Jockey Stat Metric Suggests Leon Fits With Top Riders

While jockey Sonny Leon entered the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) without a previous graded stakes win, a new statistical approach to rating jockeys suggested the Ohio-based rider would not be in over his head.

Leon lived up to that rating by guiding 80-1 longshot Rich Strike  to a memorable come-from-behind win in the 20-horse Derby. After skipping the Preakness Stakes (G1), Rich Strike is entered in the Belmont Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets (G1) where Leon will ride the 1 1/2-mile oval for the first time in his career.

In the Derby after waiting near the back while rivals tired under a fast early pace, the 32-year-old Leon and Rich Strike then weaved through 14 horses in the final quarter mile; rallying along the inside to pass the dueling Epicenter  and Zandon  inside the final sixteenth of a mile. Rick Dawson, owner of Rich Strike, said this week the ride has to rank among the sport's greatest.

Why has a jockey with the talent to deliver that type of ride spent the vast majority of his recent career riding in Ohio? A new jockey rating system suggests one reason may be that the sport is not efficient at noticing talented riders in out-of-the way places. As Leon's trainer Eric Reed put it after the Derby, "The difference between the Sonny Leons and the guys that everybody sees every day is that they ride those horses all the time, and he doesn't get a chance." 

In this year's Derby a late scratch gave Leon a chance to ride a horse with a big closing kick in a big race. He took advantage of the opportunity.

The March issue of BloodHorse magazine outlined a new rating system I developed to help find talented riders who may be flying under the radar. Using a measure I call "Speed Above Replacement Jockey (SARJ)," I estimated how many Equibase speed points each North American jockey added to his or her mounts in 2020, when compared to an average jockey riding the same horse.

Leon had a SARJ of +3.1 in 2020, meaning that he added about three speed points, on average, to his mounts' performance. Adding three points is a strong rating; It is enough to make a difference in close races.

In the Kentucky Derby, for example, Rich Strike earned an Equibase Speed Figure of 106—just one point faster than the second-place horse, Epicenter, and two points faster than third-place Zandon. The +3.1 SARJ rating for Leon suggests the rider may have made the difference between first and third with Rich Strike in the Derby. If Rich Strike had an average jockey—the kind that everyone thinks is regularly riding races in Ohio—everyone would be talking about Epicenter and Zandon. 

Anyone who watched the race could see that Leon brought something extra to the 2022 Kentucky Derby. But the SARJ ratings indicated Leon had something special in 2020. The table below shows the 2020 SARJ ratings of jockeys who started in the Kentucky Derby in 2022. Leon stacked up reasonably well.

While Leon's SARJ wasn't at the stratospheric level of +6 or higher of Joel Rosario, who was aboard Epicenter; or Rafael Bejarano, who was aboard 14th-place Happy Jack ; Leon's SARJ of 3.1 was on par with top jockeys like Brian Hernandez Jr., Julien Leparoux, or Florent Geroux. 

While SARJ identifies Leon as on par with those riders, his stakes opportunities are well behind them. In 2020 Geroux got almost 10 times as many chances to start in stakes races.

In other words, the 2020 SARJ ratings already suggested that Leon wouldn't look out of place in the Kentucky Derby. And the 2022 results of that race validated that finding. 

Based on the examination of 2020 performance, Leon isn't the only overlooked jockey. Far from it. In my BloodHorse article, I flagged 10 other riders who had elite SARJ ratings—as high as any jockey in the Kentucky Derby—but spent the bulk of their time riding at smaller tracks for smaller purses. Jockeys like Hector Berrios (SARJ 5.0), who raced alongside Sonny Leon in Ohio; Huber Villa-Gomez (SARJ 6.6), who raced at Tampa Bay Downs and Presque Isle Downs; or Fanny Olsson and Lauralea Glaser, who had elite SARJ ratings (5.6 and 7.4, respectively) despite starting fewer races and working mainly as exercise riders.

How many overlooked and underused jockeys are out there? And how much better would the sport be if we started using a tool like SARJ to find them?

Paul Von Hippel is a professor of public policy, statistics, and data science at the University of Texas, Austin. He tweets about horse racing at @equinometrics.