Are you looking to become a professional equestrian? A professional horse rider with a knack for keeping a firm grip on your horse’s reigns as you work together to jump the obstacles in front of you?
If you are looking to start a career as a professional show jumper, you may have many questions to get started. The most important question, however, is, can professional show jumpers make a decent living?
How much do professional show jumpers make? The amount that a professional show jumper makes per year is going to be influenced by where they live. In South Dakota and Minnesota, professional show jumpers averaged twenty-three to thirty-two thousand dollars a year, while in Alaska and California they averaged thirty-four thousand dollars a year.
If you’re an avid horse rider and are thinking about abandoning the traditional city life bustle to a simpler life of stables and professional show jumping, you are in the right place.
Keep in mind that there are no shortcuts to making this dream a reality. Here, you are going to learn exactly what it takes to become a professional show jumper and what your total earning potential can be.
What is the Most Amount of Money I Can Earn as a Professional Show Jumper?
If you are looking to become a professional show jumper for fortune and fame, you may need to consider looking into some different career options. A professional show jumper does not typically earn as many zeros on a paycheck as you may like to think, and your earning potential is going to be influenced heavily by where you live.
If you happen to be a resident of South Dakota or Minnesota, for example, do not expect to earn very high wages as a professional show jumper. In the Midwest, respectively, professional show jumpers in South Dakota earned, on average, twenty-three thousand dollars a year. In Minnesota, they earned significantly more at thirty-two thousand dollars a year.
If you learn further out west in the beloved states of Alaska and California, you can expect to see a higher average of yearly earnings at thirty-four thousand dollars a year. Montana, however, has a significantly lower professional show jumper salary average at twenty-four thousand dollars a year.
If you live in Washington DC, however, you can earn a decent wage, with their annual salary average of forty-seven thousand dollars.
If you are looking to become a professional show jumper, purely for financial gain, this is the wrong career for you. While it is true that there are some jumpers out there who can make significantly more, that is few and far in between.
However, if this is not a deterrent and you’re still looking to trade dress shoes for spurs, the next section will explain to you how the pay structure works for show jumpers.
How do Professional Show Jumpers Make Money?
Professional show jumpers typically get paid through their winnings in a show. There is not a guaranteed amount of money a professional show jumper will make, and professional show jumpers often have other means of making money to allow them to compete in the sport, as it is expensive to compete in.
The winnings that can be earned by the professional show jumper vary depending on the promotion, with prizes for jumps ranging anywhere from twelve-hundred to twenty-five thousand dollars for jumps.
While that might sound great if you are looking at competing, you need to keep in mind that the horse you ride is going to be your biggest expense.
Necessities such as food, water, bathing, and training the horse all cost money, and so you know, owning a horse is not a small expense to have, which is why professional show jumpers have other means of creating an income that allows them to participate in the sport that they love.
When looking to compete as a professional show jumper, it is important to be involved in other aspects of equestrian life to be able to make a sustainable living–horse training, grooming, acquiring sponsors, and even selling horses, which is where much of your income is going to come from.
How do You Become a Professional Show Jumper?
For those of you who have decided that you love horses and would rather have your life revolve around them, this is going to be the perfect section for you.
Especially if you want to learn the ins and out of equestrian life to be able to support yourself as you pursue your dream. Being a professional show jumper should not be looked at as a job or even a sport. It is a way of life, and it is not easy.
Regardless of who you are, becoming a professional show jumper is not going to be an easy feat to accomplish, and there are certain steps that everyone who is looking to compete as a professional is going to have to take. The first one is going to be finding a mentor to apprentice under.
Why is Becoming an Apprentice Necessary to Become a Professional Show Jumper?
Believe it or not, becoming a professional show jumper is not only about riding as much as people would like to think. You need to know everything about horses. You need to know about feeding them, training them, and learning how to run a stable.
The most important part of becoming a professional show jumper is understanding and knowing how to care for the horse that you are jumping with.
The mentor who is going to be training you is going to provide you with some essential skills that you are going to need to be able to develop the necessary relationship with the horse you are going to be riding and jumping with, but also develop the skills necessary to learn how to care for horses and start your own horse training and stable business as it will most likely become your means of generating income.
Start as Early as You Can and Learn as Much as Possible
The sooner you know that you want to be a professional show jumper, the better off you will be. It will allow you to create a map for professional development that is going to allow you to be in the position you need to be and develop the relationships with people that are going to give a shot at jumping some day.
This means starting a financial plan to budget properly to finance your professional show jumping career when you are ready. Also, spend as much time as possible with your mentor working in the stables learning the ins and out of the business, horse caretaking, and training to leave you better prepared.
The longer you wait to engage in getting involved and started on the path to becoming a professional, the greater the difficulty to be successful.
You could be brushed off as not being serious or able to last long in the sport by not being prepared and having your finances in order, which is a must in the professional show jumping business.
Learn From Those Who Came Before You
It is important to follow the steps of the professional show jumpers who came before you and have been competing in the sport for some time. When we say to follow their steps and learn from them, we do not mean, go to them for an apprenticeship.
We already covered that. We mean to follow their careers and read their stories to get an idea as to how they got so far as a professional jumper.
You can never learn or know too much. Take the time to learn from the experience of those that came before you to avoid the pitfalls that they might have experienced themselves before. As trainer Karen Healey says
“I don’t do lunch; I do lessons.”
Source: Practical Horseman
Final Thoughts
Life as a professional show jumper is going to be a change of pace for anyone that has not been involved in equestrian life significantly before deciding to make this transition. If you are looking to become a professional show jumper, you need to keep in mind that this is not something that you do to become rich.
While there are ways to increase your income as a professional show jumper by acquiring sponsors and making appearances after you reach a certain level, you need to keep in mind competing in the sport; itself can be very expensive.
Spend your time training with a mentor and learning how to run a stable and training business to be able to support yourself and your passion.
We hope that the information provided to you in this article points you in the right direction towards achieving your dreams of becoming a professional show jumper. Remember, this is more than a sport
As Healy also says:
“It’s not a job; it’s a life.”