You are here:
Richard Perham Trains Leading Qatari Jockey
Jassim Al Kaabi is one of the leading jockeys riding in Qatar. He has been spending the summer months riding out for Debbie Mountain in Newmarket, to gain experience outside of his home country.
As the leaders of jockey training in the UK, The British Racing School was thrilled to commit to a jockey training programme to help Jassim improve riding a finish. Jassim had four sessions with Richard Perham (our resident jockey coach) at the BRS, using state of the art simulators and Dartfish analysing equipment. Here is Richard's blog on the training and how Jassim improved:
Session 1
This involved a presentation on how to balance when riding with short stirrups. From the classroom, (having seen good examples of balance) we moved into the simulator room for a practical session. To make an initial assessment of Jassim, I videoed him while he rode a simulated 6 furlong race on the simulator. The simulation involved jumping from the starting stalls, riding a finish and using his stick. We then analysed the side on video footage in the classroom and decided that we could make some changes for the better.
The main change was to adjust Jassim's point of balance. You can see in picture 1, how 95% of his weight is in front of the point of balance, where there should be an even weight distribution.
To help with this we went back to basics in the simulator room. I asked Jassim to balance with short stirrups on the simulator without the use of his reins. Although Jassim has ridden plenty of winners he struggled at first to achieve this.
However he soon got to grips with it and by the end of the one hour session he was able to balance effectively. An example of this is shown in picture 2, which was taken during session 4.
Session 2
The aim of session 2 was for Jassim to analyse how to push a horse in a finish. For this, he needed to balance lower in the saddle and hold that position for long periods (this exercise is needed to build up the specific muscles that are needed for the pushing position). As soon as he had accomplished this, which was only a few minutes, I started him pushing in rhythm with the horses stride. At the end of the session I gave some training on the use of the stick.
You will see in picture 3, how, on the left hand side picture Jassim was hitting the horse around the flank area (yellow lines). I worked on a technique to help Jassim hit the horse more on top of the quarters (right hand side picture, red lines).
He went away from with a good technique to practice this at home. The plan is for him to ingrain this technique into his muscle memory, so that it becomes a natural movement.
Session 3
This session was concentrated around fitness and involved more work pushing to build up a strong technique. To do this Jassim would ride a finish on the simulator for one minute and then take a rest for one minute. This was repeated a number of times. We also looked at the progression with the stick technique, which proved to be coming along well.
Session 4
During the last session we took an opportunity to recap on the training. You will recall how, on session 1, I ask Jassim to ride a simulated race over 6 furlongs? Now was the time to see if the hard work that Jassim had put in had paid off. He rode the same simulated race, which was videoed and then analysed. The result was remarkable.
The aim of this training was to improve the way that Jassim rode a finish, and If you look at picture 4, Jassim is more balanced, much lower in the saddle, more in rhythm with the horse.
Although you can not see from the picture, Jassim was hitting the horse with more rhythm and higher on the quarters, which would suggest that the training had been successful.
Jassim was certainly pleased with the end result and had worked really hard during the 4 session's.
I was pleased to present him with a framed certificate to show that he had done an intensive simulator training course at the British Racing School (picture 5).
I would like to wish Jassim the best of luck in the future and very much look forward to him, and hopefully a number of other Qatari jockeys returning later in the year for more intensive jockey training.
Richard Perham
Jockey Coach