Go to a football ground, the home dressing room will be of a good standard. Go to rugby, basketball, any other sport, and you’ll see facilities for the home side being good.

Of course, away team conditions may not be as good, but still of a fair standard, more often than not with rules in place.

So why is racing so bad, with people who are at the centre of the sport? Conditions inside jockey rooms have once again come under scrutiny recently, with Redcar racecourse being the latest to be called out.

Jockey Tom Marquand was at Redcar for their popular Bank Holiday Monday fixture recently and needed to use an exercise bike in order to get rid of a little weight. With a small weighing room, small canteen, and no other area, the exercise bike for him to use was placed inside the toilets.

We all know that even the cleanest toilets have smells and other things associated with them, not to mention the flow of people going in to use them. To be asking Marquand, and anyone else, to ride the bike in the toilet is frankly an absolute joke. You have to wonder why anyone would want to become a jockey given what we’ve seen in the last few weeks.

Yes, there’s plenty about at the minute, but the knock on effect of things right now will certainly be putting off some younger people, who are just thinking about a career in horse racing.

Is the BHA Weighing Room Pledge Enough?

Prior to Marquand going to Redcar and highlighting things, the BHA had already stepped in and put together a plan for the future. However, does this really go far enough?

The plan is for 80% of racecourses to have weighing room upgrades completed by the end of 2026, with the rest to be completed by the end of 2027, though these are being pushed to be completed by the middle of 2027.

Should this not happen, then courses will face sanctions which could go as strongly as having meetings taken away from them, so they can’t offer any sport until things improve.

Warm up areas, which have come under the most scrutiny, have to be in place by the end of July across all racecourses, which has led to new areas being built, and that’s only a good thing.

But is the pledge enough? Does it bring change early enough? This is not a new pledge, for those who don’t know, just bringing forward of an old pledge that was based around facility upgrades by 2030.

Yes, it’s a step in the right direction, but given some of the horror stories we’ve read over the past few months, it’s a small step, when a giant leap is needed really.

The Professional Jockeys’ Association were quick to come out against the pledge too. They were happy to have issues at the start of the 2026 season, but don’t think enough is being done, knowing that some courses will stretch into 2027 with their upgrades, and members of the association will have to keep suffering until then.

The bottom line for me, once again with racing, is how we look after those at the heart of the sport. I think racing does a good job, on most occasions, improving animal welfare and steps taken to look after the animals taking part.

But why are we so slow looking after the humans involved. If you were an important cog at work, needed for the workplace to exist, and you needed exercise, which was available only in a toilet, would you accept it?

It’s been going on for so long, that we’ve probably all become a little numb to the entire situation, but things have to change, and in my opinion, have to change before the new deadlines, they are simply not strong enough to get things done.