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Like millions of other workers every morning in Australia, jockeys in the state of Victoria will rise long before dawn and head to work: for them it’s the race tracks, often to ride horses in racing preparation events known as jumpouts.

They accept it’s part of their job but they receive no pay.

The horses are loaded into stalls, they jump from the gates, respond to a rider’s urgings and flash past a finishing post with the jockeys employing effort and skill while facing the danger that comes with it. 

There’s no prizemoney or betting on offer and finishing positions are irrelevant, but everything else about the exercise is designed to emulate a standard race – they are events used to build a horse’s fitness without the emphasis on winning.

Sometimes, jockeys will do it three times a week, riding more than a dozen horses in each jumpout session.

Unlike those millions of other Australian workers who receive the pay that’s due for the work they do, jockeys have never been paid for riding in Victorian jumpouts.

It’s caused a bitter feud with trainers – the people who employ them every day – and led to unprecedented industrial action for the past two months, where Victoria’s senior jockeys have refused to ride in jumpouts without payment.

“There is a stack of work being done by jockeys for no payment, and this is not about the top handful of riders in Victoria, it’s about looking after every rider, no matter their standing,” leading jockey Damian Lane told Idol Horse last week. 

Jockey Damian Lane
DAMIAN LANE / Sandown Lakeside // 2024 /// Photo by Vince Caligiuri

This week, the representative body of the state’s riders, the Victorian Jockeys’ Association, held showdown talks with the industry regulator, Racing Victoria, and the Australian Trainers’ Association to find a breakthrough on an issue which has dominated the headlines over the Christmas and New Year period.

Idol Horse has been told by multiple sources that the latest talks included Racing Victoria, led by new chief executive Aaron Morrison, and the regulator asked all parties to stop publicly commenting on the breakdown in the relationship between jockeys and trainers for fear of further headlines about the fracture.

VJA boss Matt Hyland and ATA chief executive Stephen Bell have not responded to calls for comment since the meeting.

But it appears progress was made.

Industry sources said there was movement on a resolution for jockeys to be compensated for their work at jumpouts, and an outcome could be imminent within days. Whether that’s the case will be determined by how much the jockeys and trainers feel they need to compromise.

Some members of the ATA’s rank and file have also become agitated with the impasse, not least of all because their preferred raceday jockeys haven’t been partnering horses in crucial preparatory work.

The meeting was also the first significant intervention from Morrison and fellow Racing Victoria executive Jamie McGuinness, who until now had distanced themselves from the role of peacemaker.

Cranbourne jumpouts
CRANBOURNE JUMPOUTS / Cranbourne, Victoria // 2023 /// Photo by Vince Caligiuri

So, how did it get to this?

Victorian jockeys have been lobbying for years to be paid to ride in jumpouts and refused to ride in them from December 1 last year.

Australian trainers use two types of methods to primarily build the fitness of their horses outside of the standard trackwork: barrier trials and jumpouts.

While barrier trials are officially sanctioned by each state racing authority in Australia and overseen by stewards, jumpouts are unofficial and traditionally run by individual race clubs, and once were so informal, jockeys would not wear their horse’s race colours, and identifying who was who was a nightmare. The jumpouts were also rarely filmed.

But as the industry became more sophisticated and transparent, horse owners and punters agitated for the professionalisation of jumpouts, where jockeys now typically wear their horse’s colours to be identifiable, and the workouts are filmed and published on industry websites.

Yet the difference between Australia’s two main racing states, NSW and Victoria, and how they use barrier trials and jumpouts has led to the recent saga.

In NSW, there are very few jumpouts – nearly all public exhibitions that aren’t races are classified as barrier trials.

Each owner’s connections are levied A$417 to start in a Sydney barrier trial, meaning Racing NSW doesn’t lose money on hosting barrier trials, which can include more than 20 heats on any morning.

But Racing Victoria’s business model differs.

Because connections are charged only A$220 per horse to trial, once the regulator meets commitments to pay jockeys, barrier attendants, starters and their own staff such as stewards, they lose money on barrier trials.

It’s why jumpouts are much more prevalent in Victoria, where the industry regulator leaves it in the hands of clubs to conduct those sessions, which number almost one per day in the state across the course of the year, an increase from 150 annually six years ago.

But jockeys have never been paid for these unofficial trials in Victoria, despite the industry’s increased reliance on them as a tool to help a horse during its preparation.

Cranbourne jumpouts
CRANBOURNE JUMPOUTS / Cranbourne, Victoria // 2023 /// Photo by Vince Caligiuri

The VJA’s initial proposal was for all jumpouts to be upgraded to official trials, which would have cost the industry a further A$8.5 million annually under Racing Victoria’s current model.

Given that wasn’t financially viable, a decision was made to keep the sessions classified as jumpouts, and jockeys be paid a fee for their services.

The ATA argued jockeys should individually agree with trainers about a fee to ride in jumpouts, and invoice separately, an assertion quickly quashed by the riding group who feared some trainers would refuse to pay or offer minor amounts.

The VJA has since lowered their expectation to a $50 fee per jumpout ride, a concession which would only cost the industry an extra $1.25 million per year.

They made savings after reducing the threshold for a $110 fuel allowance for riding at race meetings from three engagements to two.

Morrison and McGuinness met with Hyland and leading jockeys Lane, Mark Zahra, Harry Coffey and Daniel Stackhouse on Tuesday in a bid to resolve the dispute. The ATA was also represented.

“Over the course of many years we’ve tried to get paid for these events, which has led to where we are,” Lane said last week. “It’s hard to come up with a reason why jockeys shouldn’t be paid for all the work they do at jumpouts and we have to make sure that money helps ensure the next generation of jockeys can stay in the industry.”

But who’s going to foot the bill?

Morrison and co might be days from working that out.

If they do, jockeys will be happy knowing that like most Australians, every time they rise before dawn they will be doing so to get paid ∎

Adam Pengilly is a journalist with more than a decade’s experience breaking news and writing features, colour, analysis and opinion across horse racing and a variety of sports. Adam has worked for news organisations including The Sydney Morning Herald and Illawara Mercury, and as an on-air presenter for Sky Racing and Sky Sports Radio.

View all articles by Adam Pengilly.

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