The Sport of Queens

by Dick Francis

  Ironically, the very honesty of some jockeys has cost them their jobs, for in a few cases an owner has refused to employ a jockey again solely because the jockey did not lose a race when the owner told him to.

  Only once was I offered a bribe not to win a race. I was staying with Douglas, who then trained at Bangor-on-Dee, and I was going to ride one of his horses the next day. The telephone rang, and Douglas came back from answering it grinning broadly.

  ‘We have just been offered fifty pounds each not to win tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘Told him to go to hell,’ said Douglas.

  A trainer may lose one race because he has had the misfortune to be swindled by his jockey, but if he ever employs that jockey again, or any other jockey known to be unreliable, he is taking a stupid risk. On the other hand, it is not always possible to see from the stands what difficulties a jockey may be in, and he may seem crooked while doing his best. ‘Stopping’ must be really flagrant to be proved.

  The second threat to trainers is that of dope. This much discussed problem has not yet been satisfactorily solved, though the old rule automatically removing the licence from any trainer whose horse had been doped has been partially relaxed. If a trainer can show that he has taken stringent safety precautions, his licence may be safe.

  There is no doubt that in the past innocent trainers suffered along with the guilty, and even now there is always the possibility of injustice. It is difficult, almost impossible, to prove whether or not a trainer doped his horse: he is really judged on the belief the inquiring authorities have in him.

  Frank Cundell said once, ‘If I go to one meeting, and send a horse to another, and someone there offers my stable lad a hundred pounds for five minutes alone with my horse, I am held to be guilty if it is doped, and I stand to lose everything.’

  In an effort to stop strangers tampering with horses in racecourse stables there is now a very strict watch kept at the gate, and all stable lads have to show a passport folder with their photograph in it before they are allowed through. There is nothing, however, to prevent a stable lad giving his charge a bucket of water to drink just before a race, and that alone is enough to slow most horses down.

  It has always seemed nonsense to me that a trainer should dope his horse to lose. His whole life is devoted to the winning of races, and there is no point in his taking such risks to destroy his own work.

  A horse that has been doped to win is an entirely different matter, for a good deal of special knowledge is necessary in this type of fraud. The doping must be done at exactly the right time, and no one but the trainer can be sure of having the opportunity.

  I have twice ridden horses which I am certain were doped to win.

  The first was a very uncomfortable experience. The horse was prancing about in the paddock on his hind legs, with a wildly rolling eye and foam at his mouth. He ran straight into the first hurdle blindly as if it were not there, and that was as far as I went. But the poor horse got to his feet and galloped for ten miles away from the course; a lucky thing for the trainer, because the horse was not found in time to be given a saliva test. This incident is a good example of the difficulty faced by the would-be doper. He has no ready-reckoner to tell him how much of any drug per pound of horse he must use to get the best results, and it is not a question one can ask publicly. My mount that day must have been given a treble dose.

  The second horse was not so obviously pepped up, but the signs were there. It had changed stables only ten days before, and its new trainer did not realise when he engaged me that I had ridden it several times in the past. I knew it for a ‘dog,’ a horse which hated racing, and as such it was the perfect subject for doping, for dope can make an unwilling horse race much faster than it would normally bother to, but it cannot do much good to a horse which is physically incapable of great speed.

  The ‘dog’ had his day. He showed amazing energy and won easily. The next and only other time I rode him he was back to his old familiar undoped lazy self, started favourite, and trailed in almost last.

  When I began to ride for Ken Cundell he had a great many jumpers and only a few runners on the flat, and Frank had nearly all flat racers. Three years later they had almost completely swapped over, and I imperceptibly changed the stable I was riding for. I still lived in the house which belonged to Ken, rode out with his horses, and did any odd jobs I could for him when he was away, but it was for Frank that I rode most races.

  For Lord Bicester, Ken and Frank I raced very happily for three seasons, with varying degrees of good fortune, and an unwavering conviction that life was being good to me. I think I should have been content to have spent all my years of being a jockey in that modestly successful way, had there not lain ahead for me the heights and depths to which I have been since.

