Because my mail programme automatically empties the trash every couple of days I can't now find the recent letter in which it was asserted that it's becoming common in international endurance to put 'jockeys' up. So I can't quote it verbatim. Anyway, it just didn't ring true with what experience I have of international endurance. I thought that, rather than simply make some equally unsupported counter-claim - unsupported, that is, by anything other than having actually gone to quite a lot of international endurance rides - I'd see if there were any stats on the matter.
I guess the WEC in Malaysia would qualify as a good example of top-end international endurance. There are 141 confirmed entries from a total of 33 countries. Of these horses there were 5 for which I could find no information whatsoever, most likely because the site I use is pretty insistent about spelling and after a while I couldn't be bothered with the 10th possible version of whatever name. So that brings the sample down to 136. I'm not sure exactly how 'jockey' is to be defined, but assume it's ?intended to imply a rider with little or no previous experience of the horse outside that necessary to qualify for the event (although that in itself implies a certain familiarity - it's not really that easy to complete a 160k ride, after all, let alone do so in such a way that you get to the WEC). ?I decided that if the rider has been the horse's regular partner, even though not its owner, they would be acquitted of the accusation of being just a jockey. Even if the database I'm using doesn't record the horse's owner - as for 5 of the US horses, for example - regular riding gets you through.
So. Out of 136 horses I could find a total of 5 whose riders at this year's WEC do not appear to be the horse's owner or regular rider. Of these, one gets the thumbs down because ownership isn't stated and she's only ridden it in two of its eight international starts. That's 5/136, multiply by ? ? ?divide ? ?hang on, 100 times 5 ? ??
someone else can figure it out as a percentage, but even I can see it's not going to be a big one.?
Probably the real statisticians out there will rip my little endeavour to bits because it doesn't use a big enough sample or it doesn't identify a trend or whatever. In which case feel free to provide some kind of back-up, other than the anecdotal, to support the original criticism. "Tilting at windmills" also means "taking up arms against an imaginary enemy"....?
