Where do all the top male riders come from?

[Tupperwarelid]

I’m watching the showjumping on the BBC and the majority of riders are male. Where do they all come from? I know a lot are sons of former riders but there are some that aren’t.

When I’ve ridden it’s predominantly females having lessons, loaning and owning liveries but this doesn’t seem to carry on to the top levels. I know things are equalling out but given the numbers that ride at younger ages I would expect to see more women riders at the top levels?

has anyone got any ideas?

I know next to nothing about horses or horse racing but have previously wondered about it! I know loads of girls who ride/used to ride, and no boys, yet most of the professionals are male. Following with interest.

That's a very good question.
Sorry I could only give the usualy guesses about where money and opportunities go, and about pregnancy and caring responsibilities.
I'd love to hear about less obvious and more specific reasons.

If you live in the countryside lots of boys ride and there are lots of horse owning families who have riding children who you would never see at a riding school because they just learn on their own pony / family pony ( which is what mine did ) . I’m in no way saying there aren’t more girls but lots of pony clubs have numerous boys as members .

This is the conclusion I've come to.
If you look at the top training/competition yards there is always a high % of young males working as grooms/riders. I think boys generally come from horsey families so skip riding schools and do pony club/private riding lessons on their own horses at home. They therefore aren't visible at riding school level.

Most of them seem to be Whittakers, so Yorkshire!!

I think as it's a really female sport for children the majority of the boys that stick at it are the ones that are naturally pretty good, otherwise they are just doing a girly sport they aren't good at...

Every time I watch show jumping there’s a new Whittaker cousin/niece/nephew that’s joined the team. There’s loads of them!

Yes that’s true. I’ve always ridden at riding schools and seen their pony clubs which are definitely skewed towards girls.

I live in the New Forest where a lot of men and boys take part in equestrianism but they tend to be from breeder/competition families so aren't taking lessons from the local riding schools or renting stables because most of them learn within the family.

Odd very loosely related fact fact but I once watched a video to Strawberry Fields Forever and noted John Lennon looked like he'd ridden before, so I looked it up and he learned as a boy and sometimes rode as an adult too.

My club, which is about 95/5 in terms of women v men hosted a high level jumping contest over the summer and it was about 70/30 men to women.

The men were mostly older too, and mostly seemed to be gentlemen of leisure as far as the chat in the stands had it. More than one of them was quite unpleasant to their horses too, in a way I haven't seen at lower levels, but at least one woman was too so not exclusively male behaviour.

I worked at a couple of racing stables where there was a more equal ratio of men to women grooms and riders as well.

This

I come from original Whittaker country. Imagine going to pony club and every rally you are against 1 of the 100s of Whittakers.
They only SJ though which is how I got into eventing 😆 No chance of making SJ team against them.

My observations are that with families who have horses all of the children learn to ride. Our local ’big name ’ in show jumping is the son of a local landowner.
certsinly local riding school is almost entirely girls

Sadly there seems to be few boys in pony club these days. Our son and his riding friends seem to be spread over various pony clubs so each only has 1 or two rather than all going to the same one.
We went to a 1 day event and there were lots of young men there.
Hunting is 50/50 men / women.
We went to a local riding club camp for adults and sadly it was 100% women.

I would assume they had their own pony as a child then their own horse and parents who had riding knowledge so they learned that way, rather than through ongoing lessons?

I also noticed that most of the riding schools where I took lessons had mostly girls and women taking lessons.

But kids from those horse/land owning families who have their own ponies are split 50:50 between boys and girls. And pretty much any top rider started out by competing as a kid on their own ponies. A vanishingly tiny number presumably come up through riding schools given the gulf in what can you do in a riding lesson on a riding school pony versus kids taking their own quaity ponies showjumping. So that still does not explain the number of men vs women. I think it;s more about boys only carrying on if they are good and generally being more ruthless/ambitious. And having more opportunities maybe. I know a brother/sister pair who had similar (very good) results in juniors, are both trying to be pro riders and the boy (now young man) gets far more rides than his sister. She is a bit older so it's not because he got there first either. His results are better now because he's had the ride on better horses to get those results, and so he is looking set to be much more successful than she is. And so the pattern continues. No idea whether he was more confident in going after opportunities, or whether owners have a bias towards male riders. Or a bit of both. Like in every other job!

I'm from the Scottish Borders and we have Ian Stark and Scott Brash. Both from modest backgrounds but the horsey culture is huge here - because it's fantastic riding country, the common ridings are big social events each year and there's lots of opportunities to ride - many people have horses

It still doesn’t explain why there’s such a huge gulf in showjumping but not so much in eventing or dressage. In all three disciplines women/girls far outnumber men/boys at the lower levels but once you get to 5*/Grand Prix level there still plenty of female representation. GB could easily send an all-female team to the European eventing championship and win team and individual gold but the same couldn’t currently happen in showjumping. So what’s different about showjumping that’s causing this imbalance?

Back in my day it was the usual men were given the rides by the horses owners over women.

men were seen as more physically able to “make” a horse work. Also women were seen as too sympathetic and not tough enough to force the best out of a horse.

not many top riders own their horses.

the more money there is at stake the fewer women there will be as owners won’t take the risk on a woman- horse racing being the most obvious.

My experience at the lower levels including junior pony club is that showjumping riders are more ruthless. For example people who have jumped watching the rest go and quietly cheering when a pole falls ect
I think with other disciplines there isn’t such an obvious win /lose moment.

Where I'm from in Ireland lots of boys ride. My uncle is too big to ride anymore so breeds horses. He does a lot of this work with a woman who is an ex jockey. My friends son trained as a jockey few years back and now quite successful - lots of girls on his course. I think the idea of a career in sport just wasnt pushed on girls as much before but I do think that's changing

Even within the Whitaker family the female riders are more likely to be at home training the youngsters than out competing. Not sure what that says about the sport.

Probably because historically men have almost certainly been supported better financially and in greater numbers than their female counterparts. Ditto owners sending horses to them.

Aeons ago, my sister had a riding school, and I used to teach the beginners. After a few lessons, the ability of the girls varied, just as you'd expect. But boys were either seriously good or bad, no middle way.