  Although for many years I had been engaged to ride in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, I had never done so, because vagaries of the weather and frequent involuntary visits to Cheltenham Hospital had regularly hindered me, but in March, 1953, I had no plans for the race. Lord Bicester’s entry, Mariner’s Log, was then trained in Ireland, and Pat Taaffe had come over with the horse to ride it in the Gold Cup; so there I was, fit for once to ride in the race, but expecting to watch it from the stands.

  On the day before the race, however, Peter Cazalet, for whom I had not ridden before, asked me if I would ride Statecraft in the Gold Cup, as his regular jockey, Tony Grantham, had been hurt. I agreed with pleasure to do so, and next day went down to the parade ring wearing the pale blue and white hooped colours of Mrs John White, sister of the late Lord Mildmay, who had owned and ridden the horse until his tragic drowning three years before.

  It is usual for a jockey to go straight across to greet the owner and trainer of the horse as soon as he gets into the parade ring, but when I looked round for Mr Cazalet and Mrs White I saw they were talking to Their Majesties the Queen and the Queen Mother, who had come to see the racing that day and were watching the horses walk round. Lord Bicester saw my dilemma as I hovered on one foot, and beckoned me across to where he was standing with Pat Taaffe, not far from the Royal party.

  In a moment Mr Cazalet was at my shoulder.

  ‘Come along,' he said. ‘I am going to introduce you to the Queen.’

  I followed him over, bowed, shook hands with the Queen and the Queen Mother, and discovered how very awkward it is not to be able to take off one’s hat in respect, when it is firmly tied on against the buffets of ’chasing.

  It was a cold misty day, I remember, and the Queen was wearing a fur coat and a yellow scarf. We talked about Statecraft, and, Lord Bicester having joined us, about Mariner’s Log also. Then Mr Cazalet helped me on to Statecraft, and off we went to the start. Statecraft pulled a tendon half-way through the race, and as I dismounted and walked back beside him, I had plenty of time to wonder at the coincidences which had led to my meeting the Queen and the Queen Mother, for I had no idea then that it was not the only time I should do so.

  Six weeks later, however, Mr Cazalet asked me if I would ride regularly for him during the following season. It was a moment I have never forgotten. We were standing in the veranda outside the weighing-room at Sandown Park, and as he spoke I became aware of all that he was offering me. To ride for him meant riding the Royal horses: it meant as well that I had come to the last few rungs of my personal ladder; and even Sir Edmund Hillary, who at that very instant was climbing his way to immortality, could not have felt more on top of the world.

  I said that I would have to ask Frank if he would agree to me partly leaving him, and that I had already renewed my agreement to ride for Lord Bicester, a contract that I would not break, even if I could. Frank and Ken, like George Owen years before, told me to. go ahead, so I started the 1953–54 season riding for Lord Bicester and Mr Cazalet, and for Frank when neither of them needed me.

  Peter Cazalet first started training as a pleasant hobby. He and two of his friends, Lord Mildmay and Mr E. C.
Paget, owned a few horses and took great pleasure in riding in races, so all three of them kept their horses at Mr Cazalet’s house, Fairlawne, in Kent, and employed a private trainer to look after them.

  When he had ridden about sixty winners in seven seasons as an amateur jockey, Mr Cazalet took out a licence and began to train the horses himself. After the interruption of war his string grew larger, at first because more and more friends sent their horses to his stable, but later because other people saw what a resounding success he was having with them; and he very soon became one of the leading trainers.

  From the start of the season everything went right.

  Mr Cazalet had a number of young horses which won several novice races each, and Lord Bicester’s horses as usual were running mostly in high-class three-mile handicap ‘chases, so that they clashed far less than might be expected. The Cundell charges too seemed to fit neatly into the gaps, so that I rode a great many horses. And I won a great many races.

