First of all I want to point out that I know nothing about horses or racing, not in Britain nor anywhere else except what I have learned from the novels of Dick Francis. Because of this lack of background knowledge I may have got the wrong impressions or ideas or completely missunderstood things.

Dick Francis, the writer of these books, is a former National Hunt jockey himself. He rode for the Queen Mother and was Champion Jockey in 1953-54. So he should know his surroundings. Through his books I have became acquainted with the world of racing. I have come to know that not all people in Britain like racing; some even detest it, and I have noticed that horse racing is also a popular sport elsewhere: in the USA, Canada, France, Italy and Australia. Despite all this I have always thought racing to be a very British phenomenon. At least it has been a popular sport in Britain for more than 300 years.

Racing is a big industry in Britain. There is a vast number of people involved in this business. First of all there are horses to race, jockeys to ride them, trainers to train the horses, stable lads to feed them, vets to take care of their health, farmers to grow oats and hay for them, breeders to produce material for the industry, bloodstock agents to buy horses for owners and, of course, owners to pay all the bills.

In Britain alone there are at present about seventeen thousand thoroughbred broodmares. A mare can theoretically have a foal every year, but some years they're barren and some foals die. I suppose there must be about nine thousand new foals or yearlings on the market every season. Then there are about twenty thousand horses in training for flat races, and heaven knows how many jumpers, but more than on the Flat.⁽¹⁾

Race meetings, held all over Britain, are places where all these people come together to show the results of their work to the public. Besides all those who directly deal with horses there are a lot of people otherwise connected with racing: bookmakers are ready to collect the dough from the race-goers, caterers to prepare food and drinks to keep the public happy, stewards to make sure that races are run honestly, race course officials to take care that everything goes smooth and easy.

The whole mob was at Newmarket. All the bloodstock agents, big and small. All the trainers with runners, all the jockeys with mounts, all the owners with hopes. All the clients with their cheque books ready. All the breeders with their years work at stake. All the bookies looking for mugs. All the Press looking for exclusives.⁽²⁾

People were coming: Bus-load of Tote operators, the ST John's Ambulance people, the squad of policemen for traffic control and the general prevention of fights in the betting rings, the bookies with their soap boxes and chalk boards, the gate-men, the racecard sellers; and then the jockeys, the sponsors of the races, the Stewards, the trainers, ...and, finally, the racegoers with all bets still to lose.⁽³⁾

There is a whole branch of transport business involved with racing. Special race-trains are arranged for race-goers. Tracks transport horses from training stables to meetings and back again. Planes carry busy trainers and successful jockeys from race course to race course when events take place on the same day all over Britain. Thoroughbred mares travel by air all over Europe to be mated with top sires. Horses are exported and imported all over the world. I wouldn't have thought horses travel this much.

The horse involved on this occasion had come from Norway, stayed in England overnight, and was bound for a racing stable in Virginia.⁽⁴⁾

In certain regions in the Downs in Berkshire there are villages - such as Newmarket or Lambourn - where there are so many trainers that racing or horses can be called even the main source of livelihood. At dawn on the Heath, on the Downs, on bare hills where it is always cold and windy one can see strings of horses with their lads doing morning gallops. For these people horses are a way of life.

I loved the Heath in the early mornings with the manes blowing under the wide skies. My affection for horses was so deep and went back so far that I couldn't imagine life without them. They were a friendly foreign nation living in our land, letting their human neigbours tend them and feed them, accepting them as servants as much as masters. Fast, fascinating, essentially untamed, they were my landscape, my old shoes, the place where my heart returned, as necessary to me as the sea to sailors.⁽⁵⁾

The people involved in racing have very different social backgrounds, starting from the Queen, who owns racehorses, to a stable lad, who mucks and feeds his two.

Our own dear Queen, someone said ironically, is associated with the Turf. And knows the Stud Book backwords, so they say. ⁽⁶⁾

The lads, on the whole, seemed to accept that in the eyes of the world they were of secondary importance as human beings to Inskip (trainer) and October (owner). Wally (groom)... told me to call Inskip 'Sir' and October 'My Lord' and said that if I was a ruddy Communist I could clear off at once: So I quickly exhibited what he called a proper respect for my betters.⁽⁷⁾

The heroes of Dick Francis are, of course, gentlemen, if not always by birth

But how would you like to be on the verge of finding out that you owe your existence to a quickie in the bushes with the milkman?⁽⁸⁾

or by upbringing

I smothered my Welsh accent quite deliberately. I used to practise in secret, while I was still at school, copying the BBC news' announcers. I wanted to be a Civil Servant, and I was ambitious, and I knew I wouldn't get far if I sounded like the son of a Welsh farm labourer. So in time this became my natural way of talking. And my parents despise me for it.⁽⁹⁾

but by speech and by behaviour.

