Conditional Jockeys in UK National Hunt Racing
A conditional jockey is an apprentice jockey racing in United Kingdom or Ireland in National Hunt racing who is under the age of 26 and who has not won more than 75 races under rules.
A conditional jockey is given an ‘allowance’, in the weight carried by his or her horse, dependent on the type of race. This figure changes according to the number of races the jockey has previously won.
Jockeys who have ridden less than 20 winners can claim seven pounds, those who have ridden between 20 and 40 winners claim five pounds and those who have ridden at least 41 winners, but less than 75 winners, can claim three pounds. A conditional jockey with fewer than five winners is allowed a further three pounds when riding for the stable which employs him so 10 in total. Allowances are not applicable when riding in races which are restricted to conditional jockeys only.
Once a Conditional jockey reaches the 75-win mark, he loses his claim. They will also lose their claims once they reach the maximum age. Six months after they ride out their claim, they must apply for a professional license.
So, there is a bit of background and in this article I plan to do a deep dive into conditional jockeys covering the last eight full years (2018 to 2025). The focus is UK National Hunt racing, and profits and losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 2% commission on any winning bets.
The excellent www.horseracebase.com site has provided the stats for this piece.
Let me start by looking at the results for 3lb, 5lb, 7lb and 10lb claims individually:
| Jockey Claim | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| 3 lbs | 27585 | 2830 | 10.3 | – £1,144.06 | – 4.2 | 1.01 |
| 5 lbs | 18594 | 1986 | 10.7 | – £963.89 | – 5.2 | 1.00 |
| 7 lbs | 18137 | 1800 | 9.9 | – £267.13 | – 1.5 | 1.03 |
| 10 lbs | 2175 | 275 | 12.6 | – £21.97 | – 1.0 | 1.07 |
There are occasions when jockeys have claimed 6 or 8lbs, but those occasions are quite rare, so I feel it is best to ignore those.
Losses to BSP have been fairly similar although the jockeys claiming the most weight would have lost you the least amount of money. However, with there being 123 winners for conditional jockeys priced BSP 50.0 or bigger during the period of study, it makes more sense to impose a price cap to avoid any skewed results due to huge priced winners.
I will use a price cap of BSP 18.0 for the remainder of this piece, except for when looking at results concerned with the betting market rank.
Hence, let me now look at the results for each of the four main claims with that price cap in place:
| Jockey Claim | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| 3 lbs | 15367 | 2568 | 16.7 | – £142.67 | – 0.9 | 1.01 |
| 5 lbs | 10737 | 1786 | 16.6 | – £268.53 | – 2.5 | 0.99 |
| 7 lbs | 9617 | 1618 | 16.8 | + £9.32 | + 0.1 | 1.03 |
| 10 lbs | 1428 | 255 | 17.9 | + £129.71 | + 9.1 | 1.08 |
It is interesting to see that the 10lb claimers have produced the highest strike rate, the best A/E index and the highest returns. Perhaps this will come as surprise for most – it did for me anyway.
A look now at the betting market and for the record, I will combine the 3, 5, 7 and 10lb conditionals together for the remainder of this piece.
I have used the final Betfair market to determine market position. Just to confirm that this table will not be using the BSP 18.0 price cap:
| Market Rank | Bets | Wins | Win SR % | Profit / Loss (BSP) | ROI % (BSP) | A/E (BSP) |
| Favourite | 6253 | 2220 | 35.5 | + £181.18 | + 2.9 | 1.04 |
| 2nd favourite | 6692 | 1410 | 21.1 | – £114.17 | – 1.7 | 1.00 |
| 3rd favourite | 6949 | 1006 | 14.5 | – £124.99 | – 1.8 | 1.00 |
| 4th in betting | 6890 | 694 | 10.1 | – £127.72 | – 1.9 | 0.99 |
| 5th+ in betting | 39707 | 1561 | 3.9 | – £2,211.35 | – 5.6 | 1.02 |
As we can see, favourites have edged into profit, while 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions have virtually identical returns to each other. Horses fifth or bigger in the market have performed the least well losing around 5 and half pence in the £.
What about handicaps versus non-handicaps? The results I have to say surprised me:
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