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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Robert Hynes

No Irish or UK jockeys among top 50 earning riders in the world

Incredibly, no Irish or UK jockeys feature on a worldwide list of the top 50 jockeys in terms of prize money won.

The team at OLBG have analysed the career earnings of the most successful jockeys of all time to reveal the world’s highest-earning jockeys.

Japanese riders dominate the list, with 26 of the top 50 hailing from the Land of the Rising Sun, while they fill eight of the top ten spots.

READ MORE: Grand National 2023: Irish-trained winner odds-on in betting as more domination expected

America come next on the list with 15 jockeys out of 50, while there are four Puerto Rican-born riders and one each from Venezuela, France, Dominican Republic, Mexico and Italy.

The Italian rider is Frankie Dettori, who is the only jockey on the list to be based mainly in the UK, but the fact his total prize money is over €653million less than that won by the number one rider on the list, Yutaka Take, shows the huge gulf in sums available between the UK and Japan.

The majority of earnings data were sourced from Equibase (for jockeys based in the US) by OLBG and Umanity (for jockeys based in Japan), while the Racing Post and Timeform was used to calculate earnings for British and Irish-based jockeys.

You can see the top 50 highest earning jockeys in full below (amounts in US dollars):

Rank Jockey Country WIns Career Earnings USD
1 Yutaka Take Japan 4,408 $925,811,000.00
2 Norihiro Yokoyama Japan 2,910 $607,066,000.00
3 Yuichi Fukunaga Japan 2,636 $561,327,000.00
4 Masayoshi Ebina Japan 2,541 $505,266,000.00
5 John R. Velazquez Puerto Rico 6,485 $463,086,551.00
6 Yoshitomi Shibata Japan 2,316 $443,890,000.00
7 Yasunari Iwata Japan 1,749 $387,907,000.00
8 Yuga Kawada Japan 1,855 $382,435,000.00
9 Javier Castellano Venezuela 5,621 $378,191,886.00
10 Yukio Okabe Japan 2,928 $377,458,000.00
11 Christophe Lamaire France 1,662 $371,828,000.00
12 Shinji Fujita Japan 1,918 $368,487,000.00
13 Mike E. Smith United States 5,698 $345,513,198.00
14 Katsuharu Tanaka Japan 1,808 $341,503,000.00
15 Hirofumi Shii Japan 1,586 $332,260,000.00
16 Hideaki Miyuki Japan 1,622 $330,187,000.00
17 Kenichi Ikezoe Japan 1,339 $322,966,000.00
18 Pat Day United States 8,803 $297,914,839.00
19 Jerry D. Bailey United States 5,893 $296,113,529.00
20 Joel Rosario Dominican Republic 3,451 $294,879,952.00
21 Kent J. Desormeaux United States 6,129 $291,595,250.00
22 Hiroki Goto Japan 1,447 $275,390,000.00
23 Edgar S. Prado United States 7,119 $272,008,849.00
24 Irad Ortiz, Jr. Puerto Rico 3,365 $269,998,902.00
25 Hiroshi Kawachi Japan 2,111 $269,767,000.00
26 Eiji Nakadate Japan 1,823 $268,409,000.00
27 Chris J. McCarron United States 7,141 $263,986,005.00
28 Hiroshi Kitamura Japan 1,417 $263,152,000.00
29 Keita Tosaki Japan 1,348 $258,303,000.00
30 Gary L. Stevens United States 5,187 $258,217,768.00
31 Hiroyuki Uchida Japan 1,324 $255,254,000.00
32 Yutaka Yoshida Japan 1,285 $255,047,000.00
33 Mikio Matsunaga Japan 1,400 $251,801,000.00
34 Katsumi Andō Japan 1,111 $245,873,000.00
35 Alex O. Solis United States 5,035 $238,405,472.00
36 Laffit A. Pincay, Jr. United States 9,530 $237,120,625.00
37 Corey S. Nakatani United States 3,909 $234,554,534.00
38 Suguru Hamanaka Japan 1,142 $229,948,000.00
39 Rafael Bejarano Puerto Rico 4,359 $224,232,705.00
40 Robby Albarado United States 5,222 $221,561,248.00
41 Jose L. Ortiz Puerto Rico 2,648 $217,821,467.00
42 Frankie Dettori Italy 3,288 $212,479,167.00
43 Victor Espinoza Mexico 3,495 $211,332,295.00
44 Shin'ichirō Akiyama Japan 1,044 $207,169,000.00
45 Katsumi Minai Japan 1,522 $205,645,000.00
46 Garrett K. Gomez United States 3,769 $205,224,899.00
47 Russell A. Baze United States 12,842 $199,334,219.00
48 Joe Bravo United States 5,591 $197,277,263.00
49 Eddie J. Delahoussaye United States 6,384 $195,884,940.00
50 Kohei Matsuyama Japan 1,032 $195,587,000.00

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