by Dick Francis
One may even pass the winning post first and then lose the race on an objection from the second, perhaps because one’s horse was too tired to keep a straight course and crossed or pushed over the one behind; or perhaps on the technicality that one’s mount was not qualified for the rare, or was carrying the wrong weight. There is little that is more dispiriting to a jockey than to find that his hard-ridden and hard-won race has been taken away from him and awarded to someone else. Until 1955, a horse disqualified from winning was automatically placed last, but the modern rule is more merciful, and where it is clear it was from accident and not malice that one horse prevented another from winning, the Stewards may simply reverse the placing of the two horses concerned.
Then there are the saddles which slip backwards and swing under the horse’s belly on loose girths, the reins and stirrup leathers which break, and the bits which come apart beside the horse’s mouth.
One day at Warwick I rode a horse called Quick One for George Owen. There were very few runners in the race because Four Ten, the Gold Cup winner, was certain to win it unless he fell, and George asked me to lie just behind Four Ten all the way, in case the unexpected should happen. George was slightly disconcerted when he saw his horse shoot to the front after the first fence, with his jockey apparently disregarding all the agreed plans: but not nearly as disconcerted as the jockey himself. As Quick One landed over the first fence his bit broke and fell out of his mouth, so that for the whole three miles of the race I was a helpless passenger. Luckily the course was railed all the way round, and Quick One showed no desire to run out, so on we went with the horse in full control of the situation, and me sitting on top without brakes or steering.
Four Ten passed us effortlessly between the last two fences, and Quick One finished second. I could not pull up, and I had visions of my tireless mount going round the course yet again, but he took a hint from Four Ten slowing down in front of us, and followed him faithfully back to the paddock. George apologised for the calamity, explaining that the metal must have been faulty, as the bridle was new.
As George had not expected his horse to win, the whole performance was extraordinarily comic, but it would have been a very sad affair if it had happened when months of planning and hard work had been devoted to the winning of a particular race.
The failure of part of the harness is apt to be drastic when it occurs, but it is not a usual cause of the abrupt dissolving of the partnership of horse and jockey. It is only too easy to fall off when one’s mount stumbles over a fence or hurdle, or stops to take an extra stride before he jumps, or pecks and puts his head down on landing, but it does not lessen one’s disappointment as one trudges earthbound back to the paddock, to meet the equally downcast faces of owners and trainers.
These falls are among the third sort of disappointments, those which are hardest to bear, because there is always the uncomfortable suspicion that they are one’s own fault; and the races that might have been won by different tactics are the most difficult to forget. There is the dilemma of the risky opening: taken with success it can lead to acclaim as a useful bit of riding; taken with disastrous results, it leaves one cursing one’s folly in attempting it.
Sometimes one misjudges the pace of a race, and makes a winning effort too soon or too late, so that one’s horse is not in front at the essential moment. There is not an honest jockey riding who will not admit to having been disappointed in himself for a depressing mistake now and then.
Finally there are the bitter times when an owner or trainer decides that he wants to change his jockey. I do of course understand that the winning of races is the whole point of owning and training race-horses, and that it is only sense to engage the jockey most suited to the type of horse and race, so that the horse shall have the best possible chance. If a jockey has made an obvious mess of a race he may learn with regret, but not with surprise, that someone else has been engaged for the horse’s next attempt; or an owner may well feel that he has a better chance in a hurdle race with jockey A than with jockey B, or that jockey C can ride a strong-pulling horse better than jockey D, and may choose his man accordingly. Nevertheless there are few jockeys who do not feel that at one time or another they have lost rides, or even a job with a stable, for no reason at all. From what I have heard from others and felt myself, it is the seeming injustice of these blows which hurts more than the actual loss of the riding.
Last spring I stood beside a friend on the stands while we watched a horse he had often ridden win a race.
‘Why aren’t you riding it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said in a defeated voice, ‘I just don’t know. I have won nine races on that horse for his owner, and now he has put someone else up. He didn’t tell me why. What more can you do than win?’
He spoke for all of us who have ever felt ourselves in the same position.
At the other end of the scale is the moment of fulfilment when there is no one ahead on the ribbon of grass stretching away between the shouting crowds, and one goes past the winning post first.
Sometimes a horse proves so much better than anyone has thought him, that it is a great surprise when he wins, but usually hours of effort and planning are behind the happy ending in the winner’s unsaddling enclosure. From the day a horse joins a trainer’s stable, everyone’s aim is to bring him to his lean peak of fitness, to teach him to jump cleanly, to feed and groom him until his coat is shining with health, and to care for his feet and legs, so that these, the weakest parts of a horse’s anatomy, will not fail him when he relies on their strength as he lands over a fence, or thrusts himself forward to win with all the power of his massive hind-quarters.
When a jockey trots out to ride a race, he takes to his task not only his own skill, but all the hard work of trainer, stable-lad and blacksmith as well, and when the horse wins it is a reward shared by them all. As well as my own simple pleasure in winning, the last stride past the post brought to me freshly every time a feeling of relief that the efforts of all these people had not been wasted. Their delight was my satisfaction, the owner’s joy was my reward, all was right with the world, and I knew why on earth I was a jockey.