Let's get to know some of these people and the phenomenon itself.

Races

There are many forms of horse racing: flat races, steeplechasing, hurdle races, show-jumping, point-to-point or what ever. In his books Dick Francis mostly talks about steeplechasing so my "experience" of racing is not very wide.

Race meetings are held throughout the year: flat races from April up to November; steeplechasing in winter. Meetings are arranged during the week (not on Sundays) in race courses all over Britain. One race event usually lasts one or two days, sometimes three or four days. Some races are more or less local, but for the main events, where a lot of prestige or good prizes are available, people and horses gather from all over Britain.

The Cheltenham National Hunt Festival Meeting started on Tuesday, 2 March. Three days of superlative racing lay ahead, and the finest 'chasers in the world crowded into the racecourse stables. Ferries from Ireland brought them across by boat and plane load; dark horses from the bogs whose supernatural turn of foot was foretold in thick mysterious brogue, and golden geldings who had already taken prizes and cups galore across the Irish Sea.

Horse-boxes from Scotland, from Kent, from Devon, from everywhere, converged on Gloucestershire. Inside, they carried Grand National winners, champion hurdlers, all-conquering handicappers, splendid hunters: the aristocrats among jumpers.⁽¹⁰⁾

Every day during the meeting there are about six races. If the first of them starts, for instance, at ten thirty and if each race takes one hour, the event lasts the whole day. That's why there is a need for quite an amount of food and drink.

Race tracks are oval. In Britain they are different in shape and length, unlike in the USA, where they are standardized. In steeplechasing there are several fences - hedges or water jumps - to go over during the race.

Jockeys go through the same preparations before every race. They change from their street clothes into their riding boots, breeches and colours in the changing room. Carrying their saddles and crash helmets they go to the weighing room and sit on the scales. After being passed for the race, they go to the saddling boxes to meet the horses and the trainers. The horses are saddled and led into the parade ring. Trainers can still give their last minute orders to the jockeys, before the jockeys mount on their horses to be ready for the start. Then off they go.

I swung up on his horse, walked out in the parade, and cantered down to the start. Clobber, an eight year old thoroughbred chestnut hunter, had only once won (thanks to being low in the handicap) in the company he was taking on now at level weights, but he shone with condition and his step was bursting with good feeling. Like so many horses, he responded well to spring air and sun on his back and my own spirits lifted with his. It was not, after all, going to be a fiasco.

We lined up and the tapes went up, and Clobber set off to the first fence pulling like a train. As he hadn't a snowball's hope in hell of winning, I thought Mr Thackery (owner) might as well enjoy a few moments in the limelight, and let Clobber surge his way to the front. Once he got there he settled down and stopped trying to run away with me and we stayed there, surprisingly leading the distinguished field for over two and half of the three and a quarter miles.⁽¹¹⁾

..horse, for a pig in a poke, was not as bad as I feared. At the second fence he put in a short one and screwed in mid-air. I came clear out of the saddle and landed back in it more by luck than judgement. This was obviously the trick which had rid Heavens Above of its former jockey, who now had all my sympathy. He did it again at the third open ditch, but the rest of our journey was uneventful. The horse even found an unsuspected turn of foot up the hill and, passing several tired animals, ran on into fourth place⁽¹²⁾

After every race the three best horses are led into the unsaddling enclosure where they and their owners and trainers are celebrated.

Some race meetings are especially famous, like Royal Ascot, where the top society of Britain gather in June, with men in their morning coats and women wearing fabulous hats.

One's first exposure to the Royal Ascot meeting was, according to one's basic outlook, either a matter of surprised delight or of puritanical disapproval. Either the spirits lifted to the sight of emerald grass, massed flowers, bright dresses, fluffy hats and men elegant in grey formality, or one despised the expenditure, the frivolity, the shame of champagne and strawberries while some in the world starved.⁽¹³⁾

I... had wandered out onto the balcony to watch the Queen's procession of sleek horses, open carriages, gold, glitter and fluttering feathers trotting like a fairy tale up the green course.⁽¹⁴⁾

... we queued up in good humour to make the wager. All around us in grey toppers and frothy dresses the Ascot crowd swirled, a feast to the eye in the sunshine, a ritual in make-believe, a suppression of gritty truth.⁽¹⁵⁾

Jockeys

Jockeys are those brave little men who risk their lives riding these massive creatures (horses) at thirty miles per hour. They are young (16-35), small and thin and always hungry.

