majxmom wrote:Comparing women jockeys to men jockeys presents a statistical problem.
It's very difficult for an average woman jockey to get a good start in this business compared to the average man. I know oodles of male owners and trainers who state unequivocally that they would never use a girl jock, and I know very, very few who are willing to use one even once. Sometimes it's because they think they don't have the talent, and sometimes it's because the older men are of a different generation and refuse to risk a girl's life.
But with those kinds of numbers against her, it's hard for a woman jockey to get the decent mounts she needs to build a reputation. If you get mounts no one can win with, and therefore you never win and don't even make a good showing, you develop a reputation --however unfair-- of being a lousy jock. A new jock only has a few weeks to show that he/she can get a little more out of a mount than one might expect. After that, they are either on the way up or on the way out.
This may have been true 30 years ago, and might still be true at a few tracks with strong jockey colonies but at most tracks there are desparate owners with decent horses in small barns who will give any jockey a chance if they will put an honest effort into riding the horse. Perhaps this is why you see women leading the jockey standings at some of the smaller tracks. A willingness to give honest efforts on any horse they are offered is how all jockeys establish themselves. So if a young women rider isn't getting opportunities it is because she isn't putting the effort into getting on horses in the smaller barns to prove herself.
) as I have decades of hard, hard, hard physical training and skill behind me. As a natural light weight, I had no trouble hanging guys who hadn't eaten in 5 years on a coat hook in the room who needed it