Irrespective of when it's added in, a lot of what has been said about jockeys seems to me to be based on incomplete information. This started with the assertion that a rider switch to JR was meaningful to a horse's chances of winning a particular race. Howvever, JR's mounts are booked by hall of famer Angel Cordero, #1 in Mall's Jockey Hall of Fame. Angel did a great job of teaching JR to ride, particularly at the Spa. But ask the trainers who used & like Angel a great deal & they will tell you pretty much to a man that he is not a very good agent, & that JR would have a lot more wins if Angel did a better job. The reason, & this is educated speculation based on limited contact, is that Angel exhibits the same lack of concentration & memory problems that are not uncommon among those who suffer a terrible tragedy. It is entirely possible that the switch in question was due to mixup, & that reading too much into it was a mistake.

Edgar is one of the hardest working & most pleasant of the colony, but don't believe the drf articles about how his English is improving. I sat next to him on a flight for 2 hrs & it took that long just to find out who his mounts were that afternoon. The largest bet I ever lost, by the shortest of noses, was due, I later learned, to the fact that Edgar did not understand the instructions. After the race, the connections actually showed Edgar videos with a pointer to communicate what they wanted him to do, & the horse won a GR I at Sar in its next start. That option obviously isn't available for most races.

The saying for the last few yrs has been that Edgar is looking for a mount in every race, while JD is looking for the best mount in the races he decides to ride in. One of the reasons Edgar is liked so much is that he turned down many offers to come to NY because he didn't want to abandon his agent. Contrast that with JD's abrupt dismissal of his agent last yr, who is now Prado's agent, an irony many were quick to jump on when Edgar recently passed JD in the standings. The word on the backside at Sar was that a no. of trainers are not real happy that JD all but refuses to work any horses in the morning. In contrast, Prado is there pretty much every day. IMHO, again based on limited contact, JD's success is due in large part to the fact that he simply seems to be smarter than most of the others.

Leading money winner PDay, sometimes called "Baby Jesus", is another who will ride horses for reasons which are not necessarily related to the possibility of winning. If he takes a liking to a young trainer, he will ride the trainer's horses even when they have a marginal chance at best. The thing I have heard more than one trainer say about him is that it does not matter if the horse is trained to run a certain way, & that is communicated, PDay is going to ride the horse the way he thinks it should be ridden. Keep that in mind when you watch him try to rate a confirmed front runner for the 1st time.

In short, a lot of what's going on with the jocks is like many human activities, in that it cannot be measured entirely by statistics.