page_title: Jockey
section_title: Risk factors
hierarchical_section_title: Jockey / Risk factors
caption_attribution_description: English: Jockey AP McCoy falls from racing on 11 September, 2009 in Bangor-On-Dee racecourse. See deteils from Racing Post
context_page_description: A jockey is someone who rides horses in horse racing or steeplechase racing, primarily as a profession. The word also applies to camel riders in camel racing.
context_section_description: Horse racing is a sport where jockeys may incur permanent, debilitating, and even life-threatening injuries. Chief among them include concussion, bone fractures, arthritis, trampling, and paralysis. Jockey insurance premiums remain among the highest of all professional sports. Between 1993 and 1996, 6,545 injuries occurred during official races for an injury rate of 606 per 1,000 jockey years. In Australia race riding is regarded as being the second most deadly job, after offshore fishing. From 2002 to 2006 five deaths and 861 serious injuries were recorded.
  Eating disorders (such as anorexia) are also very common among jockeys, as they face extreme pressure to maintain unusually low (and specific) weights for men, sometimes within a five-pound (2.3 kg) margin. The bestselling biography, Seabiscuit: An American Legend chronicled the eating disorders of jockeys living in the first half of the twentieth century. As in the cases of champion jockey Kieren Fallon and Robert Winston, the pressure to stay light has been blamed in part for jockeys suffering agonies of thirst from dehydration while racing. Sports Dietitians Australia warns:"Dehydration and energy depletion may compromise concentration and coordination." Indeed, recent research carried out in association with the Irish Turf Club measured the effects of rapid weight loss to make weight in professional and apprentice jockeys and found significant levels of dehydration; however, cognitive function was maintained, suggesting jockeys had become accustomed to performing in a dehydrated state and had potentially developed a preventative mechanism to enable them to perform under these conditions.
  In January 2016 it was announced that the International Concussion and Head Injury Research Foundation (ICHIRF) will run a new study. Named 'Concussion in Sport' it will be the first study to take a detailed look at the effects of concussion on sports people, including around 200 retired jockeys.
caption: A race fall.
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