No weather worries for O'Brien as temperatures rise at Ascot

And the master of Ballydoyle also allayed any fears the equine athletes on show would find conditions unduly oppressive, despite the mercury rising.
O'Brien said: 'Horses love heat, it's in their nature and when you are training horses they thrive in the heat and in the cold they don't always try, they don't like the cold weather.
'Heat is always an advantage for horses and as long as there is plenty of water at hand, you would prefer it to be warm – if you asked the horse what weather he would like, I would know what he would say.
'Ascot do an incredible job and we've had beautiful weather this week. I promise you, if you are training horses you would see the difference. When it's warm horses train better and get bigger and stronger, they eat better and drink better. When it's cold they put all their energy into keeping warm, so it's better it is warm any day.'
Ascot's clerk of the course Chris Stickels underlined the amount of water that is readily available at the track.
He said: 'We've got plenty of water available and there is over 3,000 litres in the unsaddling enclosures.
'We also ice the water and there is a 1,000-litre water bowser which sits on the finishing line of the jumps course and is able to be towed anywhere on the racecourse it is needed.
'There is also 800 litres at the winning line and pull-out area to be dished out by the dedicated team, who are not only there to top up the buckets but help out stable staff as required.
'We've got the misting fans and there are a lot of resources available. Horses get used to the heat and they do get acclimatised and it's worse if it suddenly gets hot, but the key thing is just to have a team on hand to keep on top of the resources.'
Dr Sally Taylor, head of equine regulation, safety and welfare for the British Horseracing Authority, told ITV Racing: 'The most important thing to realise is horses are very able to acclimatise to hot weather. When horses sweat it is their primary mechanism of losing heat, as the sweat evaporates it takes with it the heat so that is what you see when a horse sweats at the start.
'When they finish racing we are able to mimic that process by applying cold water and creating a breeze. Ascot does a fantastic job, there is iced water available, horses are supervised by vets at all stages of their journey across the racecourse and they have state-of-the-art fans here to create a breeze.'

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