I recently stumbled upon a livechat featuring Jerry Bailey and it got me thinking about the roles Jockeys play in the outcome of a race, and the art of jockey handicapping in general.

At this summer’s Belmont Stakes meet Junior Alvarado and Javier Castellano are battling it out for the riding title. They both have a 23% win percentage.

In what other sport can you crack open a bottle of champagne and celebrate attaining your profession’s highest honor though you have only been successful 23 percent of the time? So, on any given 9 race card the best jockey is still probably going to win 23% of the races on the card- a whopping two races!

This is not to say throw out jockey handicapping altogether, this is to say understand its limitations as well as what it can do for you.

There are two factors only that affect a jockey’s ability to ride-the surface and the horse’s running style. There are two surfaces and four primary running styles for a total of eight types of riding situations a jockey can find himself in. A jockey can ride a frontrunner, stalker, closer or a deep closer and he can do this on dirt or turf (we will pretend polytrack doesn’t exist for now).

So, let’s look at the maestro himself; Garret Gomez. Garret has a 18.38 win percentage on turf and 17.62 on the dirt which makes him pretty adept at both surfaces. If I had to make a jockey’s chart for Garret Gomez it would look something like this:

Needless to say, I wouldn’t hesitate playing a horse because Gomez was riding, but I should also note that I wouldn’t play a horse simply because Gomez was riding either. Now lets say that Garret Gomez was on the second best horse according to the TA Indicator and the best horse according to the TA indicator was ridden by Dean Butler. Though some of you are going to be completely surprised to hear this, Dean Butler’s turf and dirt numbers are almost identical! Here is how my jockey chart for Dean would look like:

I would go with Dean in most circumstances, but would seriously consider Gomez if he were on a stalker and Dean was riding a deep closer. In this circumstance I do think that Garret could steal the race away from Dean.

The main argument that I am trying to make is that I would use the TA indicator as well as my gut instincts about the horse’s abilities to make my decision, but my tie-breaker would be the jockey if it were a special scenario. It has also been my observation that jockeys do not struggle with distances or track conditions, but rather with surfaces and running styles. Patrick Valenzuela was great at sprints because frontrunners are also great sprinters, but if they were great routers he would’ve won a bunch of routes as well. His biggest win was going a mile and a quarter in the Kentucky Derby, and it was on a little black colt with lots of early speed. Valenzuela was never average; but if there was a situation were he looked less than spectacular, it was with deep closers. This means that if he were riding a deep closer, then that horse would have to have the best TA indicator in order for me to play it.

It is important to remember that the best jockeys will win 2 out of 9 races; the key is figuring out which two races they are going to win. The answer to that is usually the two races where the surface and the horse’s running style play to the jockey’s strengths.