‘Is that really necessary?’
‘Just do it. All my insurance is invalid if you don’t.’
I take off my anorak and put the protector on over my clothes, then quickly replace the warm outer layer.
‘And this,’ Jerry says, tossing me a helmet. ‘It’s Herbie’s but it should fit.’
I adjust the chinstrap to my head size as Jerry tacks up the first horse.
‘Is this Susi’s or Brenda’s?’
‘Susi’s. His name is Foscote Boy but at home we usually just call him Fossy. Seven-year-old gelding. He’s won over hurdles before, but today’s race might be too short for him.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Two thousand metres. About a mile and a quarter.’
Jerry gives me a leg-up onto Fossy’s back. It is the first time I’ve been on a horse in more than seven years but, somehow, it feels entirely natural. What had I been so worried about? I instinctively gather the reins and slip the toes of my snow boots into the irons.
‘Just a gentle canter twice round the track followed by a short sharp gallop for a furlong or so up past the finish line,’ Jerry says. ‘Just to give him a stretch and a warm-up. But don’t needlessly tire him out. He’ll need all his energies for this afternoon.’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ I reply, giving him an ironic mock salute.
I know what a pipe-opener is and Jerry is treating me like the young wet-behind-the-ears conditional jockey that I’d been when I first turned up at his stable yard. But, I suppose, it is only fair. I hadn’t exactly covered myself in glory on the last few occasions I’d ridden for him.
* * *
If that Boxing Day at Kempton had been a low point in my life, it was only the first of many.
After that Christmas of excesses with the beers, I managed to hold things together over the New Year and into the following months such that, by the beginning of April, I’d moved up to second in the Conditional Jockeys’ Championship, albeit still six winners behind the leader. But, with Jerry’s support, I was doing everything I could to catch up, criss-crossing the country to ride at as many meetings as possible.
One major highlight at this time was my first ever visit as a jockey to the Grand National meeting – three days of top-class steeplechasing over the famous Aintree Racecourse on the edge of Liverpool – not that I went north with any huge excitement, as I didn’t have a ride booked for the National itself.
Jerry drove us from Lambourn early on Thursday morning and we checked in to a budget hotel not far from the racecourse.
‘Best to do it first, prior to racing,’ Jerry said. ‘I’ve had rooms nicked by others before now. Especially if I get back late after having had a runner in the last. Some people will try every trick in the book, including using my name and paying extra with cash – anything to get a bed. I always book two rooms here during the previous year’s meeting to get the best rates so close to the racecourse. If I don’t use the second one, I sub-let it at a profit. Means I effectively get my room for free.’ Jerry smiled at me as if to emphasise how clever he was.
Always the cheapskate. Did he expect me to pay?
But worrying about that did little to dampen my anticipation and delight as we finally turned into the Aintree owners’ and trainers’ car park. I stood up out of Jerry’s Mercedes and breathed in deeply, savouring the atmosphere and history of the place.
Aintree. The venue for so many of our sport’s most iconic moments – Red Rum winning three Grand Nationals and finishing second in two more, Foinavon succeeding where everyone else failed at the 23rd fence, Devon Loch’s collapse with just forty yards to run for a right royal victory, to say nothing of Captain Becher falling into the brook now famously named after him, or Bob Champion coming back from near-terminal cancer to win the big prize on Aldaniti.
But today I am concerned with more mundane matters, like riding in the first race, a handicap hurdle, and also in the last, a National Hunt flat race, a bumper.
Aintree for the Grand National weekend is like no other race meeting anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of Flemington on Melbourne Cup day.
It is like Cheltenham on steroids.
Swathes of Liverpool’s young men and women, dressed up in their finery, make their way by train, bus and stretch limo to the racecourse, often totally inappropriately dressed for the overhead conditions.
Open-toed high-heeled sandals regularly splash through puddles on the concourse behind the grandstands, and goose-bumped areas of bare skin abound, under backless or shoulderless chiffon more suited to high summer than the vagaries of the English weather in early April.
