IN the world of precious gems, some jewels are more coveted than others. For instance, a piece of jade is valuable to anybody and would hold pride of place in any jewellery collection. But jade, platinum or even gold would pale in comparison, in any collection, to a carat of diamond.

The Derby is like a diamond. And despite horse racing’s Triple Crown having three jewels, none is as precious to a racing man or woman as the Derby.

Bob Baffert’s American Pharoah recently ended a near four-decade-long Triple Crown drought, when he nailed the Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes in that order, over a six-week period. As ever, the Americans are different from other nationalities who still use the British template for Triple Crown races and have the Derby as the first jewel in the crown. But even though American Pharoah has entered history as only the 12th Triple Crown winner in the USA since 1919, he would have been accorded legend status by virtue of his Derby win alone. Such is the history and prestige around this event that a horse becomes immortalised simply by winning it.

A Triple Crown winner is great. But the connections of a Derby winner have no inferiority complex when measured against a horse which has also won the other two jewels of horse racing’s most celebrated group of races.

The Derby, more than any other event, is a jockey’s race. Especially a Derby that’s run over 12 furlongs. The Jamaica Derby has been run at Caymanas Park since 1959.

There have been precious few winners in the 55 years since then and now, who, it could be argued, fluked their way to victory. This race is won by the toughest horse on the day, and more crucially by the jockey with the coolest head and the sharpest intelligence.

A Derby jockey has to be constantly asking himself, when do I attack the leader? Should I risk being carried wide into the home turn for a run at the leader, or do I hold and look for a route along the rail? How many lengths do I want to have to be making up on a free-running leader, three furlongs from home? It may seem like these are the usual questions a rider asks in every horse race. But the Derby is different. The pressure makes it different. The occasion is unique. And routine decisions that a jockey would make without thinking, now become an agonising problem to solve, in a split second, in a race a potentially great racehorse will have only one chance of winning. That’s the reason the stakes are so high in this race.

Historically, big jockeys win the Jamaica Derby. And in the 55 races since the legendary Arthur Jones booted home Blush in 1959, the Derby has been won 36 times by a champion jockey. That means that the other 19 editions of the Derby have been won by a jockey who has never been crowned champion on local soil. However, there have been some Derby-winning jockeys whose accomplishments are so great that they are even more celebrated than many who’ve worn the champion jockey crown at Caymanas Park.

Fitzroy Glispie, now a multiple classic winning trainer, won the event in 1977, ’78 and ’80. Not many champion jockeys can argue with him about race riding. The legendary Kenneth Mattis who rode Derby winners in 1961, ’66 and ’69, is arguably the best jockey at Caymanas Park to never win a championship.

Amazingly, given the quality of horseflesh at Mattis’s command as a trainer, he saddled only two Derby winners, Royal Dad in 81 and D’s A Legend in 1985. The other jockey never crowned champion at Caymanas Park but who has won the Derby multiple times is Neville Anderson, who scored on Cesario in 1982, Hello Poochie Liu in ’83 and Dorval in ’95.

The Derby tests the stamina, courage, class and pedigree of thoroughbred horses. It also tests the very same things in the human beings who will pilot them over the mile and a half contest. The jockey with the most impeccable judgement, riding a good horse, has a greater than 50-percent chance of winning the Derby.

Jamaicans have a saying, ‘common horse nuh win Derby’. That is true. Neither, as history suggests, do common jockeys. Selah.