By eating and drinking very little I had managed to keep my riding weight down to ten stone for a whole week. This meant a body weight of nine stone eight, which was a strain at my height, ...⁽¹⁶⁾

They are either professionals, who own their living by racing

I'm a professional, so I'm not allowed to own racehorses...

I ride for my life... I get paid for doing what I like best in the world. It's a very satisfactory state of affairs. ⁽¹⁷⁾

or amateurs with all kind of backgrounds, to whom racing is a hobby or a passion

Amateurs came in all guises: there was a mother, an aunt and a grandfather riding that afternoon, besides a journalist, an earl's son, a lieutenant-colonel, a show-jumper and myself.⁽¹⁸⁾

To be a jockey is a dangerous job often done in lousy conditions. Jockeys have to retire quite early and find another job. Dick Francis himself retired in 1957 at the age of 37 and started a new career as a writer.

Bad weather, long journeys, disappointment and injuries had at first been shrugged off as "part of the job". After ten years I saw that they were the job. The peaks, the winners, those were the bonuses. Extras.

The tools of my trade were a liking for speed and a liking for horses, and the power to combine those two feelings. Also strong bones, an ability to bounce, and a tendency to mend quickly when I didn't.⁽¹⁹⁾

Winded and coughing, I lay on one elbow and spat out a mouthful of grass and mud. The horse I'd been riding raised its weight off my ankle, scrambled untidily to its feet and departed at an unfeeling gallop. I waited for things to settle: chest heaving, bones still rattling from the bang, sense of balance recovering from a thirty-mile-an-hour somersault and a few tumbling rolls. No harm done. Nothing broken. Just another fall.

Time and place: sixteenth fence, three-mile steeplechase, Sandown Park racecourse, Friday November, in thin, cold, persistent rain. At the return of breath and energy I stood wearily up and thought with intensity that this was a damn silly way for a grown man to be spending his life.⁽²⁰⁾

Owners and trainers

Owners make racing possible. Anyone can own a race horse. All you need is enough money to buy one and to pay its training fees. Owners seldom train their horses them-selves, only some farmers do their own training. Horses are trained by professional trainers, who have horses from different owners in their stables. These stables are bigger or smaller and more or less successful.

I... walked round with him (Tremayne, trainer) to inspect his horses at evening stables. At every one of fifty doors he had stopped to check on the inmate's welfare, discussing it briefly with the lad and dispensing carrots to enquiring muzzles with little pats and murmurs of affection.⁽²¹⁾

In the book, Longshot, the trainer has fifty horses to take care of and to train. He has twenty-seven full time employees to do the job: an assistant trainer, secretary, head lad, travelling head lad, box driver, groundsman and twenty-one stable lads. Quite a staff. His stable is not very big but quite prosperous.

An owner can be a truly rich tycoon with a string of horses in training, or an old lady who can hardly afford her middle-rank 'chaser, but who wants pleasure and excitement in her life. Horses can be owned by syndicates of several people to share the costs or by firms or by foreigners. Owners usually spend more money in buying a horse and keeping it up than they are able to win as prize-money or by betting. Not all horses are winners.

I find I get more and more delight from watching horses. I get particular delight if the horses are my own, and although in time of course my hobby costs me a good deal of money, because owners on the whole don't make a profit, I am totally happy and consider it well spent.⁽²²⁾

...Harold (trainer) went off to join the owner in a consolatory drink. Harold needed the training fees. I needed the riding fees. The owner was buying a dream and kidding himself. It happened every day, all the time in racing. It was only occasionally that the dream came superbly, soul-fillingly true, and when it happened you saw points of light like stars in the owner's eyes. Thank God for the owners, I thought. Without them racing wouldn't exist.⁽²³⁾

Owners don't necessarily know anything about horses or recognise their own horses by sight or ever go to the races. There are many reasons to own a race horse.

They know eff-all about horses but the money's burning their fingers. All they want is to be sure they're getting the best possible. That they are not being done.⁽²⁴⁾

Pamphlet's youngish owner flicked his fingers and said, Hey, man, how's about a little sweet music on this baby?