But they are here to see and be seen, to gamble on the horses, to have fun and, of course, to drink – copiously.
By the end of the day many will have had far too much and it was not unusual to see young women, still wearing stiletto heels, slumped down on the damp ground, legs splayed wide, with their very short skirts failing to cover their embarrassment. The men were no better, their ultra-slim-cut short suit jackets and leg-hugging drainpipe trousers all beer-splattered and much the worse for wear.
And all around them, the business of horseracing would continue.
Jerry and I walked the course, not the Grand National course itself, but the shorter inside track used for the races I was riding in. And then I went to get ready in the jockeys’ changing room, where little brass plaques screwed to the walls indicated the pegs used by those lucky enough to have won the big one.
I knew that my father had ridden eight times in the Grand National but the closest he had come to winning was second, so there would be no little plaque with ‘Pussett’ engraved on it.
Maybe one day, I thought. Maybe one day.
I weighed out for the first race and skipped excitedly down the steps from the weighing room to join Jerry and the owner in the parade ring.
‘Do your best,’ Jerry said quietly to me as he gave me a leg-up. ‘I fear he’s poorly handicapped in this company, but the owner insisted on him running just to get the free entry tickets.’
This rather dampened my excitement, and didn’t instil any great confidence, but Jerry’s comment was well founded as the horse finished twelfth of the sixteen runners, some fifty lengths or so behind the winner. And I fared little better in the last race, finishing somewhat closer but still outside the prizes.
However, Friday was a different day altogether.
I won the three-and-a-half-mile novice hurdle on a sixteen-to-one outsider, overhauling the tiring favourite in the final stride. And then I received the news that would keep me awake most of the night.
Jerry’s stable had two runners in the Grand National and the jockey he had previously declared for one of them had had a fall in the Topham Chase, breaking his left collarbone.
‘So you will now ride Malvernian in the National tomorrow,’ Jerry said to me in the car on the way back to our hotel, sending my adrenalin level through the roof. ‘He’s low in the weights, mind. Due to carry ten-stone-seven. With your allowance, that’s ten-four.’
‘No problem.’
‘Good. We’ll walk the course in the morning. We’ll leave here at seven.’
I spent the evening alone in my room, not daring to eat or drink for fear of being too heavy. I tried to watch the television to take my mind off things but I was too nervous to concentrate on anything else.
Malvernian was a ten-year-old bay gelding that had qualified to run in the Grand National by finishing second in a three-mile chase at Doncaster in January, not that I’d been riding him then. Indeed, I’d never sat on his back before, not even at home, but that didn’t particularly worry me. Like all jockeys, I’d ridden lots of horses in races that I hadn’t been on previously.
Just to have any ride in the Grand National as a 21-year-old conditional jockey was a real feather in my cap, but only if I didn’t mess it up. But I wouldn’t be the youngest to ride in the race, far from it. Bruce Hobbs had been just sixteen his first time, and he is
still the youngest jockey ever to win it, steering Battleship to victory only three months after his seventeenth birthday.
I set the alarm on my phone for six o’clock but I was awake long before it went off; in fact I didn’t feel that I’d slept much at all. But I was relieved to be able to get up and dress, to be finally doing something rather than simply lying there in bed churning over and over everything that could go wrong.
Not that I was worried about the horse falling. I was concerned more about failure due to my own shortcomings.
‘Treat it just like any other race,’ Jerry said as we walked down the line of fences towards Becher’s Brook. ‘But keep out of trouble if you can. Stay wide on the first circuit and don’t go into the first fence too fast. The landing sides on these first six are all lower than the take-off sides, and that will tend to pitch your horse down onto its nose. Give him a chance to get used to it. Four miles is a long way and you can’t win it in the first mile, but you can certainly lose it if you fall or are brought down.’
