saunas, the ageing writer and conspiracy.

​In both Ireland and Britain, the use of saunas has become a hot topic of debate. Jockeys want saunas restored to Irish and British racecourses, the medical advisors to the racing authorities both sides of the Irish Sea are adamant in their belief they are bad for health and must not be reinstated. Finding a resolution to the disagreement will be difficult as both sides, in my opinion, have a slice of right on their side.
The overall health, as much as they can legislate for it, is the primary concern of racing authorities and the medial staff they employ. On the other hand, jockeys are obligated to draw the correct weight for each and every ride they have on any given day. At the moment, jockeys with weight issues are trying to take off the last pound by running around the racecourse before or during racing, sweating in very hot bathes before driving to the races, some wearing sweat-suits, with the car heater turned-up to full-blast, or spending an hour in a sauna close to the racecourse. Unregulated and unmonitored; more dangerous to health than saunas?
Both parties agree it is injurious to health to ride when dehydrated. Jockeys do, on occasion, faint after a ride due to dehydration. Personally, I believe the devil you know provides better resolution to any problem than the devil you don’t know. That is why I believe the return of saunas to racecourses is the way forward, with observed rules followed by all jockeys making use of them. Limited time use, drinking a stated amount of water after use and monitoring by a health official. As an olive branch, the wealthier jockeys could put their hands in their pockets to either pay for the saunas or at least pay a sizeable contribution to their return. Perhaps a small charge should also be imposed on sauna use.
I have also suggested, though this is not a bridge between both divides of the debate, that ‘heavy-weight’ and ‘light-weight’ races could be introduced to help both the very light jockeys who are disadvantaged by the rising of weights to accommodate the heavier jockeys and the same jockeys struggling to do the weights carried by horses at the top of the handicap.
It is a disagreement that must be resolved with speed afoot. 

Yesterday I posted a blog in which I got my facts wrong. I deleted the post within five-minutes of reading my on-line copy of the Racing Post. The previous day I had also e-mailed a letter to the Post’s letters column opining the same lack of knowledge. I trust they will not publish my gaffe. My excuse I present for my ignorance is wrapped-up in ageing, ailing memory, laziness in checking facts and the blindingly obvious conclusion of anyone who reads my musings, that I am not a journalist, trained or otherwise, and publish without the aid of an editor.
The basic premise of the blog was correct, that premierisation of racing will eventually lead to Saturdays without any racing for I.T.V. to televise as the weather in this country has an annoying habit of intervening on our entertainment. My error was in believing only two meetings would be scheduled on a Saturday in the time-slot given to the two premier meetings, when a third non-premier meeting will also be permitted. This small but relevant fact torpedoed my argument. 
In winter, though, you can bet your boots, there will be Saturdays when both premier meetings will fall victim to the weather, with any meeting scheduled for morning or evening being unavailable to fill the void. It is a basic failing of premierisation, even if 99% of the time the weather gods will play nicely.

On another, even more controversial subject, does anyone think there is a connection between the Gambling Commission’s war on betting and the Irish government’s apparent determination to destroy its profitable thoroughbred industry by banning betting adverts throughout the day on both terrestrial and satellite television, thereby denying horse racing in their country of millions of pound’s worth of advertising revenue? And would Singapore closing its only racecourse also be part of a similar connection? Or the manner in which horse racing in the U.S. is slowly beginning to implode upon itself?
I will leave you to conduct your own research. But in the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’, a plan for the resetting of the world which all the leading nations and organisations have signed-up to, there is no place for animals other than those in the wild, and no place for racehorses that require so much of the Earth’s resources. And wild fires? Quite recently a conference took place on Maui, in Hawaii, on the possibility of turning the island into the first super-city, of 15-minute city of infamy. Join the dots and you might discover that ‘they’ have cleared the land of people, vegetation and buildings. Cars incinerated, yet wooden telegraph poles left unsinged!
The truth is, we are unwanted by the future developers and ‘guardians’ of our planet. Only that which A.1. can command will be allowed to remain!