A tenner each way, Harold (trainer) suggested, having learnt the pop-star's language. The pop-star was using the horse for publicity and would only let it run when its race would be televised:⁽²⁵⁾

Stable lads

Lads are employed by trainers to look after the horses. Every lad usually does his two or three; that is he takes care of two or three horses; feeds, grooms and mucks them out and rides them in exercising gallops. Although the work of lads is not respected it is essential for the well-being of horses and the foundation of the prospect of a stable.

Harold (trainer) behaved in his normal blustery fashion, raising his voice over the scouring note of November wind. The lads scowled and sulked as the vocal lash landed and one or two, I reckoned, would be gone by the week's end. When lads left any stable nowadays they tended simply not to turn up one morning, nor ever again. They would sidle off to some other stable and the first news their old masters would have would be requests for references from the new. Notice, for many of the modern breed of lads, was something they never gave. Notice led to arguments and aggro, and who wanted that, man, when ducking out was so much easier? The lad population washed in and out of British stables like swirling endless river, with long-stayers being an exception rather than the rule.⁽²⁶⁾

Well, he (Jimmy, lad) said glaring at us, you can do my ruddy horses, as well. I'm off. I'm not bloody well staying here. This is worse than doing bird. You won't catch me staying here to be swiped at, I'll tell you that.⁽²⁷⁾

Bookies and punters

For many race-goers betting is one of the main things in racing. You can bet beforehand in bookmakers' shops or you can do it at the races in the Tote, or with bookies in Tattersall's or on the rails.

It was part of Bill's pleasure at the races to walk among the bookmakers stands in Tattersall's and put his actual cash on at the best odds, instead of betting on credit with a book-maker on the rails.⁽²⁸⁾

Bookmakers have to be good mathematicians to keep their accounts balanced. They earn their living through betting, so they should make a profit.

And there's us thinking we were taking lollipops off a baby when whammo, this outsider he'd invested about six big ones on comes cantering in from nowhere and we're all paying our heads out and wincing and scratching our heads over where he got the info, because the trainer hadn't had as much as a quid on, as far as we knew.⁽²⁹⁾

He asked me what price I'd give him about Cherry Pie, Newtonnards (bookmaker) went on. I didn't have any price chalked on my board, seeing Cherry Pie was such an outsider. I offered him tens, but he said it wasn't enough, and he looked like moving off down the line. Well... Newtonnards waved an expressive pudgy hand ... business wasn't too brisk, so I offered him a hundred to six. Couldn't say fairer than that now, could I, seeing that there were only eight runners in the race? Worse decision I made in a long time.⁽³⁰⁾

If you bet one pound on a horse whose odds are ten to one, you will receive ten pounds if the horse wins. Bookmakers give very poor odds on a horse sure to win, so a punter can't win very much by waging on a favourite.

Weather

The weather during the races seems to be very British indeed. Or what do you think about the next remark:

We'll need windscreen wipers on our goggles in this lot, Anyone for a mud bath? Blimey, it's enough to discourage ducks⁽³¹⁾

This image I have about the weather is due to the fact that the steeplechase season is in winter. So in Britain it is always cold, wet and windy. Frost is bad for racing; if the ground is frozen, races will be postponed.

It was a rotten afternoon there in many ways. Sleet fell almost ceaselessly, needle-sharp, ice-cold and slanting, soaking every jockey to the skin before the start and proving a blinding hazard thereafter. Goggles were useless, caked with flying mud; gloves slipped wetly on the reins; racing boots clung clammily to waterlogged feet. A day for gritting one's teeth and getting round safely, for meeting fences exactly right and not slithering along one's nose on landing. Raw November at its worst.⁽³²⁾

Vocabulary

Every trade has its own special language, its jargon, its own way of speech. In the above I have tried to pick up some examples of vocabulary I have learned to combine with racing.

It would be interesting to know the history of these words. Why turf, which in my dictionary is said to be short, thick, even grass, has also became to mean the whole racing business: the Turf. What about words like bloodstock or thoroughbred; where do they come from? Surely there is no blood stocked anywhere. More likely these horses are bred very methodically and probably they also come of good stock. And what is steeplechasing? Certainly there are no church towers to be chased.

For me horses are just horses; in this business they are always classified by sex as colts and fillies, mares and geldings, stallions and broodmares and even dames and sires; or by age as foals, yearlings, two-year-olds, six-year-olds, up to old hacks; or by colour as bays, greys and chestnuts; or by purpose as jumpers, hunters, 'chasers and hurdlers. They all belong to bloodstock; they are thoroughbreds with the best possible breeding for excellent performance on turf.

When a horse is thought to win, he is said to be a dead cert, an odds-on certainty or an odds-on favourite.

