Jockeys in race to scale career ladder

13 April 2012

Jockeys are fighting a war with the scales which poses a major threat to their physical and mental health. That is the message in a BBC documentary tonight which highlights the disturbing measures some riders adopt to exist at a level more than 20lb below their natural body weight.

Inside Out portrays a day in the life of Jean-Pierre Guillambert, a promising apprentice who survives on slave rations and drives to races with the heater on while wearing a sweat-suit under layers of clothing.

"The first thing you do every day is weigh yourself and the last thing you do is weigh yourself," he said. "It is not healthy, but desperate things call for desperate measures and you have to keep doing it to climb the ladder."

Half of all British Flat races are handicaps in which horses carry different weights according to their form. The minimum weight was raised from 7st 7lb to 7st 10lb in 1996 and to 7st 12lb in 2002, but the Jockey Cub's chief medical officer Dr Michael Turner is pressing for an 8st minimum.

Turner does so amid evidence that the average 16-year-old boy now weighs 10st 7lb - 11lb more than 30 years ago - and that the pool of teenagers built to make a career in racing decreases every year.

"You couldn't do it if you didn't love racing, but the vast majority of jockeys are struggling with weight or keeping a close eye on it," added Guillambert. "I'm off to Corfu on Monday and I'll be 9st 7lb by the weekend, but everybody needs a blowout and I'll have to graft to get the weight off when I come home."

Michael Caulfield, a sports psychologist and former chief executive of the Jockeys' Association, said: "It's a life of supreme sacrifice. Psychologically, wasting makes jockeys very angry, very tense and quite depressed. Physically, it can result in exhaustion and stomach cramps because you are putting the minimum of petrol in the car."

The issue of jockeys risking their health to lose weight is as old as racing itself and can go well beyond what tonight's programme shows. Steve Cauthen fought bulimia during his time in Britain, while star American rider Jose Santos argues that half his colleagues resort to the self-induced vomiting practice known as "flipping" to keep weight down.

Some American tracks even have special toilets marked "Heavers" for those who need rapid weight loss, while Hall of Fame nominee Randy Romero has developed kidney and liver problems after a 4,000-winner career in which wasting and diuretics were part of his daily routine.

Keith Dalgleish succumbed to early retirement because of weight trouble recently. He weighed 7st 5lb when he rode his first winner aged 17 and had more than 200 successes before he was 21.

But the Scot's story reached a sorry end when he failed to turn up at Hamilton 10 weeks ago and retired on the spot. Dalgleish, now 10st, said: "I tried everything to keep weight off, sweating and simply not eating, but there comes a time when whatever you do isn't enough."

Raising the minimum weight to 8st will be no good to Dalgleish. Nor will it be enough to help hundreds of others whose career prospects depend on an ability to maintain a body weight more in keeping with a Victorian street urchin than a 21st century sportsman.

Inside Out, produced in conjunction with Equus Intermedia, will be screened tonight on BBC1 at 7.30pm.

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