Jockey recruitment crisis as British stable hands becoming too tall, top trainer warns

British horse racing is suffering a workforce crisis because stable staff are becoming taller and too heavy to ride delicate thoroughbreds, a leading trainer has warned.

John Gosden, the dual Derby-winning and former champion trainer, says young would-be jockeys and work riders are taller than they were fifty years ago but do not have the strength to go with it.

He told The Sunday Telegraph the generation of “fine-boned, wiry and athletic” Britons was “moving on”, forcing training yards to rely on southern Europeans, such as Italians and Spaniards, who have a better strength-for-weight balance.

The obesity epidemic is shrinking the pool of riders suitable to work with young, developing flat horses, he said, but even the “skinny” population is getting heavier because of the increase in average height, believed to be about seven per cent over the last century in the UK.

Horses in training are typically exercised every day, and at a big yard of 150, such as Mr Gosden’s, this requires around 50 riders who weigh no more than nine stone with a saddle.

Recent surveys suggests British racing has a shortage of 500 such riders.

“We find that for riding thoroughbred flat horses, particularly young ones, it’s getting more and more difficult to find people of the right proportions and weight,” he said.

“I go to the [jockey] apprentice school and it always surprises me how tall they are.

“They’re tall and skinny - they shoot up more quickly - but don’t have the strength to go with it.”

The winner of more than 100 Group 1 races, Mr Gosden is closely associated with the star Italian jockey Frankie Dettori, who rode Golden Horn to victory in the Derby and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for the trainer in 2015, as well as winning the Oaks and the Arc on Enable last year.

The Newmarket trainer described Dettori - five foot three inches and able to ride at eight stone six with a saddle - as the “perfect” proportion for a jockey.

He also pointed to fellow Sardinian Andrea Atzeni and said the southern European stature is now more likely to provide a suitable physique than the British.

“It’s no good being able to do the weight if you don’t have the strength to go with it,” said Mr Gosden.

“The ideal shape and form of a jockey or a rider is to have width and strength in the shoulders and strength in the legs.

“That perfect body is becoming increasingly rarefied.”

Mr Gosden is closely involved in efforts to lobby the Government to re-designate work riding as a skilled occupation for immigration visa purposes, a task that will become even more urgent once Britain leaves the EU, with the expected end to the free movement of people that will entail.

However, he said the current situation had come with a big increase of female staff at racing stables.

“There are a lot more girl riders now, a lot of them exceptionally good,”

Poor pay, early hours, inaccessible rural locations and the tough, outdoors nature of stable work are also contributing to shortage.

Last year George McGrath, chief executive of the National Association of Stable Staff, which represents 6,000 workers, described the situation as “the worst I’ve ever known it”.

The rider shortage is less acute in jump racing stables, whose horses are typically bigger, older and able to carry more weight.

An analysis by Imperial College London in 2016 found the average height in the UK had increased by 4.3 inches between 1914 and 2014, with men now at five foot 10 inches, making them 31st tallest in the world, and women at five foot five inches, making them 38th tallest.