HORSES sweat, gentlemen perspire, and ladies feel the heat. With due deference to Lisa Jones, the only female riding at Brighton yesterday, there can be little doubt that jockeys have had a good deal more in common with their mounts than with “gentlemen” over recent days.
These are the dog days of the season. Between Goodwood and York, quality ebbs, but there is no respite in quantity. In a heatwave, the claustrophobia of their working schedule is heightened for jockeys — trussed in foam body protectors, crammed into helmets, starved of relaxation. At Catterick on Tuesday, Kieren Fallon himself gave up his last two mounts because of dehydration.
It is instructive, then, that some jockeys began the afternoon in the sauna. Richard Mullen was fortunate. Though scheduled to ride at 8st 1lb, lighter than he had managed in a year, he did not need to join them. He had already achieved the weight loss with a jog, wrapped in a sweatsuit, after riding work at dawn in Newmarket.
“But a few of the lads were in there, the likes of Steve Drowne and Dane O’Neill,” Mullen said. “I’m lucky, in that I’m not going on to Kempton tonight. That’s when it hits you — when you get a break, or get into the car, and you no longer have the adrenalin to help you. I’ve been careful to keep taking in water, with electrolyte pills. The only air-conditioning we have here is the back door, and Jockey Club security wanted that shut. Thankfully, they’ve been able to post a guard there today.”
As luck should have it, the forecast meltdown was relieved by a sea fret, but its arrival did little to alleviate the overall concerns of Michael Turner, chief medical adviser to the Jockey Club.
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“In such hot weather, a jockey can lose 1lb a ride, adding up to 6lb or 7lb through an afternoon,” he said. “We tell them that a pint of water equates to 1¼lb in weight. But jockeys treat water like lead. Hot weather means that they don’t have to go into the sauna.”
Turner acknowledges that their performance will not be seriously impaired by the loss of, say, 2 per cent of body weight. “Any more, however, and you’re talking about significant loss of strength, perhaps as much as 25 per cent,” he said. “Jockeys can get away with variable weight, because the horse does a lot of the work for them.
“But if you put them on a machine, they would see that they are performing below par. They complain that drinking fluids is very tiresome. It does feel uncomfortable in the stomach, and, to a degree, their bodies are conditioned to losing weight. The rest of us, after losing 4lb in a sauna, would be coming out on our hands and knees. So these, for many jockeys, are day-to-day issues. But this time of year is undoubtedly very difficult, very tiring.”
Michael Caulfield, chief executive of the Jockeys’ Association, agrees that it is a question of balance. “I’ve always said that the riding is the easy part,” he said. “The long days, the driving, the frustrations — that’s the hard bit.
“I’ve encouraged jockeys to work smarter, not harder, because there is only a certain amount they can give. But the rest of the industry has to buy into that if they want to get the best out of jockeys. Riders have to take a sensible, professional approach. Rather than moan, they have to select their own best working programme, and quietly withdraw at the right time.”
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The Jockey Club agrees that the frenetic weighing-room culture is a matter of collective responsibility. “If a jockey is to take off, say, one day in fourteen, everyone has to respect that,” John Maxse, its spokesman, said. “Some trainers are too intolerant. Flexibility over riding out in the morning would make huge difference, too.”