The Sport of Queens

by Dick Francis

  The perfect going for steeplechasing is springy, well-drained turf, with thick grass cut to a length of two or three inches. Every horse likes to race on it, for it gives a good foothold for taking off and a sponge-rubber carpet for landing on.

  When an owner says, ‘My horse likes the hard,’ or ‘My horse revels in the mud,’ he is really saying that if the going is not good, his horse is better equipped to deal with one of the two extremes, not that he positively prefers it. The only exceptions to this general rule are horses whose legs are very sensitive to any firmness in the ground, and who can race only in very soft going without laming themselves.

  Even in good going, however, horses which have judged their fence and jumped well sometimes come to grief as they land. They knuckle over and go down on to their knees, having perhaps caught their toe in bumps or holes left by other horses. They jump very fast and cannot get their legs out in front of them quickly enough for their second stride. Or they swerve to avoid a fallen horse and their feet slip away sideways from under them.

  One cannot make any sort of generalisation about when a horse is likely to fall, though tiring animals under pressure are of course the most likely candidates. Clever jumpers seldom come down, but there are very few ’chasers which have never fallen in their racing life. Other horses make the same mistakes over and over again, and fall so often that one wonders why their owners persevere. Perhaps, though, they were encouraged by the performance of the late Lord Bicester’s horse Senlac Hill.

  Senlac Hill was a very long-backed washy chestnut with four white socks, a white face and a flaxen mane and tail. In spite of hours of patient schooling he remained an ignorant and careless jumper, and because of his pale colour his antics were always clearly visible from the stands. Although he won a good race or two when he managed to complete a course, he became well known for the regularity of his disappearance at the open ditch. He not only did not pay these difficult fences the respect due to them, he often ignored them altogether. He used to put his fore-feet straight into the ditch and somersault over the fence on to the ground, usually landing on top of his unfortunate jockey.

  It was with some confidence, therefore, that I predicted my doom in the 1953 Grand National. The third fence is the first open ditch, and I arranged for several friends to be standing there with their hats off in suitable mourning, ready to pick up my remains. Bookmakers were offering fifty to one against Senlac Hill getting round, and said it was a crying shame to take the money.

  Even Lord Bicester, whose dearest wish it was to win the great race, looked faintly apprehensive in the paddock, and instead of making his usual hopeful plans for meeting me afterwards in the winner’s enclosure, told me .just to ‘Do the best you can, Dick.’

  Finnure and Mariner’s Log, two of Lord Bicester’s horses which set out with great chances, fell with me at the first fence. Senlac Hill took a good look at this big obstacle and mended his ways instantly. He actually jumped the third fence well. And on we went, over Becher’s, the Canal Turn, Valentine’s, the Chair and the water, and all round again. It was fantastic.

  Only five of the thirty-one runners finished, and Senlac Hill was the last of them. He was some way behind, because he had not been able to combine speed with his new caution. Raymond Glendenning, commentating, reported his return among fallen horses cantering back, and said, ‘Here is Senlac Hill coming in, but I am quite sure he has not finished the course.’

  It is still reckoned among racing miracles that he did.

  It was very unfortunate that shortly after the National he developed tendon trouble and finished his career at the early age of eight, for the only time I rode him afterwards he at last showed signs of correcting his previous mistakes.

  Quite often a horse which is a jumping fiasco in its youth improves enormously as it grows older, and ugly ducklings fly through the air like swans. It is only when his horse has crashed his way consistently through two or three seasons that an owner must face the sad truth that he has bought or bred a permanent duck. It is usually worth while persisting with a horse for all that time if his sire or dam is good steeplechasing stock, for such animals often develop an ability to jump as they grow older.

  The last part of one jump is the first stride towards the next. A horse should not be allowed to rest on his laurels when he has cleared an obstacle, and his jockey tries to help him make a quick getaway by pulling in the slack in the reins, pressing with his legs, and gathering him into a proper balance. When his mount has hit a fence the jockey often has quite a job to collect himself back into the saddle at all, and before he can urge the horse off again he has to be certain that he is going with it.

