Okay, so I wanted to figure out who’s the best jockey at the Fair Grounds Race Course. I started this whole thing by looking up stuff online, just a general search to see what I could find.
First, I stumbled upon some info about this jockey, James McDonald. Apparently, he’s a big deal, even considered the world’s best at some point. That got me thinking about how much these guys make. It turns out that jockeys at the Kentucky Derby, which is like the Super Bowl of horse racing, can earn at least 30,000 to 50,000 bucks just for showing up. And the winners? They can rake in around 300,000 dollars. Crazy, right?
Then I started digging specifically into the Fair Grounds. I found this website called Equibase, which is apparently the go-to place for horse racing data. I started looking at the current standings, and boy, it’s a tight race! There are like six jockeys all within a few wins of each other. At the top was this guy named Jose Guerrero, with 29 wins when I first checked.
But here’s where it got interesting. I noticed that the standings kept changing. So, I started tracking them every day. I made a simple list to keep track of the top jockeys, their number of starts, wins, second and third-place finishes, and their total earnings. One day Jose L. Ortiz had 41 wins, the next day he was at 42. Same with Jareth Loveberry and Marcelino Pedroza, Jr. – their numbers were always moving.
I also saw that the Fair Grounds is a popular spot for some top trainers, like Steve Asmussen and Brad Cox. It’s like all the big names in horse racing hang out there during the winter.
Here’s what my notes looked like at one point:
- Name – Starts – 1st – 2nd – 3rd – Earnings
- Jose L. Ortiz – 143 – 42 – 26 – 19 – $1,877,726
- Jareth Loveberry – 155 – 25 – 17 – 18 – $971,040
- Marcelino Pedroza, Jr. – 148 – 20 – 18 – 32 – $803
- Flavien Prat – 128 – 36 – 28 – 12 – $4,339
After tracking for a while, I saw that Miguel Mena was usually near the top. He’s a well-known jockey and has won some big races. I kept this up for a couple of weeks, just checking the standings every day and updating my little list.
Finally, after all this tracking, it became pretty clear that while the standings fluctuate, Jose L. Ortiz, Jareth Loveberry, and Miguel Mena were consistently among the top performers at the Fair Grounds. It was a fun little project, and I learned a lot about horse racing and the jockeys who make it all happen.
In the end, I’m not a horse racing expert, but I do think I got a good handle on who the best jockeys are at the Fair Grounds. I think my method of tracking and observing worked pretty well!
