Top feminine jockey needed to share racecourse sauna with 5 bare male riders
Hayley Turner, the first female to ride 1,000 winners, said some racecourses still do not cater for women who regularly risk coming face-to-face with nude men in the changing rooms
Hayley Turner: described her sauna experience(Image: (Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images))
Top jockey Hayley Turner has told how she had to share a racecourse sauna with five naked male riders.
She said some courses still do not properly cater for women despite her becoming the first female to ride 100 UK flat race winners in a year and Rachael Blackmore winning the Grand National and Cheltenham Gold Cup. Some racecourses have valets – jockeys’ assistants who prepare their silks – in male changing rooms only.
That means women are faced by male colleagues in the buff when they go to get their racing clobber. Hayley, 43, the first female to ride 1,000 winners, said she was just 17 when she was first confronted by a room full of naked jockeys.
She said: “The first time I ever had a race I went to Southwell and I had no idea. I was oblivious to it all. I went to the valets where I was pointed and I walked in and there were loads of naked jockeys everywhere.
“I was just, ‘oh my God’. Some of them had the grace to cover up but not all of them. I was 17. That day I was told to go in the sauna because I had to make a really light weight.
“And the trainer said, ‘oh just jump in the sauna and lose a pound or two’. So I went into the sauna and I didn’t realise that there were adjoining doors to the male changing rooms.
“I walked in the sauna and there were like five naked jockeys sat there. I’ve never been back in a sauna since.”
Hayley, who retired last year and now works for ITV Racing, said while many courses have ‘improved a lot’ since she started out ‘quite a few haven’t’ – even though there are currently 37 professional women jockeys in the UK. “A lot of racecourses have really stepped up,” she said.
“Some haven’t – quite a few haven’t – the likes of Lingfield, Nottingham. Tracks that we ride at regularly. They still have the valets in the male changing room.
“So the girls have to go into the male changing rooms and the lads are just walking round with no clothes on.” She said it was ‘ridiculous’ in 2026.
The operators of Southwell and Nottingham racecourses had not responded to a request for comment. Sources at Lingfield said a new weighing room facility which opened in February met all British Horseracing Authority standards.