  Making a serious mistake at a fence knocks the stuffing out of a horse and unbalances him badly for some strides afterwards, and he needs an easy few seconds to recover it. Occasionally one sees a horse fall several strides from a fence if his jockey, happening to have weathered the upset better, vigorously drives his mount on before the animal is ready. A more experienced horseman would feel the wavering beneath him, and help his mount collect himself before he urged him forward.

  The first stride away from the last fence is the beginning of riding a finish. As at every fence a smooth flowing jump, landing, and departure are the ideal movement. It is deeply depressing to come to the last fence with the race won, flounder over it, and see another horse, jumping well, sprint past while one is still trying to get one’s mount going again. Thousands of races are won or lost at this fateful jump.

  The aim of a jockey riding a finish is first to establish a steady rhythmic gallop, and then gradually to speed it up until the horse is going as fast as his lungs and legs will let him. A carelessly lifted whip, some paper blowing across the course, an unusual shadow, the smallest alarm during this final effort is enough to destroy it.

  To achieve a long smooth winning run a jockey’s hands are holding the reins lightly to give the horse his head, his legs are squeezing his mount forward, and with small scrubbing motions of his arms and wrists he sends at every stride a message of urgency to the horse’s mouth.

  In a very hard finish most jockeys use a whip to help them, though some horses are so rebellious to the stick that they throw up their heads and stop racing if their rider begins to swing one. Few jockeys beat their mounts or leave any marks on them, and a great deal of the apparently vicious whip-swinging one condemns from the stands barely touches the horse at all. Horses know that the whip is a signal for a final spurt, and it is rarely necessary to do more than swing it beside him so that he can see it out of the corner of his eye and tap him lightly down the shoulder to remind him to keep going. Australians tie white tassels to the end of their whips so that their horses can see them more clearly, but this custom is banned in Britain.

  Owners influence the use of the whip made by their jockeys. Some refuse to allow their horses to be hit at all, most recognise that some gentle encouragement often turns a loser into a winner, and an unpleasant few do not care if the horse comes back bleeding as long as he is first.

  Whether or not one makes an extreme effort to be second or third when one cannot win also depends entirely upon whose horse one is riding. Some owners have an each way bet to save their main stake, and for them one must drive one’s mount as hard as possible to gain a place. Others say that if their horse cannot possibly win they do not want him knocked about to come in third. In general, jockeys try to run into a place if they can, because the public deserves a fair run for its money, but it is not sensible or kind to exhaust an unfit horse in doing it.

  Heavy going is apt to make the finish of a long race a graceless affair. Rhythm and speed are often conspicuously lacking as two or three weary horses plod along towards the post, labouring against the mud, and rolling from side to side because they are too tired to run straight. At this point their jockeys are often equally worn out, and have only enough strength left to ride a shadow of their usual finish. Three or four races like this in one afternoon severely tax a ride
r’s stamina, for even on good going a hard finish needs a fit man.

  The race to the post is the supreme test of jockeyship, and there is no doubt that the best finishing school is flat racing.

  All the National Hunt riders who attend it ride a strong finish. Fred Winter, Ron Barry, Dave Dick, Bryan Marshall, Martin Molony, George Slack, Josh Gifford, Bill Rees, and so many other good jockeys that I could fill half a page with their names, were apprenticed on the flat because they were small and light at fifteen.

  It is of comfort to the heavy brigade, however, to know that ex-amateurs Michael Scudamore, Richard Pitman, Bob Davies, Graham Thorner, Tim Molony, Stan Mellor and Terry Biddlecombe have won more than enough races to prove that there are other ladders to climb.

  The greatest advantage of learning to ride a finish as a flat racer is that one gets plenty of practice. Close finishes are not the rule in ’chasing, more common in hurdling, but almost universal on the flat. Another advantage is the age at which one starts. It is easier, I suppose, to learn any physical skill at fifteen or sixteen than it is five years later; and few amateurs, even at twenty-one, are riding horses good enough to figure often in a fighting finish.