  By Christmas I had won as many races as I had ever managed in a whole season before, and I was having one of those long runs of good luck which defy explanation. Not only did good horses win when they were expected to, in itself an unusual thing, but unknown quantities came galloping cheerfully in first, and unspectacular plodders took the lead when their potential conquerors fell. The weather was kind, the falls I had did not stop me riding, and all the time I was thinking, ‘This luck can’t last.’

  But it did last.

  After Christmas, with short breaks for bad weather, the run of luck went on, but it almost came to an end on Gold Cup day.

  I was engaged to ride Mariner’s Log for Lord Bicester, and I thought my excursion on Statecraft the year before would have broken the long series of mishaps which had formerly kept me out of the race. I was wrong. I rode Lochroe in a hurdle race earlier in the day, fell at the furthest hurdle, of course, and dislocated my left shoulder.

  I retreated once again to the casualty department of Cheltenham Hospital, where the Casualty Sister took one look at Mary helping me through the door, and said, ‘What! Not you again!’ I had seen her at least six times in the previous three years, and she suggested I might reasonably subscribe to a bed, so that it would always be ready for me.

  On that day, however, I did not need a bed. My shoulder was speedily returned to its original design, I jumped into the taxi which Mary had telephoned for, and we went back to the racecourse as fast as the wheels could carry us. I was hoping very much to get there in time to see the finish of the Gold Cup, but as we walked into the paddock the last cheers were dying away, and the loud-speaker was announcing the result. Four Ten had won, and Mariner’s Log was second.

  The dislocation was a nuisance to me long afterwards, though after a day or two, when the stiffness had worn off, I forgot about it for months. At the end of the following December, however, I was riding a desperately hard finish in the Christmas Hurdle, and just managing to keep my nose in front of Fred Winter up the straight at Kempton Park, when I felt my shoulder fall apart inside. The jerk it gave me was enough to upset the balance of my mount, so that we lost the race by a head instead of winning it. Needless to say the owner of the horse was not very pleased, but his misery was nothing compared with mine, for this was a repeat performance of an old nightmare.

  When I had been racing for only two years I dislocated my right shoulder and tore its moorings so badly that it was quite loose. My arm fell out of its socket at the slightest excuse, and although I could shrug it back into place, it happened several times in races, and I felt that few trainers would employ a jockey who was likely to come to bits before their eyes.

  Bill Tucker came to my rescue, took my shoulder to pieces and repaired the internal damage. From then on my right shoulder was as good as new, but I did not like the idea of repeating on my left one the painful operation and the four months’ climb back to strength.

  In deep gloom, therefore, I made my way to Bill Tucker’s Clinic, expecting to hear the worst; but the damage was not as bad as I had feared.

  He found that there was only one position in which my left arm was likely to dislocate by itself, and that was straight up. Apparently, in riding the hard finish at Kempton with my head down and my arms forward, I had literally flung my arm out. He suggested that if I wore a strap to remind me not to put my arm in that one position, I should be able to avoid another catastrophe.

  After that I wore, under my racing colours, a strong band of webbing anchoring the top of my arm to my shoulder. I was not the only jockey who was held together, like a battered car, with bits of wire and string, for several others also are giving Nature a helping hand at weak spots.

  At home, during my first season with Mr Cazalet, Mary and I had another engrossing interest. We were building a house.

  Although we were very happy in Ken’s house, and no one could have been a more generous landlord, we wanted to live in a house of our own, on land that belonged to us. A second son had been born to us, and I was already looking forward to their riding days, but we were enclosed by the village at Compton, and had nowhere to keep a pony. For two summers we had looked at houses for sale, without finding any to fall in love with.

  In Ken’s house, which was originally built in the year sixteen hundred, we had learned the drawbacks as well as the beauties of very old houses, with their wattle and daub walls, uneven floors, and absence of damp-courses. In the four years we were there Ken had had the whole roof retiled, the kitchen floor relaid, and an insecure chimney taken down, and we were discouraged by this from buying a house which might involve us in the same sort of upkeep. But we found that nearly every house for sale was old and damp, and those built within the last century were hideous; and finally we decided that if we were ever to have the sort of house we were looking for, we would have to build one ourselves.

