WikiRacing
RacingJockeys
Riders with careers: four skills, growth and ageing, apprentice allowances, booking a freelancer, signing and the jockey pool.
Jockeys are riders with careers of their own. Every stable starts with an apprentice; stables can hold up to 3, and Club freelancers ride for anyone for a fee. A jockey’s skills grow with rides, and over a few seasons the young rider from your yard might become a champion for someone else, then retire.
By the numbers live from the rules
- Jockeys a stable can hold
- 3
- Pool size
- about 1.5 per active stable (raced or visited in 14 days)
- Career
- 4 weeks apprentice, 12 weeks prime, 4-8 weeks veteran
- Retirement notice
- 2 weeks
- Apprentice claims
- 7 lb until 10 winners, 5 lb until 25 winners, 3 lb until 50 winners
- Idle stables
- after 21 days away their jockeys rejoin the Club pool
- Transfer window
- closes every Sunday at 20:00 UTC
- Wages
- A 600, B 400, C 250, D 150, E 100 credits a week
- Open offers
- 3 per stable
- Development bonus
- 500 credits
Four skills
Each skill runs from 0 to 1000 and shows as a grade from A to E, like a horse’s stats. Behind each sits a hidden potential: the most that skill can grow to. A young jockey’s page shows a range (“C to A”) that narrows as they ride; after 60 rides you know exactly.
| Skill | What it does in a race |
|---|---|
| Gate | Breaking from the stalls: fewer slow starts. |
| Pace judgement | Rates the horse through the race: less energy wasted. |
| Finishing drive | Gets more out of the horse in a late battle. |
| Horse handling | Steadier day form; settles a keen horse early. |
The skills are sealed into the field with the runner when entries close, so old races replay exactly whatever the jockey does later. A jockey never turns a bad horse into a good one: between the best and the worst rider is worth about two to three rating points in total.
| Rider (all skills) | Slow-start chance | Energy drain | Late-battle response | Day-form swing | Keen horse's early waste |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E (a raw apprentice) | 93% | 99% | 75% | 97% | 92% |
| C | 75% | 98% | 85% | 89% | 73% |
| A | 58% | 97% | 96% | 81% | 53% |
| Grade | Overall skill (mean of the four) |
|---|---|
| A | 750+ |
| B | 600-749 |
| C | 450-599 |
| D | 300-449 |
| E | 0-299 |
Growing and ageing
Every ride teaches: 10 experience, plus up to 15 more for a strong field and up to 15 more for a rich race. Each skill then moves towards its potential, quickly at first and more slowly near the ceiling. Veterans slowly lose their gate, finishing drive and handling; pace judgement holds.
- Apprentice: the first 4 weeks (about a season).
- Prime: the next 12 weeks (about three seasons).
- Veteran: 4 to 8 weeks of slow decline, then retirement, announced 2 weeks ahead.
Apprentice allowances
In handicaps (where horses carry weights, 1 lb = 1 rating point), a jockey who hasn’t ridden many winners claims an allowance off the horse’s weight. The racecard shows it after the name: “T. Ashby (5)”.
| Career winners | Allowance |
|---|---|
| 0-9 | 7 lb |
| 10-24 | 5 lb |
| 25-49 | 3 lb |
| 50+ | none |
Booking a ride
The entry sheet picks the jockey for a Live race: your best jockey who is free at the off, unless you choose another of yours (free) or a Club freelancer (a fee by grade and purse, burned). A jockey rides one horse per race and can’t take two rides less than 10 minutes apart. Club runners get a freelancer drawn from the race seed.
| Purse | A freelancer | B freelancer | C freelancer | D freelancer | E freelancer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 100 | 80 | 50 | 30 | 20 |
| 2,000 | 100 | 80 | 50 | 30 | 20 |
| 2,500 | 130 | 90 | 60 | 40 | 30 |
| 6,000 | 300 | 230 | 150 | 90 | 60 |
| 20,000 | 1,000 | 750 | 500 | 300 | 200 |
Contracts and wages
Every jockey a stable holds is on a contract: 4 weeks, 8 weeks or to the end of the season, a weekly wage in credits (taken on Monday, burned), a number of rides promised each week and a buyout price. A stable’s first apprentice rides without a wage for its first 4 weeks. If you can’t pay a week’s wage, nothing is taken (your balance never goes below zero): the jockey simply leaves at Sunday’s transfer window and the debt is forgotten. You get a note 2 and 1 weeks before a contract ends.
| Grade | Standard wage a week | Offer range | Signing fee | Buyout range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 600 | 300-1,800 | 4,000 | 4,000-40,000 |
| B | 400 | 200-1,200 | 2,000 | 2,000-20,000 |
| C | 250 | 125-750 | 1,000 | 1,000-10,000 |
| D | 150 | 75-450 | 500 | 500-5,000 |
| E | 100 | 50-300 | 250 | 250-2,500 |
The transfer window
Every Sunday at 20:00 UTC the transfer window closes. Its free agents are jockeys whose contracts end that week, jockeys released (or let go by a stable idle 21 days), jockeys who weren’t paid or were let down on rides, and the week’s new apprentices. Until the deadline any stable can make an offer from the jockey’s page: up to 3 open at once, each holding the signing fee until the window closes (returned if the jockey goes elsewhere).
At the deadline the jockeys choose. Each one ranks its offers by what its personality values, and the matching is worked out jockey-first (deferred acceptance): every jockey ends up with the best offer it could get from a stable that would keep it, and no jockey and stable would both rather have each other. A stable fills at most its free places (3 jockeys in all); between two jockeys it keeps the one it offered the higher wage. Exact ties are decided by a draw from the week’s seed, whose fingerprint is published before the window closes and the seed itself after. Free agents with no taker join the Club pool, where any stable can still sign them directly.
| Personality | Wage | Horses | Standing | Rides | Loyalty | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Money-minded | 50% | 10% | 5% | 15% | 10% | 10% |
| Ambitious | 15% | 30% | 25% | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| Loyal | 20% | 10% | 5% | 15% | 40% | 10% |
| Workhorse | 20% | 10% | 5% | 45% | 10% | 10% |
Morale and promises
A jockey counts the rides it gets for you each week against the rides you promised. One short week unsettles it; 2 short weeks running and it can walk out at the next window without a buyout (it won’t take a new offer from you that week). A jockey’s page says what it wants right now, for example “Wants: more rides · better horses · wage 300+”.
Developing jockeys
An apprentice who rides 25 races for a stable was developed there, and its page says so. Whenever it later wins a Feature or a Season Final for another stable, the stable that developed it receives 500 credits.
Signing and releasing
Between windows a stable with fewer than 3 jockeys can sign a Club freelancer directly for the signing fee, on standard terms (4 weeks, the grade’s wage, 2 rides a week). Releasing one of yours ends its contract and makes it a free agent in the next window. Linked accounts can’t sign each other’s jockeys or make offers for them.
Supply
Each week new apprentices join so the whole pool holds about 1.5 jockeys per active stable; retirements take the oldest out. The same ratio holds at 50 players or 5,000, so jockeys never pile up. Personality (money-minded, ambitious, loyal, workhorse) shows on each jockey’s page and decides which offers it takes.