March Madness Meets the Racetrack: What College Sport Athletes Can Learn From Horse Racing Jockeys

There is a surprising amount of overlap between horse racing and basketball. One of the first things so many NBA stars seem to do with their newfound wealth is develop an interest in horse racing.

Nikola Jokic is particularly known for his love of racing--but it isn't only the equines that catch his attention. He is a passionate fan of the jockeys as well and will go out of his way to meet with them while he is on the road.

The Joker even kids that he considered a career as a jockey before landing in the NBA--a route that his pro-basketball build regrettably excluded him from.

Still, if one of the best NBA players in the league has decided that jockeys warrant special attention, it's something college athletes might bear in mind as well. What lessons can you learn from jockeys? Find out.

How Grit Impacts the Odds

Horse racing has a notably high number of upsets. This owes partially to the format. The compressed time frame makes it so that every race, from little ones at your local track to the Kentucky Derby, has a high level of volatility.

Not to be underestimated, though, is the value of intangible qualities that can influence outcomes, but are not easily reflected in the odds. Grit. Determination. Willpower. It’s for these reasons that jockeys can experience thousands of wins throughout their careers, riding hundreds of different animals to victory.

If you want to learn how to bet on Belmont Stakes, those are factors to consider. People pay a lot of attention to the horses—rightfully so—but think also about the team behind the animals. Do the jockey and trainers have a history of succeeding in the face of adversity? That’s a big feather in their cap.

Grit also plays a role in other sporting upsets. For example, in 2023, when  Fairleigh Dickinson, entering the tournament as a 16^th seed, beat the second-seeded Purdue, it was as much as anything else, the result of perseverance.

Coach Tobin Anderson, despite being tasked with claiming an almost impossible job, never doubted his team. Before the game, he was heard saying, "The more I watch Purdue, the more I think we can beat them."

Well, he was right. It’s that kind of perseverance that makes anything possible in sports.

The Pursuit of Perfection:

One of the things that people from the spectator gallery often neglect is how perfect jockeys need to be. These races are so fast.

With an average run time of less than two minutes, every action that the jockeys take needs to be perfect. A mistake as simple as a slightly delayed takeoff from the starting gate will very probably exclude a team from the winner's circle.

Other sports are generally more forgiving, but going in with the attitude that you need to get things right the first time is still important. Consider, for example, the high-stakes environment of March Madness.

Yes, basketball games are long enough that you can recover from an error or two and still grab that win. What's the favorite line of any player fielding repetitive courtside questions from a reporter? Basketball is a game of runs. Any team can go off for a few minutes.

But in a high-stakes game, those "runs" can easily become a margin of victory. March Madness is particularly brutal because it uses a single-game elimination framework. It's for this reason that smaller teams will occasionally, even if rarely, unseat giants.

The lesson? Treat every play like it matters. It's the jockey way, and it is also a quality that so many of the best champions share across sports.

Understand Your Opponent:

Equally important across sports is the need to understand your opponents. Collegiate teams don't need to rewrite the book every time they go up against a new team, but they do want to act rather than react to their opponent.

This goes back to our earlier example of the Purdue vs. Fairleigh Dickinson upset in the 2023 March Madness tournament. It wasn't exactly that Fairleigh Dickinson was better than Purdue, but that they were able to capitalize on the mismatch.

Jockeys are admittedly pursuing victory in a less complex context than a basketball team. Still, they go in understanding their opponents and using a strategy more nuanced than "run fast."

Resilience:

More than anything else, it's important to brush off your defeats. A working jockey might easily do 7-8 races per day during the typical season.

Even if they are really good, they are going to lose. A lot. It's how they handle those defeats that makes all the difference.

NCAA teams that can take a licking and keep on ticking are worth paying attention to.