We moved on to the Canal Turn, where the racecourse turns abruptly left through ninety degrees. ‘Try to jump this fence on the angle,’ Jerry told me. ‘Doing so can save you many lengths but be careful not to get squeezed on the inside by others cutting across you.’
We completed our walk at The Chair, the most formidable fence in all of British steeplechasing: five feet two inches high, three feet thick and preceded by a deep, six-foot-wide ditch. ‘Kick on hard into this,’ Jerry instructed. ‘Those that hesitate won’t get across and they’ll either end up on top of the fence or fall backwards into the ditch.’
I swallowed my fear and wondered if the 600 had ‘kicked on hard’ into the ‘Valley of Death’ at Balaclava.
11
The waiting was the worst part. Nervous tension in the Aintree changing room before the Grand National put everyone on edge. For the old hands with many Nationals to their name, it was a time to reflect on past victories or failures over the big fences. But for the debutants like me, it was just a time to worry.
I tried to busy myself and spent twenty minutes in the sauna to sweat off a few ounces. I then changed early into Malvernian’s maroon and white silks, making sure for the umpteenth time that all my kit was in order. Next, I weighed out – ten-stone-four, on the dot – and gave my saddle to Jerry to take away and put on the horse.
About half an hour before the race was due to start, all the jockeys were told to go outside for a group photo in the winner’s circle.
‘It’s in case one of us dies,’ one of the old lags joked as we trooped back in. ‘So they have a recent picture to put on the TV news.’
No one laughed.
Finally, the call for jockeys was made and I went out to the parade ring to meet Jerry and Malvernian’s owner, a large, moustached man wearing a camel-coloured cashmere coat and a dark-blue fedora.
‘Best of luck,’ he said nervously.
‘Thank you, sir,’ I replied in the same manner.
Everyone was nervous, even Jerry.
Treat it just like any other race.
That’s what he’d told me this morning, but the Grand National wasn’t just any other race. Events of the next half-hour could put you into the history books for ever – as either a hero, or a villain.
The bell was rung and Jerry tossed me up into the saddle.
‘Just remember what we talked about earlier.’
I nodded at him and he disappeared off to sort out his other runner.
Malvernian was led out through the tunnel beneath the grandstands and onto the track. There was a parade for the race so we had to sort ourselves out into the correct order before being led past the enthusiastic crowd for inspection.
Sitting there on Malvernian’s back, staring across at the sixty thousand expectant faces, was quite a strange feeling: part excitement, part apprehension and part dread of what was to come. It felt like a dream but then we were released back into reality, cantering down, away from the clamour, to the quiet of the first fence for the horses to have a look.
The lull before the storm.
Back to the starting point in front of the packed stands, circle, circle, girths tightened, circle, circle, all the while keeping one eye on the starter, who was already standing on his rostrum, waiting for the appointed time. Finally, he raised his flag and the forty runners spread out across the course and walked in.
‘Come on, then,’ shouted the starter, simultaneously lowering his flag and releasing the tape.
We were off, encouraged on our way by a huge roar from the crowd behind us.
As Jerry had instructed, I lined up towards the outside and took it fairly steady on the long run to the first, not that every jockey had heeded the warning given to us all earlier in the weighing room about going too fast. And some of them had paid the price.
By the time Malvernian and I jumped the fence there were already five horses and riders prostrate on the turf although, thankfully, none of them were in our way.
I stayed out wide and avoided trouble all the way down to Becher’s, running about mid-field, and I was enjoying myself immensely. At the Canal Turn we jumped the fence at an angle while avoiding being squeezed on the inside, and at The Chair I kicked on hard and Malvernian cleared it with ease.
Jumping the water in front of the stands, I counted just nine horses in front of us, but that number steadily increased as we went towards Becher’s for the second time, and the race began to develop in earnest around us.
