Should amateur jockeys be paid?

I’ve always loved the story of Ireland’s first Gold medallist at the Olympics Games, Dubliner John Pius Boland, who competed at the inaugural modern games in 1896. He had travelled to Athens on holidays to simply watch the events, but upon hearing of poor numbers of entries for the Tennis he put his name down. He borrowed a racket, but couldn’t find tennis shoes to fit and played in leather shoes before going on to win gold medals in both the singles and doubles.

Stories like this are the epitome of amateur sport, but nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to work out who is amateur and who is not. At this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris most Gold medal winners will receive cash bonuses from their own sporting federations or countries. Track and field athletes will get $50,000 for a gold medal from their federation, while the Hong Kong Jockey Club is involved in sponsoring an award scheme for competitors from the special administrative region that will reward each gold medallist with €700,000. Saudi Arabia famously gave their Karate silver medallist from the Tokyo games in 2021 over €1 million when he returned home.

Aside from the payments for the medallists we have also seen the introduction of high earning tennis players, golfers, basketballers and other professional sports people representing their countries at the Games in recent years, so in reality the Olympics is no longer the bastion of amateur sport it once was.

Professionalism in sport is not in any way a bad thing. Rugby Union has gone from strength to strength since starting to pay players in 1995 and standards of competition and welfare of the participants can greatly improve when sports are professional. The question for me is where do you draw the line between amateurs and professionals in any given sport?

You would think this is a simple question to answer. The dictionary definition of amateur is a person who engages in a pursuit, especially a sport, for pleasure or interest, but not as a job.

Those playing Gaelic Games are often held up as examples of one of the last true strongholds of amateur sports people. No one playing Gaelic games earns a salary and the vast majority of participants simply do it for the love of the game, but some might argue that those competing at the elite level for the top counties are professionals in everything, but name. Their day jobs are often linked to the fact they are county players and this in turn facilitates their professional approach to the sport which is required to compete at the highest level. Expenses and other benefits some receive also aids them to focus singularly on their chosen sport for long periods of each year.

When it comes to amateur status, National Hunt horse racing must have one of the oddest set ups of any sport. Amateur and professional riders regularly compete against each other on equal terms in the same contest which is most unusual. There is also significant prize money on offer in races confined to amateur riders, but unlike their professional counterparts they do not receive any share of it.

But the strangest part of all when it comes to horse racing is that there are two distinct groups within the amateur ranks. Like many other amateur sports there are amateur riders that compete in races as a pastime, separate from their day jobs, but there is a whole other cohort that are basically professional in every respect and permitted to fly the amateur flag of convenience for their entire careers.

These professional-amateurs are generally, but not always, too heavy to sustain a career in the professional ranks where the riding weights are lower and instead opt to ply their trade in the calmer waters of amateur only races and point-to-points.

It is no secret that riding in point-to-point races and bumpers can offer a very lucrative career for those riders talented enough to reach the top and it’s an utterly bizarre system where some amateur riders seem to make far more money out of the game than many of their professional counterparts.

I’ve never quite understood why the regulators have always turned a blind eye to this aspect of the game. They are fastidious about every other element of the sport, sanctioning trainers and jockeys for a myriad of minor mistakes, but never think to question the fact that some amateur jockeys travel the length and breadth of the country riding in races day in day out, year after year with no visible income.

Wouldn’t it make more sense nowadays to just pay all jockeys a riding fee regardless of whether they are amateur or professional. Jump racing is a professional sport and yet it has a structure reliant on amateur jockeys competing in races to make some of its profits - eleven races during the lucrative Punchestown Festival are confined to amateurs. Many amateur rider races end up being large betting contests and this in turn links directly to the Media Rights money which is vital to racecourses.

In golf there are strict rules governing prizes for amateur players, but you can still pick up non-cash prizes to the value of €575 for winning an amateur competition. Even if horse racing is averse to paying amateur jockeys a riding fee couldn’t they simply be given one4all vouchers or an equivalent when they win or place to reflect the contribution they make to the sport.

Changing the subject, I was sad to hear last week that former racecourse bookmaker and co-founder of Paddy Power bookmakers David Power had passed away at the age of 77.

David was the biggest layer in the Irish on-course betting rings during the years that I worked at the races returning the starting prices (SP). The job of returning the SP was akin to a football referee in that whatever decision you made regarding the odds of a horse one side or the other wouldn’t be happy. Punters thought the odds should be bigger and the bookies invariably thought they should be shorter.

With large sums of money involved tempers often got frayed, but David Power who had more at stake than anyone with his interests in Paddy Power never once raised his voice and was always most courteous in his interactions with myself and others who returned the SP.

I remember on one occasion after a contentious SP return explaining to him and other bookmakers that their habit of rubbing their boards and stepping down from their pitches before the off of races was impacting my ability to make a fair SP return. Once the betting activity had gone quiet and the horses were loading into the stalls David would often wipe the prices from his board and stop betting which meant I couldn’t include any of the odds from the biggest layer in the ring when calculating the SP.

From that day forward he made a point of keeping all horses priced on his board until the race was officially off and on the odd occasion when he might catch my eye as a race was starting he would playfully gesture towards his fully chalked up board with the tip of his pipe and smile.

May he rest in peace.