When the nine equine athletes involved in the seven-furlong contest for Newbury’s Saturday highlight, the Group Two BetVictor Hungerford Stakes, strolled around the parade ring there was nowhere else in the world I would have preferred to be. As the sun gleamed off perfectly burnished coats and perfectly toned muscles rippled in sturdy hindquarters I wanted every one of them gift-wrapped and delivered to a paddock behind my garden. The classy Chindit, a Wootton Bassett colt trained by Richard Hannon, looked glorious. His stable companion Witch Hunter, sired like this year’s wonder-horse Paddington by Siyouni, gazed intelligently around him. Spain had a rare representative in the Lope de Vega colt Rodaballo, six times a winner in Madrid, and Charlie Hills’s habitual front-runner Pogo looked perfectly tuned for battle. In the event the early leaders faded. New Endeavour moved through smoothly to lead two out looking the likely winner but then Witch Hunter, having been given the fast pace on which he thrives, came past each of his eight rivals to emerge a one-length winner at 12-1 with the favourite, Chindit, three lengths back in third. ‘On that ground Chindit’s wheels were spinning,’ said his trainer.

I could not believe that Witch Hunter, the winner of the Buckingham Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot who likes the good to soft ground, had been allowed to start at 12-1 though I and my bank manager remain grateful. Perhaps it was that Witch Hunter was clearly the stable second string, entered only because the ground might have been deemed too soft to risk Chindit. Maybe punters were worried that this was Witch Hunter’s 11th race this year. As jubilant jockey Sean Levey put it: ‘He hasn’t missed a single dance.’ But the Hannon yard has never been known for wrapping its inmates in cotton wool.

We can rest assured that after their efforts Witch Hunter, New Endeavour and Chindit, like the other contestants, will have been well rewarded with the combination of grass and hay, oats, corn and barley favoured by the feed man at their yards. The formula for successful racehorses as an old jumps trainer put it to me once is: ‘Feed them well and work them to it.’ The average racehorse needs about 35,000 calories a day in their diet including plenty of fat, protein, fibre and starch. Since sweating can cause a horse to lose six to eight gallons of liquid they have to be kept well hydrated too.

But it is a different story for those riders of assorted shapes and sizes who file into the ring before each race like pilots heading for the fighter cockpit. Many of them, desperate to keep their not always suitable bodies at inappropriate weights, will be driving horses home in a race while severely dehydrated and that is why controversy is raging over the British Horseracing Authority’s refusal to have reinstalled at racetracks the on-course saunas which were banned during the Covid crisis and scrapped altogether in 2021.

Weight is the all-consuming issue for so many riders. Despite taking hot showers at Goodwood, Neil Callan had to give up his ride on Sumo Sam in the Lillie Langtry Stakes because he couldn’t get down in time to the horse’s allotted weight. The lighter Tom Marquand took the ride and the jockey’s share of the £170,000 prize. The long-time arrangement between trainer Clive Cox and Adam Kirby, who won the Derby on Adayar, has come to an end because Adam, at 5ft 11in, is losing his battle to keep the weight down. There is no longer any point in him going down to ride work at the Cox yard when he can’t do the weight to ride the horses on the track. Top apprentice Harry Davies told the Racing Post recently that some days he wakes at 4 a.m., rides out in a sweatsuit, drives four hours to the races and then, having been dehydrated for 12 hours, climbs on a horse to do his job. Some jockeys now have to factor into their already arduous travel plans finding a gym or hotel near a racecourse where they can use a sauna before racing.

Marquand and Callan, along with other top jockeys like Richard Kingscote and Jason Hart, who reckons that 90 per cent of jockeys sweat to do their weights, are calling for the racecourse saunas to be reinstalled. They argue that the shorter the period you have to be dehydrated the better it is for your health and that it is best done in a controlled environment on course. The BHA, which points out that minimum riding weights have been raised by 2lb, is digging its heels in.

It says the Professional Jockeys Association, by calling for the saunas’ return, is reversing its public position and undermining a huge body of work on the weight problem. I’m with the jockeys: the BHA, after all its changes of direction on issues like whip use, is in no position to criticise anybody else for a change of mind.