  For weeks the house was littered with little plans on pieces of squared graph paper, and Mary was often to be seen, tape-measure in hand, crawling round the furniture to see how much space it was going to need in its new home.

  After a long search, we persuaded a farmer to sell us some land near the village of Blewbury, where the Berkshire Downs sweep gently towards the Thames Valley. We can see the long line of the hills to the south of us, and an Iron Age earthworks of giant steps lies to the east. It is a windy place, close enough to a road but surrounded by large open fields, with no trees near enough to stop the march of the sun round the windows; and it thoroughly satisfies the urges that Mary and I share for light, space and solitude.

  It was alarming to see the lines we had casually drawn in pencil on our graph paper growing up solidly in bricks, and to realise that if we had made any mistakes it was now too late to rub them out. Nearly every Sunday we drove the ten miles from Compton to see how it was getting on, and stood shivering in the freezing wind looking at half-dug drains, half-built walls, and solid heaps of bricks, and trying to imagine ourselves living in the house that was rising from the muddy field.

  Much too slowly to our impatient eyes the walls went up, the roof grew over the top like a monstrous spider’s web of rafters, the tiles were laid, the glass was puttied into the windows, the plumbers, electricians, plasterers and painters came and went, and at long last, at the end of August, we moved in.

  The adventure has turned out well, the house is still our pride and joy, and time has proved it comfortable and easy to live in. We have grown roots there which will soon be as impossible to pull up as the creeping weeds I battle with in the garden.

  During my first season with Mr Cazalet, M’as-Tu-Vu was the only horse the Queen Mother had in training. He was not an outstanding horse, and he had no idea what to do when he found himself in front, but by clever placing on Mr Cazalet’s part, and some care on mine not to bring him into the lead too soon, he managed to win three races, and was second or third in three others.

  It was a great thrill for me to put on for the first time the blue and buff stripes and black velvet cap of the Queen Mother�
��s racing colours. I was not, of course, the first National Hunt jockey to wear them, for Tony Grantham and Bryan Marshall had both been riding for the Queen and the Queen Mother during the four years since Their Majesties had bought their first steeplechaser, Monaveen.

  Except in the Grand National, when there are bunches of people standing all round the distant parts of the course, jockeys seldom hear any crowd noises from the time they leave the starting gate until after they have passed the winning post. Even the normal cheers and jeers from the stands at the end of a race fall on their ears as a distant echo, because they are altogether absorbed in their task and deaf to the outside world. So I was unprepared, the first time that M’as-Tu-Vu won when his owner was watching, for the tremendous roar which greeted my return in front. For a wild moment I thought something extraordinary must have happened behind me to cause such an outburst, but when I saw the hats flying up in the air I realised it was all for the Royal win. Of course I knew that the cheers each time were for the Queen Mother and her horse, and not for me, but nevertheless it was exciting to hear and be part of them. I often felt like joining in.

  The Queen, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret all go to National Hunt races several times each season, and as I rode the Royal horses for some years, I naturally met them briefly many times. They take a keen interest in the sport and follow the results closely, and they are very well informed about horses and racing. Their comments are accurate, full of wit, and to the point, and whenever I was with them I had the comfort of knowing I should not be left, as I sometimes am, gasping and grasping for a sensible answer to a silly remark.

  Steeplechasing is notorious for its filthy weather, but mud and rain do not interfere with Their Majesties’ plans, and they visit the paddock to see the horses parade when many an ordinary person would stay in a warm shelter. One day at Lingfield I went out to ride in a heavy downpour. There were only three other runners; the parade ring was almost deserted, and only about six very hardy spectators were watching the horses walk round. But H.M. the Queen Mother was waiting under one of the big trees there to see her horse, and to give me her usual encouragement before I set off.