Jockeys are bad tipsters. But that one was a cert, a dead cert.⁽³³⁾

Palindrome was an odds-on favourite...⁽³⁴⁾

Most heads were still turned towards the last fence, searching in the impenetrable mist for Admiral, the odds-on certainty who had lost his first race for two years.⁽³⁵⁾

Jockeys wear jerseys and breeches when they are riding. My dictionary says these words are old-fashioned, but in the world of horse racing they seem to be still in use.

In the eyes of a foreigner, British units of measument also give an original touch to the world of racing. When reading English novels you would need a pocket calculator and a dictionary beside you to know what all this is about. I can manage with miles and yards, even with feet and inches, but furlongs were new to me. When checked in the dictionary a furlong is easy enough ; 220 yards or 201,2 metres. With weights I am quite lost; all these stones and pounds and ounces. If a jockey weights 10 stones, how heavy is he? One stone is 14 pounds or 6.35 kilograms. So he is not heavy at all. And what is a 10-lb penalty? Even my dictionary didn't know this.

In practice a 10-lb penalty is the maximum extra weight a winning thoroughbred is normally set to carry in a horse race.⁽³⁶⁾

Way of speech

People involved in racing have different kinds of backgrounds. When recognising someone's background great attention is paid to the way he or she speaks. Here are some examples:

Her voice was,... like the rest of her: manufactured, processed, not natural top drawer but a long way from gutter.⁽³⁷⁾

He had a Gloucestershire accent but not pronounced, and I would have placed him as a farmer's son, if I'd had to.⁽³⁸⁾

And of course there are lots of different characters with different kinds of ways of speaking. If I knew English better, I could probably learn much more about these people by recognizing their way of speach. Here are some examples.

This is what an elderly lady says about her niece:

She has been brought up as I was, which is the right way. Gels are given too much freedom nowadays, with the result that they lose their heads and elope with fortune hunters or men-about-town of unsavoury background. Gels need strictness and guidance if they are to behave as ladies, and make suitable, well-connected marriages.⁽³⁹⁾

Stable lads about a trainer and his stable:

Not that it matters, only a raving nit would take a job there. It's a blooming sweat shop, a hundred years out of date. All they get are riff-raff that no one else will have. It wants exposing, said the rabble-raiser belligerently. Who runs this place?

Bloke called Humber, said the pretty boy, he couldn't train ivy up a wall ... and he has about as many winners as tits on a billiard ball... You see his head travelling lad at the meetings sometimes, trying to pressgang people to go and work there, and getting the brush off, right and proper.⁽⁴⁰⁾

A jockey to his comrades in the changing room:

Which of you sods has half-inched my balancing pole. ... Why don't you lot get up off your fannies and see if you're hatching it.⁽⁴¹⁾

Through these novels I have seen a piece of Britain. For me, novels are like windows to another world. They are a means of getting acquainted with other nations -- their joys and passions, their sorrows and griefs, and their way of life.

It has been fascinating to get to know a new world. It would be interesting one day to go and see whether my image of racing is true or not.

---

¹Knock Down. p.141

²Knock Down. p.75

³Decider. p 191

⁴Flying finish. p. 48

⁵Twice shy. p 174

⁶Banker. p.62

⁷For Kicks. p 34

⁸Reflex. p. 87

⁹Enquiry. p.98

¹⁰Dead Cert. p 78

¹¹Flying Finish. p. 122

¹²Dead Cert. p.44

¹³Banker. p.27

¹⁴Banker. p.34

¹⁵Banker. p.35

¹⁶Nerve. p.42

¹⁷Dead Cert. p 43

¹⁸Hot Money. p 78

¹⁹Reflex. p.127

²⁰Rexlex. p. 1

²¹Longshot. p. 68

²²High stakes. p. 27

²³Reflex. p 120

²⁴Knock Down. p.135

²⁵Reflex. p. 68

²⁶Reflex. p. 57

²⁷For Kicks. p.113

²⁸Dead Cert. p. 130

²⁹Twice Shy. p. 208

³⁰Enquiry. p. 28

³¹Dead Cert. p.140

³²Break In. p. 198

³³Dead Cert. p. 44

³⁴Dead Cert. p.144

³⁵Dead Cert. p.7

³⁶10-lb Penalty. Cover pace

³⁷Banker. p.28

³⁸Banker. p.74

³⁹Dead Cert. p 102

⁴⁰For Kicks. p.55

⁴¹Dead Cert. p.38

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Last Updated 11 September 1998