Pathway

How to Become a Jockey in Britain

Reference entry · Updated 19 May 2026

Riding races for a living in Britain is a regulated career. A rider doesn't sit a single exam and qualify; instead, several institutions hand a candidate forward through a sequence of courses, work placements and trial rides. The route is well-trodden — every professional jockey in the country has been through some version of it — and the formal steps are the same whether the eventual licence is on the flat or over jumps.

The starting point: a residential foundation course

The traditional first step is a 12-week residential foundation course at one of the two officially recognised British training establishments. The Doncaster training college, known until 2019 as Northern Racing College, has trained foundation entrants in South Yorkshire since 1984. The British Racing School, founded earlier in Newmarket, runs the same syllabus in the Suffolk training centre. After the 2019 merger the two operations are administered together as the National Horseracing College, while keeping both campuses in use.

The course is open to candidates from sixteen years upwards and is fully funded for eligible entrants through the apprenticeship system. The selection process tests three things: weight (a working jockey typically rides between 50 and 60 kilograms), fitness (a written and physical fitness test is set at admission) and a feel for horses — applicants need not have raced before, but they do need to be ridable and to take instruction calmly. Successful candidates live on campus, ride out twice a day on a string of resident thoroughbreds, and progress through stable-yard duties, equine first aid, fitness training in a jockey gym and classroom modules on the rules of racing.

From foundation to a yard

Graduating from the foundation course is not the same as having a licence. The college's role is to deliver a rider who is safe in a working yard. The next step is placement: graduates are taken on as stable staff by a BHA-licensed trainer, where they continue to ride out daily and pick up paid stable work. Most trainers expect a year or more in the yard before the trainer will sponsor an application for an apprentice licence.

The work in those months is unglamorous and useful — mucking out, leading horses on the gallops, schooling on the all-weather, occasional pony-club appearances at promotional events. The Doncaster college's well-known motto, "Hard Work Pays Off", is a fair summary of the period; the same phrase recurs in the published profiles of graduates who progressed to professional careers from there.

The apprentice licence (flat) and the conditional licence (jumps)

The first riding licence a young rider holds is one of two: an apprentice jockey licence for flat racing or a conditional jockey licence for National Hunt racing. Both are issued by the British Horseracing Authority and both come with weight allowances designed to give a developing rider a chance against established professionals.

• Apprentice (flat): a young rider claims 7lb, then 5lb, then 3lb according to the number of winners ridden — a sliding scale that disappears once the rider has accumulated 95 winners.
• Conditional (jumps): the equivalent allowance over jumps is 7lb, 5lb and 3lb until the conditional has ridden 75 winners, after which the rider takes a full professional licence.

In both codes, the trainer is the sponsoring party: the licence is held by the rider but the apprentice or conditional is attached to a yard. This is why the choice of yard matters as much as the choice of school. A young apprentice attached to a high-volume flat yard will get more rides on the all-weather circuit than one attached to a small jumps stable — neither is wrong, but they shape the early career.

The trial ride and the qualifying assessment

Before the BHA will grant a riding licence, the candidate has to pass a qualifying assessment. The assessment is run at one of the two college campuses and consists of a riding test on a string of horses, a written paper on the rules of racing and a fitness benchmark including a treadmill run and a strength test. Trial rides at a licensed racecourse follow once the qualifying assessment is passed; only after a clutch of successful trial rides is a full licence issued.

The fitness component is rigorous because race-riding is physically taxing. A jockey on the flat will ride between four and seven races in an afternoon, each at a sustained pulse rate over five or six minutes; over jumps the duration is longer and the cardiovascular load higher. The college's gym programme is built around interval training, core stability and lower-body strength, and the qualifying fitness test reflects that.

Pony racing as a junior pathway

For riders under sixteen, the Pony Racing Authority operates a junior pathway. Pony racing meetings are held at registered racecourses and on point-to-point cards, with categories for different pony heights and rider ages. Pony racing is not a prerequisite for jockey school — many successful jockeys did not race a pony before going to the foundation course — but it is the earliest formal racing experience available, and the Doncaster college has historically run a residential pony racing camp each summer for younger riders aged eight to sixteen.

What the route actually looks like in years

A note on alternatives

Not every rider on a British racecourse holds a professional licence. Amateur riders compete under separate licences (the Category A and Category B amateur rider permits, set out in the next entry), and stable staff who never aim for a licence can build long careers as work riders, head lads or assistant trainers. The foundation course is not a one-way ticket to race-riding; many of its graduates move into yard management, racing administration or coaching roles. That breadth is part of the reason the residential model has lasted — it produces capable racing professionals, not just jockeys.

Related entries: Jockey Licences Explained · Retraining of Racehorses · Weatherbys & UK Racing Records