at Hipódromo Camarero, and at Olds, Horse Racing Alberta loans each student a horse for training. BCTC Equine maintains twelve horses at The Thoroughbred Training Center outside Lexington and complements that string with six Equicizers, including the only MK10 racing simulator in the U.S. that tests rider balance—a critical factor in race riding. 

Literal size is a discriminator in whom each school accepts, as might be expected. BCTC Equine specifies a weight no greater than 145 pounds to accommodate students who might choose exercise riding over a jockey career.

VES has tougher requirements matching what will be required on the racetrack as a professional. “The apprentices will have to ride with 109 pounds, including equipment,” said Ana Velázquez. “The equipment will weigh around three pounds, so they have to be no more than 102 or 103.” This weight allows for some extra pounds gained as students add muscle from riding daily and becoming fit.

While Olds’ program is the shortest, both BCTC Equine and VES conduct two-year programs. 

Each school starts students off with introductions to the Thoroughbred breed and the racing industry before any student sits astride a Thoroughbred. “They will learn everything from nutrition to anatomy—internal and external; the type of lameness that horses get; the injuries that they might encounter and how to identify those; and types of illnesses,” said Sealey. The Olds program begins with four-week remote learning from home to introduce and orient students—some of whom, amazingly, have never been to a racetrack.

 “That first piece is also about the racetrack, which includes things like the behaviors of horses— why they do what they do. That’s something they can study online. 

“When they get to us that first week,” referring to in-person training on the Olds campus in the school’s indoor arena, “we can jump right into what they learned in their curriculum.

“They don’t just learn to ride; they learn how to care for the horse and its health from the inside out.”

In the final five weeks, instruction moves to Horse Racing Alberta’s Century Mile Racetrack and Casino at nearby Nisku and a portion of the curriculum called “Earn and Learn.”

“They work in the morning for the trainers, exercising the horses—working with some mentors—and then they come for class in the afternoon,” said Sealey. Century Mile has a classroom facility on its grounds.

“It’s kind of a neat thing for them to be able to get on horses every day, look after them, get to know them, and then see them race during the season,” she said.

VES’s two-year program is broken into four, six-month phases. The first is horse care, grooming and balance training using drums mounted on springs. Next, students ride horses in a round pen and become familiar with entering and breaking from a starting gate. They progress from there to a small track used by the school and riding school horses before moving to the main track at Hipódromo Camarero. They continue with school horses until proficient to breeze and race (yes, race) trainers’ horses stabled there.

In the BCTC program, at minimum, students take Equine Care Lab, Training Principles and Practices, and Intro to the Racing Industry. “Those classes are prerequisites or corequisites because they have to take them at least the same semester as Racehorse Riding Skills 1; and they have to pass all of those classes to move forward to Racehorse Riding Skills 2,” said Kendall.

“Exercise Rider” are key words in the Old’s program title, as an overwhelming percentage of students aspiring to be jockeys gravitate to this on the racetrack. BCTC Equine and VES also offer a separate exercise riding “major” as an alternative to jockey training. After schooling and some experience on the racetrack, however, that percentage changes drastically. “By the time they leave the program, only five to ten percent actually pursue being a jockey after six months or so,” said Sealey.

For Kendall at BCTC Equine, the percentage is higher for those who want a jockey license. “I would say we’re probably around twenty-five percent.” 

“As they get into the industry and start to understand the comforts that come with a salaried position as an exercise rider, many kind of lean away from the jockey pathway,” she added.

Upon admission, VES divides students between those wanting to be jockeys and those wanting to be exercise riders. While some students, especially those who enter the school at age 16 to be jockeys, might outgrow the jockey course, students in the one-year exercise rider program who weigh in the 110-pound range often switch to the jockey program and the second year of that program. 

The regimen with BCTC Equine is not for the faint of heart or more accurately, for those who might faint—period. Students will spend two to four hours a day on an Equicizer or on horseback. The kicker is that they are encouraged to do physical training outside the program.

“I have a graduate who is now a personal trainer, and she does a lot of fitness work with our riders,” said Kendall.  

“This last group that I had, they would actually go through fitness training with her at 5 a.m., be at the barn by 8 a.m. to make sure their stalls were cleaned and their horses were groomed, and then we’d be in the barn riding sets till about two or three o’clock in the afternoon.”

Kendall’s program culminates with 12-week internships that can launch careers in racing. “We place them with quality trainers that are going to help take their careers to the next level.  

“When they’re getting ready to start having those conversations about getting their license, they’re connected with the right trainers to help them along,” said Kendall.

Joe Sharp was one of those trainers. BCTC Equine grad Erica Herrforth won in her first race, riding Sharp’s horse, Carry On, last May at Churchill Downs. 

“They need the connections more than anything to be able to take those next big steps,” said Kendall. 

“We really kind of serve more as agents,” she added.

Sealey recognizes both the traditional route to becoming a jockey—exercise riding first—with the limitations of any school.

“We can’t teach anyone to be a jockey in fifteen weeks; I don’t care how good you are,” Sealey said.

That’s not to say that the school hasn’t produced top jockeys. Olds has graduated three Sovereign Award Outstanding Apprentice Jockeys: Omar Moreno, Scott Williams, and Sheena Ryan. Moreno also won an Eclipse Award as Outstanding Apprentice Jockey.

At VES, the goal is full-fledged jockeys ready for an apprentice license at the end of schooling. According to Ana Velázquez, most students will have agents coming out of school, and 80% will migrate to the U.S. for more opportunities and larger purses.

If there is a “Harvard” of jockey schools, it is VES. Four of the top 10 jockeys last year, according to Equibase, were graduates: the Ortiz brothers, John Velazquez, and Manny Franco. The impetus for the school, which opened in 1975, came from Puerto Rican jockey legends Angel Cordero and Eddie Belmonte who inspired Agustín Mercado Reverón to establish VES.

Ana Velázquez points to the school’s location inside Hipódromo Camarero as the principal reason for the school’s success. What it provides students—full-scale race riding—is of inestimable value in training future jockeys. Students will race against each other in ten races out of the gate, roughly every two weeks during mornings after workouts at Hipódromo Camarero. Perhaps more beneficial and definitely more exciting, the students compete against each other another ten times a year in the racetrack’s last race of the day. The preparation and atmosphere are exactly what they will experience as licensed apprentice jockeys.

“The only thing we don’t have is betting on these races,” said Velázquez. All practice races, morning or afternoon, are at five furlongs except for the last race in the school’s curriculum, which is a mile. Races serve as breezes with a plus for Hipódromo Camarero trainers with horses gaining valuable experience running in company in full fields.

“We have a prize, a trophy, flowers, and all that,” she added.

The school’s outstanding reputation extends also to exercise riders. 

“I talk to Todd Pletcher every winter,” said Velázquez. In her last conversation Pletcher told her that of seventeen exercise riders on his payroll, fifteen were from VES.

It's a safe bet that more Ortizes will come along from VES, but also more Carol Cedenos, who graduated from the VES in 2006 and who has earned more than $30 million in her career. In fact, more female than male riders might be expected in the future. Four of this year’s VES students are women, but that is nothing compared to Olds or BCTC Equine.  

Sealey at Olds said the ratio of male-to-female students is “one boy to ten girls.” At BCTC Equine, it is 80% female-to-male currently, according to Kendall, who added that in 2020, the class was all female.  

Move over Emma-Jayne Wilson. For that matter, watch out, Irad and Jose Ortiz. Competition’s coming.