Inside racing's doomsday nightmare: The communities that tax hikes will 'kill', a 24-hour blackout and the brutal reality for the hard-working low earners that will suffer most

This day will feature words such as crisis and horrendous and stark realities will be confronted. But, at this early hour, a smell provides the first attack on the senses – and it sparks laughter.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ says Abbie Bunten, yard manager at the stables of Newmarket trainer John Berry with a telling twinkle in her eye. ‘I honestly wouldn’t notice it now. Anyway, we’ve got a bit to do, so let’s get on with it.’

Racing is in a state of flux and, on Wednesday, there will be a 24-hour blackout with no action being staged.

Instead, the sport’s powers-that-be will descend on Westminster to protest about the threat posed to the industry by a potential tax hike on bookmakers’ profits from 15 to 21 per cent.

‘Sometimes you need to point out that we do exist,’ six-time Champion trainer John Gosden told Daily Mail Sport. ‘If you want to kill communities and create a lot of unemployment – if they do what they’re talking about (to raise tax), that’s exactly what will happen.’

Gosden painted a bleak picture so, in order to get a deeper understanding of what is at stake in an industry which provides more than 85,000 jobs, I spent a day as stable lad – and the experience couldn’t have been more rewarding.

There was no hiding place. At 7.30am, Abbie had given a tutorial on what was required to get a horse’s box shipshape again and, with that, a pitchfork and brush was handed over and wheelbarrow needed filling. This was real life, the wet straw being as pungent as ammonia.

Stable lads and lasses work unforgiving hours, their average pay £30,000. That figure is just below the UK average of £31,768, as reported recently by the Office for National Statistics. There is potential for bonuses but these are the workers who will be in most peril if racing capsizes.

But those in this yard from Abbie, who is 29 and has worked at Beverley House Stables for 10 years, to John and his wife, Emma, a respected journalist, have one thing in their heart each day and that is the love of the horse and in this vibrant little base, the quarrels of an industry seem miles away.

John, a former Mayor of Newmarket, sets the tone. He will be 60 next year but he is a force of nature, a man with an encyclopaedic knowledge and a gift to get horses, whatever their ability, to keep improving. He is up at 5.30am each day and works for 12-14 hours, seven days a week.

Thursday provided an insight into the efforts he puts in to keep the wheels turning, as he galloped three horses, one after the other in different parts of town in rain, at times, that came down horizontally. His enthusiasm, however, would not be dampened.

‘You have got to be an optimist,’ he says. ‘There are two parts to it and the easiest way to equate is this: if you have a dog, your life would be massively different – and massively worse – if you no longer had it. Your dog is so important to you (he has three) and it is the same with horses.’

No other sport gives you the opportunity to dream and, as John states with a chuckle, no other sport allows you to 'see greatness where none exists' – every trainer in every yard around the world pursues this venture because you never know where a superstar might arrive.

For John, his dream revolves around a little filly called Azkena, who cost just 1,000 guineas when she was bought but she has been floating easily up the gallops lately and as he washes her down, making sure all her legs are clean and injury free, you can see he is dreaming.

There is not, however, any time for hanging around. Abbie is busy loading up Double Meaning, the yard’s runner for the day, into the box that John will drive the 95 miles to Lingfield Park; the three-year-old doesn’t know he’s a long odds-on favourite but favouritism carries pressure.

The journey around the M25, though, is dreadful. An accident just after the Dartford Crossing leaves delays of an hour and the constant stopping and starting of a van can upset a horse, meaning they can lose a race before they have even made it to the course.

‘That was horrendous,’ John says, the delay having done nothing for his anxiety. But we have made it with two hours before the 4.10pm off time and we now have chance to discuss the blackout and how someone like him would be impacted if the Government impose a tax rise in November’s Budget.

‘In one sense, we have been presented with the doomsday scenario so often that you almost become immune to worrying about them,’ he says. ‘But, yes, if there if a significant alteration to the tax rate, it will have an effect – a big effect.

‘It’s not even that it will make something easy become difficult. It will make a difficult situation even more difficult. For a long time, the bumblebee analogy has applied to racing. Aerodynamically, if you analyse a bumblebee, it shouldn’t be able to fly. It’s big, solid and has little wings – but it flies.

‘For as long as I’ve analysed them, racing’s finances shouldn’t work – but it does. We get used to thinking it will continue but we will just have to see what happens. But you can’t worry about things that are out of your control. You just have to deal with things as they turn up.

‘People fall by the wayside all the time and, at some point, it will be me. The thing with training, for all of us, is this: it’s what we do.’

And he does it so very well. Double Meaning, who is owned by long standing supporter of the yard Tony Fordham, thunders away with the two-mile handicap.

His five-length win under jockey Marco Ghiani earns the owners £2,560 but, really, the experience is priceless.

‘Wonderful,’ John says, bursting with pride, as he watches Double Meaning bound across the line. ‘Just wonderful. These are the days you simply have to enjoy.’

There was sunshine then champagne for Fordham, his wife Rebecca and daughter, Miranda, but for John and Abbie, who had won the prize for presenting Double Meaning so immaculately, it was back to the M25 to do it all over again.

To see this happiness, you wondered how there could be crisis.