  Riders may improve as time goes by, but the professional flat-racing polish at the winning post is seldom acquired by experience in National Hunt racing alone.

  I discovered that I could ride a good finish on some horses, but not on others. On those that went well for me I found I could hold my own against Harry Sprague and Fred Winter, but on mounts unresponsive to my brand of persuasion I ruefully realised I was beaten.

  Tim Molony developed an excellent finishing style which depended mainly on his own great strength, and less on the sort of finesse displayed by his younger brother. Tim was also helped immensely by the racing system in Ireland, for at the majority of Irish meetings, all through the year, one event is a flat-race for amateurs. He rode regularly in these for three or four years until he became a professional in 1939.

  I think the liquid force of a jockey in perfect harmony with his mount as they race towards the winning post is a joy to see. Every ripple of muscle in the horse’s stretched body finds an echo in the man on top. Like ski-ing and billiards it looks easy from the sidelines, but it is quite a different matter when one has to do it oneself, as I discovered the first time I came into the straight with a winning chance.

  I thought at that time that the best way for me to learn to ride a finish was to study how the experts did it, but after a while I found it was more instructive to watch the really bad riders, and see what not to do.

  The faults of beginners are glaringly obvious. Sometimes one sees them, in their effort to move in rhythm with the horse, swaying backwards when it should be forwards and vice versa, like trying to swing with one’s legs tucked under on the forward arc and stretched out on the backward. The result is the same: both swing and horse slow down.

  Others frenziedly flap their elbows, as if a flying motion would propel them along faster, or flail with their whips as if they were beating a carpet. Most spectacular of all are the gentlemen who bounce up and down in the saddle while sitting upright. They seem to work on the principle that the harder one comes down the greater will be the next spring forward, like riding on a pogo stick.

  Everyone realises that a bad rider can make a thoroughbred look a cart-horse, but unless a horse is fleet of foot the Perfect Horseman and the Perfect Jockey rolled into one cannot regularly win races on him. The jockey is there to guide, help, drive, cajole, or even hoax his mount into the winner’s enclosure, but he cannot go faster than the horse.

  It is always a pleasure to ride a good horse, whatever the outcome of the race. There is, of course, more chance of winning if one’s mount is intelligent and skilful, but if he is squarely beaten by a faster horse, the basic satisfaction of being on his back is not diminished.

  I finished second in a race one day, and when I dismounted in the unsaddling enclosure I said, partly to please his owner, but mostly because it was true, ‘Your horse gave me a lovely ride.’

  ‘What has that got to do with it?’ he answered sharply. ‘You didn’t win.’

  I said nothing, but I thought a lot about it afterwards, and I realised that if I did not enjoy riding horses that do not win I could not be a jockey. No one could. It is a hard life in some ways, but the pleasures of race riding by far outweigh the knocks; and every jockey thinks the same, for if he did not, he would change to another job. No one can last long as a steeplechase jockey unless his heart is in it.

  There are the rough horses to be taken with the smooth. By no means are all their steeds a delight to their riders, and it would be foolish to say that I looked forward to every race with the same degree of pleasure.

  Stupid horses, for instance, are exasperating. They will not put themselves right before a fence, and they resist their jockeys efforts to do it for them. They repeat their mistakes over and over again, and they never learn from experience; yet every time I went out to ride an animal like this, I felt an irrational hope that perhaps he would at last remember to take off when I asked him at a flight of hurdles, instead of rushing into them as usual, or to stop wasting his energy by fighting against his bit, and apply more of it to winning his race.

  The horses I most enjoyed riding were those I had schooled at home, ridden in their novice races, and progressed with into handicaps. It is a great thing to feel a young horse develop under one’s hands, and to watch his early promise mature into a successful career.

  10

  The Good Years

  MY association with Frank Cundell began, as so many pleasant things for me have done, on Bangor-on-Dee racecourse.