I could tell that, short of a Foinavon-style disaster again at the 23rd fence, we were not going to win this race, and by the time we jumped the Canal Turn on the angle for the second time, Malvernian was losing ground even more rapidly.
‘Time to call it a day, old boy,’ I said into his ear, and pulled him up before the last open ditch, four fences from home. He didn’t object.
I’d been neither a hero nor a villain.
But, oh my goodness, what fun I’d had!
* * *
I trot Foscote Boy down from the stables and out onto the frozen St Moritz Lake.
It is the first time I have ever ridden a horse on ice and I am initially wary that it might be slippery in the same way as the hard glassy surface of the Cresta Run. But the ice on the lake is covered with a layer of compacted snow and that, combined with special protrusions on his shoes, means that the horse has no difficulty in keeping its footing.
I am not alone on the ice. Several of the day’s other runners are also being given a warm-up and I follow a group round the track at a gentle canter.
I am surprised by how good it feels to be back on a horse and I almost begin to wish that it was me riding him later in the day, especially when I ask Foscote Boy to quicken and he surges forward.
‘There’s a good boy, Fossy,’ I say into his ear as I pull him up after a short gallop. ‘Save the rest for later.’
I walk him back towards the stables and find that Jerry has come down to watch, leading the other horse.
‘Still got it, then?’ he says. ‘You look like you’ve never been away.’
I smile at him and slide down onto the snow.
Jerry transfers the saddle.
‘What’s this one called?’
‘His full name is Cliveden Proposal. We usually just call him Cliveden.’
Jerry gives me a leg-up onto the second horse’s back and I repeat the process, enjoying myself hugely. But, all too soon, it is over and we return to the stables.
‘Which one will win?’ I ask.
‘Why? Thinking of placing a bet?’
‘I might,’ I reply, although I’d never placed a bet in my life, not on horses anyway. But Jerry was a big gambler. Always had been through the years I’d ridden for him. His stable was well known for it.
‘So which one are you on?’ I ask.
He laughs. ‘That’s for me to know and you to worry about. On past form, Cliveden should be the better of these two by far, and he should be good enough to beat the
others as well. But I’m not saying he will, although he won here last year and he may well start this afternoon as the favourite. But we’ll all find out later.’
Indeed we would.
* * *
Two days after my ride in the horseracing Grand National at Aintree, I finally passed my driving test at the third attempt and instantly invested some of my win bonuses into a blue, second-hand, three-door Volkswagen Golf.
Having my own wheels suddenly gave me much greater freedom, even if I now spent more time driving on the motor-ways than I did actually riding.
By the middle of April, I had halved the deficit to the championship leader, who was, unfortunately for him, laid up with an injury, and there were just ten days left of the season when I was engaged to ride four horses at Newton Abbot, three fairly fancied runners for Jerry and one other no-hoper for a local Devon trainer.
I’d ridden at Newton Abbot before, often, but had always travelled there either on the train from Newbury or with Jerry in his Mercedes. This was the very first time that I’d driven myself, and what a foul day it was to be driving anywhere. The heavy rain and low cloud, together with the steady stream of headlights coming towards me on the other carriageway, made it appear more like dusk than midday.
Headlights!
Approaching junction 26 on the M5, south of Taunton, I had the sudden realisation that this was the precise spot where my father had been killed.
Images and memories, imprisoned for so long in my subconscious, now suddenly broke free and invaded my reality, such that my hands began to shake and all I could see ahead was the brick lorry, its headlights also ablaze, with smoke pouring from its wheels.
How I didn’t hit something or cause another frightful disaster in the same place, I don’t know. One moment I was in the outside lane travelling at seventy miles per hour and, the next, I was stationary at an obscure angle on the hard shoulder with other vehicles’ horns and drivers’ curses still ringing in my ears.
Not that I really heard them. All I could hear in my head was the tearing of metal and scraping of the car door on the tarmac as the lorry slammed into my father’s Jaguar. And his truncated scream.
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