KEY POINTS:
The winning jockey's income from the $200,000 Zabeel Classic this afternoon will be $6000.
With perhaps six or seven rides and another winner on the 10-race card, his or her take-home pay could be close to $8000.
But it's far from an easy ride. Horse racing's most pampered participants are, in fact, a tough, resilient and often troubled group of professionals.
Beneath those glamorous silks that the party crowd at Ellerslie will admire before each race lies a tough, mostly starved, often injured body.
Kilo for kilo, jockeys are almost certainly sport's toughest participants.
Demand and big-money races mean they often ride with injuries, sometimes confidentially.
Some of our pampered stars in other sports could learn plenty from the character required by jockeys when beaten in major events.
When jockeys get beaten, often unluckily, they don't seek counselling.
What some do seek to relieve the crushing pressure, though, has got them into trouble.
The remarkably talented Lisa Cropp faces methamphetamine charges, and another jockey at the top of the premiership ladder, Michael Walker, has had enough controversy to fit three lives. The pair will feature prominently in races this afternoon.
Walker put behind him crippling hip injuries as well as the damage of publicly admitting he rode in Melbourne with cocaine in his system, to return to racing in the last year with a new, more mature attitude to life.
On 99 wins since the start of the racing season on August 1, Walker is on track to easily beat Lance O'Sullivan's fastest 100 winners.
He copped a glitch last week with a recurrence of the hip problem, but is certain to crack the ton over the NZ Herald Christmas carnival, if not early in the programme then probably on Insouciant in today's $125,000 Cambridge Stud Eight Carat Classic.
Another of today's jockeys, Jason Waddell, 21, could have played rep soccer or been a golf professional.
He chose racing instead and holds the record for the most winners ridden by a first-year apprentice.
Early last year, when riding in sensational form, he wasn't wasting (dieting) properly and that did what it almost always does to young jockeys - it played with his mind.
Waddell found the pressure too much, walked away from racing, died his hair green and got fat.
Now back with a new dedication, Waddell is the consummate professional, much admired by his peers, and he gets a chance to showcase his talent on well-fancied Il Divo in today's $150,000 Great Northern Guineas.
Jockeys can make a lot of money - but it's a high-risk sport.
Three race-day jockeys have died in New Zealand in the last decade.
A 500kg horse can do an awful lot of damage and all jockeys know that in every race, they are only one awkward footfall from a wheelchair or a coffin.
Sam Spratt, who will feature prominently today, is lucky to be alive, having suffered head injuries in a sickening race crash at Trentham that could have claimed her life. That she is back riding perhaps says it all about the resilience of jockeys' bodies.
And spare a thought for those who don't have a big day financially - for a journeyman rider, two losing riding fees will barely pay the car expenses from Matamata or Cambridge.
Jockeys have to live with pressure. They are out there making split-second decisions which, if they get them wrong, can cost them a race and even their lives.