  Frank did not go to the meeting, and I had not yet met him, when I rode and won a race there on a horse he was training, but a few days afterwards Ken Cundell introduced us during a schooling session on the downs. Frank is Ken’s second cousin, and they trained together for a few years after the war, until Ken moved over to Compton to start on his own.

  Early in his life Frank was infected with the longing to ride in races, but he faced a drawback common to many young men similarly afflicted: no funds. With the clearness of thought and the ingenuity which are still two of his most outstanding qualities, Frank first became a veterinary surgeon, and then joined the Army. He had thus equipped himself with a permanent means of making a living, and transplanted himself into the heart of amateur steeplechasing country. An army officer can remain an amateur for ever, untroubled by the National Hunt Committee, who had breathed down Frank’s neck more than once while he was racing as a veterinary student.

  In 1934 he was sixth in the Grand National on Blue Peter III, but shortly after that the Army unfeelingly posted him to India. He consoled himself by serving as a stipendiary steward for three or four years at the Royal Western India Turf Club in Bombay. After the war he took up old threads at his late uncle Leonard Cundell’s stables in Aston Tirrold, where he has been training with great success ever since.

  Training steeplechasers is no easy job. I know little about flat racing from the inside, and I was listening with interest one day to a man who has excelled as a trainer under both rules.

  ‘Compared with jumping,’ he said, ‘the flat is dead easy. All you have to do is get the horse absolutely fit, run him against lower-class horses, and have a good bet on him. Enter him often, and pick your race. You can’t lose. It’s money for old rope.’ He spoke with some authority that day: of his previous nineteen runners on the flat, fourteen had won.

  ‘Why do you train mostly over the sticks, then?’ I asked.

  ‘More fun,’ he said.

  There must, I suppose, be a very good reason for a trainer to favour steeplechasing rather than ‘the flat’, and the fun and informality of the winter sport may well be it.

  All trainers work and worry extremely hard: no forty-hour weeks for them. Up early in the morning to see their horses’ gallop, they then spend the day at the races looking after their own run
ners and studying the form of other peoples’, and rush home afterwards to go round their stables to see to the well-being of all their charges. The endless paper work has still to be squeezed in somewhere : entries have to be made long in advance and the forfeit stages noted; corn, hay, straw have to be ordered, horse transport arranged, boxes at racecourse stables reserved; and the accounts have to be kept and the bills made up and sent out. Telephone calls and messages disturb his evenings, and at bedtime there is a last walk to be taken round the stables to make sure that all is well for the night.

  All trainers worry at the same time that their horses may suffer some unforeseen harm that will undo in seconds the hard work of weeks: and when they have done their best, produced the horse fit, and still lost the race, they worry whether the owner is satisfied, or whether a horsebox will appear one morning to whisk the horse off to someone else’s stables.

  For all this nerve-racking labour one might expect trainers to be comfortably rewarded, but most of them confess that their only profit comes from well judged wagers. They are, after all, closer to the horse’s mouth than anyone else, but judging from the glum countenances of defeated trainers, those dumb creatures are prone to exaggerate their own chances.

  The necessity to bet to live daunts me from starting to train now that I am no longer a jockey, for I am a hopeless gambler. It did not need the ban imposed on me by my jockey’s licence to keep me away from ‘the books’: in my case it is like telling a man who hates whisky not to drink it.

  Hovering like little thunder clouds on the horizon are two distant threats to the peace and prosperity of trainers, the first infuriating but temporary, the second drastic and deadly, and both arising from dishonesty.

  A few trainers, many owners, and thousands of racegoers are convinced that jockeys are continually being bribed to lose races. Let them be reassured that if any steeplechase jockey is seen ‘stopping’ a horse, word speedily goes round, and the rider in question finds that the number of horses he is asked to ride drops steeply. Although he might be paid a large sum for deliberately losing a race, he would lose also his reputation, many of his regular mounts, and perhaps even his licence.