Surely anyone is a happy man who can spend his life doing what he likes best, and make a career of it too. Being a jockey is more than a job, it is a way of living. It is the way I liked to live; and although I no longer ride in races, my interest, my heart, and my work take me almost as much as ever to a racecourse.
By nature I am a restless man, and I hate to stay long in one place. For two months in the summer every year there is no steeplechasing, and this long break, which seemed in the depths of winter to beckon like a soft bed to a tired body, soon palled for me. After a fortnight’s rest I wanted to start racing again, but every year I had to summon what patience I could to bear the banishment until August.
In the early summer Mary and I often go for a quiet holiday on our own, perhaps driving round Scotland or Europe in a car, or round the Norfolk rivers in a boat, but always moving on, so that there is something new to see every day, and a new place to remember. We drift where we like and when, without planning in advance or fussing over time-tables, and with no one to consult but ourselves. This lazy and aimless touring is rest and refreshment for us both, but holidays which mean only lying on the sand in the sun bore me hopelessly. I always feel, as soon as I am idly stretched out, that I must be up and doing something or going somewhere, even if it is only for a game of tennis or a walk with the children along the beach to the toffee-apple stall.
It is therefore not surprising that I actually enjoy the daily travelling to race meetings, and unless it is misty or the roads are choked with traffic, I very rarely find any journey tedious. Unfortunately the traffic problem affects us a great deal, as we are always in the middle of it on Saturdays and Bank Holidays; needless to say, we are going where the crowds are. The queues of cars to Liverpool, Cheltenham, Plumpton, Wolverhampton and Bangor-on-Dee have sometimes been so long and snaillike that
there is often to be seen a dismal march along the road of the jockeys engaged for the first race, who know it is quicker on foot.
When I started racing in 1946 the war-time petrol rationing for cars was still very strict, and I went quite thoroughly into the idea of buying an aeroplane to go racing in, because it was then easy and cheap to buy an Auster, and petrol for flying was unrationed. Flat race jockeys regularly fly to meetings, and aircraft landing on steeplechase courses are not unknown, but two things defeated my hopeful plans.
First and worse was the weather, for there are too many days when racing is possible but flying is not. Gale force winds, very low cloud, poor visibility and rain storms would keep me grounded, and a great many of the journeys home would have to be made in the early winter darkness.
Secondly, there were a tremendous number of regulations pressing down the would-be private flyer. One was not allowed to park one’s plane in the back garden and take off at a moment’s notice, or to land anywhere without permission in triplicate or a blind eye.
I found I would have to leave the plane at the nearest civilian airport, and drive over there when I wanted to use it. Also I would need permission to take off, land, refuel, almost to sneeze, and I would have to pay a qualified mechanic to look after the works if I wanted to get a certificate of airworthiness after every ten hours’ flying time. If I did not get the certificate, I could not fly.
After all that it hardly seemed to matter that most of the racecourses would not allow a plane to land within an hour of the first race, or take off less than an hour after the last. I reckoned that to fly to most meetings would take me so long in ground work at both ends that I would get there just as quickly by car, but when I was creeping along in low gear and low spirits in a mile-long snake of cars, how I wished for that Auster.
All through the winter months, and six days a week, except of course during the snow and frost, we were on the road, driving round the country from meeting to meeting. In a typical week we might go to Nottingham on Monday, return on Tuesday, go to Plumpton in Sussex and back on Wednesday, Wincanton in Somerset on Thursday, Doncaster on Friday, home again on Saturday, and on Monday morning the same sort of thing started again. We averaged roughly seven hundred miles a week, though sometimes less, and sometimes much more.
I liked it. I like driving, and finding new and quieter roads to avoid traffic and towns. All the people whose business is racing travel these circuits too, so that one may say good-bye to one’s friends in Kent one evening, and good morning to them the next day in Shropshire.
At each country meeting we get to know many of the people who live there, and we can look forward to seeing them again on our three or four yearly visits to their local course. It is very satisfactory when one’s job not only allows but actually forces one to travel from friend to friend.
This nomadic life is one of great freedom. As long as a jockey arrives in good time to ride in a race, or to do some schooling in the early morning, no one minds where he goes or what he does. There is no office to attend, no time-clock to be punched, no regular train to catch. Jockeys who have become trainers look back wistfully on the days when their work was finished with the last race, and they did not have to hurry home to worry about the horses in their care. In the winter, when racing is very early because of the light, the day’s work is often done by half-past three and one can relax until the next morning.
The real reason for my being a jockey, however, is not to be found in the freedom, the friendships or the travelling that I enjoyed, or even in the great satisfaction of winning races: and it is not in the means it gave me of earning a living either, for if I had been a millionaire I would still have been a jockey. The simple fact is that I like riding horses, and I like the speed and challenge of racing.
I cannot explain why all jockeys, amateurs as well as professionals, are happy to take pain, cold and disappointment in their stride as long as there are horses for them to race on. Why do people climb mountains, or swim the Channel? Why do people swing on trapezes, or explore pot-holes? Because they can, they want to, and in some obscure way, they feel they must.
6
Riders and Routine
STEEPLECHASE jockeys are a companionable crowd of men, down to earth, and comfortable to be with. Most of them have a strong sense of humour and a realistic view of life.
Contrary to widespread public belief they live a quiet and sober life, for they must keep very fit if they are riding day after day. At the beginning of the season, when no one is properly fit, the jockeys come back from their August races panting more than the horses. Even after months of riding, a very hard finish or a difficult horse will try one’s stamina dearly, so that one’s legs feel weak and wobbly on the ground again, and one’s fingers tremble with fatigue as they undo the girth buckles.
Late nights and large amounts of rich food would soon soften them into useless passengers, and too much alcohol would slow their reactions and judgement, and hinder the healing of bones and cuts. So they sleep early and eat little, and save their excesses for special days and the summer months.
Strangers were often surprised when they found out I was a jockey.
‘You are so tall,’ they said, or ‘You don’t look like a jockey.’
Very few steeplechase jockeys do look like jockeys. Unlike most flat-race jockeys it was no physical accident of size which chose their occupation for them, except perhaps in the case of those who started on the flat, but grew too large for that job. These men are certainly shorter than average, but not nearly as small as flat jockeys; and some of them are unlucky because although they grew too big for the flat, they hardly grew tall enough for steeplechasing. Too heavy for flat-race weights, they often have to carry a lot of lead in hurdle races and ’chases, and their short legs are a disadvantage to them over big fences—the longer the legs, the more there is to balance with.
This principle affects the whole style of steeplechase riding. The short stirrup, knees-under-chin crouch of the flat jockey, while it may be effective over hurdles, is heading straight for a fall if clung to over fences; long legs can grip better, and kick a horse into a fence more strongly, and there is more feeling of being one with the horse.
Most steeplechase jockeys are between five feet six and five feet ten inches tall, with one or two six-footers, and are in every way normal men. There is nothing about their faces, their clothes, or even their non-bandy legs to proclaim their profession. Just after he won the Grand National in 1955 on Quare Times, Pat Taaffe appeared in the television programme ‘What’s My Line?’ The newspapers were on strike at the time, so the panel of guessers had not seen any pictures of him or of the race. In spite of their practice and perception in guessing people’s occupations they did not guess Pat’s, and when they were told who he was, they said almost in a chorus, ‘But he’s so big.’
Steeplechase jockeys have to be reasonably big and strong, because their job is controlling large and very powerful horses. Some horses have light mouths and respond easily to a movement of hands on the reins, but others nearly pull your arms out, so every jockey who rides a great deal develops heavily muscled shoulders and back. It is almost possible, from looking at a jockey’s torso, to tell how long he has been riding, like calculating the age of a tree from the rings of growth in its trunk.
Apart from their common fitness and devotion to their job, steeplechase jockeys vary as individuals as much as any random group of men would do. They touch all points from recklessly wild to intensely sober, from sensitive intuition to coarsest speaking, and from mercurial spirits to chronic envy. Some of them have a tough and ruthless sense of justice which can be disconcerting to people who are used to the British habit of suffering insult and indignity in silence.
It is often very amusing too.
One evening many years ago Tim Molony and Dave Dick parked their cars and went into an hotel in a seaside town, but the inviting stretch of kerb where they left their cars was normally reserved for taxis, which w
ere all away at the time. Later in the evening, when Tim and Dave left the hotel, they found that the taxis were back, and all the tyres of their own cars were flat. The taxi drivers, having punished the two cars which had dared to borrow their private space, had then made the mistake of underestimating the character of the cars’ owners, and had retired to their shelter for a cup of tea.
Tim and Dave without more ado unscrewed all the valves of the taxis’ tyres, so that they all sank down gracefully on to their rims. As Tim and Dave were attending to the last one, the taxi drivers came back and surveyed the scene with amazement and wrath.
Lurid oaths rang crisply in the warm summer night, but the general drift of their remarks seemed to be, ‘You can’t do that to us.’
The taxi men advanced in a body towards Dave, but he and Tim picked up the nearest man and said they would sling him over the wall into the sea if there was any more fuss. The victim yelled loudly for a truce, not anxious for a midnight bathe fully dressed, and an uneasy peace was restored. Dave and Tim declared that the moral victory was theirs, however, because the taxi drivers pumped their tyres up again for them without a murmur.
As with the sons of doctors, actors, fishermen, and others whose fathers’ jobs come closely into the family life, a boy is usually led to try his fortune with horses because they have been about him from childhood. Most steeplechase jockeys are either the sons of jockeys or trainers, or were born and brought up on farms, and nearly all of them were country boys. Some of the jockeys who were first apprenticed to flat racing stables only because of their small size came from towns, but they are exceptions. All the rest have been used to hearing endless discussions about horses from their earliest days, and have come to racing through the hunting field and point-to-points, or by growing up in a racing stable and learning the job from the cradle.
To be able to ride when one is a very young child is not essential for success as a National Hunt jockey, but it is almost impossible for any boy to learn well enough if he has not started by the time he is twelve. After that age balance has to be learned instead of developing naturally, and the co-ordination of every muscle has to be studied instead of being instinctive.
