‘You workers.’ He laughed. ‘No sense of priority.’
I wondered again where his money came from. He had a sizable string of racehorses, both jumpers and flat, and there was no shortage of readies available for entertaining in private boxes around the country’s racecourses.
I made it back into the commentary box just in time to describe the horses for the fourth race as they emerged out onto the course and made their way to the one-mile start.
‘First going down is Jetstar in the red jacket with the white crossbelts. Next is Superjumbo in the white with a red circle and black cap.’ I looked down at my notes and also at my folded copy of the Racing Post with its diagrams of the jockeys’ silks. ‘Rogerly comes next in the blue and white quarters and hooped cap followed by Scusami, the favourite, in the yellow jacket with the light blue stars and cap.’ I watched Clare cantering Scusami down the course and wondered again what was going on in that head of hers underneath the light blue cap. ‘Lounge Lizard is next in the green and white stripes, with Tournado in the pink with dark green epaulettes and cap completing the line-up for the John Holmes Construction Limited Stakes over a mile, the big race of the day here at Lingfield.’
I clicked off my microphone.
Six runners over a mile on the round track. Easy-peasy.
I pushed a button on my control box and the latest betting odds for the race came up on my monitor.
‘Scusami is still favourite and his price has shortened to five-to-four. Superjumbo is at threes, as is Rogerly; five-to-one for Tournado, sixes Lounge Lizard, with Jetstar the rank outsider at twenty-five-to-one.’
I turned off my mike and switched the monitor to show the horses as they circled at the start.
For a race with a very large field, like the Grand National, I would have spent some time the previous evening studying the colours but, mostly, I learned them in the last few minutes before the off. If I tried absorbing six or seven races’ worth all together I would simply get them confused in my head.
So I learned them race-by-race and probably couldn’t describe them ten minutes after it had finished. I started each race with a clear mind, and describing the silks as the horses cantered to the start was as much part of my learning routine as for the benefit of the racegoers on the grandstands. Now I watched the horses circle on the monitor and put my finger on the image of each animal in turn while saying its name out loud. With more runners I might have gone to see them in the parade ring to give me more time, but with six... piece of cake.
‘Going behind the stalls,’ I told the crowd. ‘Scusami is still favourite at five-to-four, Rogerly now clear second at three-to-one with Superjumbo at seven-to-two; five-to-one bar those.’
I flicked the monitor back to the horses and went on putting my finger on their images and saying aloud each horse’s name.
‘Now loading,’ I said.
Derek spoke into my ear. ‘Mark, coming to you in five seconds. Four. Three. Two...’ He counted down to zero while I described the horses as they were being loaded into the starting stalls. As he reached zero, I paused fractionally so that I wasn’t actually speaking as the satellite viewers came online.
‘Just two to go now,’ I said. I briefly flicked back to the odds on my monitor. ‘Scusami is still favourite but has drifted slightly to six-to-four, with Rogerly still at threes. Just Superjumbo now still to be loaded.’
I took a small sip of water from my bottle.
‘Right, they’re all in. Ready. They’re off!’
Easy-peasy, indeed. Even my grandmother could have called this race.
Scusami jumped out of the stalls first and, as an established front runner, he never relinquished the position. He was only briefly challenged in the home straight by Superjumbo but, when Clare asked him for a response, it was instant and dramatic. She only once raised her whip, mostly riding the horse out with hands and heels to a comfortable three-length victory with the others trailing past the winning post in line astern.
‘I’ll make you a copy of that one too,’ said Derek into my ears. ‘What a great horse. Must be a good bet for the Guineas.’
‘The opposition may have made him look better than he really is,’ I replied. But I did agree with Derek. Perhaps I’d make a small investment in the ante-post market. The 2000 Guineas was not until May and a lot could happen in the next eight months.
Indeed, much would happen in the next eight hours.
Lingfield was my local course and I was home by half past six, even though the last race didn’t start until five twenty-five. And I had remembered to collect the DVD from Derek with the two recordings on it.
I sat on my sofa and played them back over and over.
The difference between a moderate jockey and a great one is all about weight management, and timing. All jockeys stand in their stirrup irons and lean forward, placing their weight over the horse’s shoulders, and all jockeys move their weight back and forth slightly with the horse’s action, but the greats are those who use this movement to bring the most out of their mounts. They dictate to, rather than just follow, the horse beneath them.
Riding a finish with ‘hands and heels’ has far more to do with the positioning of weight than anything actually done to the horse with the hands or the heels. Most jockeys, especially those on the flat, ride far too short to be able to give the animal a decent kick with their heels anyway, and the hands on the reins move back and forth with the horse’s head.
I watched again the recording of Clare riding Scusami to win that afternoon’s fourth race. As Superjumbo came to challenge one furlong out, Clare gave her mount a single smack with her whip down its flank, then she rode out a classical finish, lowering her back and pushing her hands back and forth along the horse’s neck and moving her weight rhythmically to encourage it to lengthen its stride, which it duly did to win easily.
I compared that with her riding of Bangkok Flyer in the first when she was beaten a neck by Sudoku.
In the final furlong she appeared to give the horse three heavy backhander smacks with the whip but the head-on camera showed that these strikes were, in fact, ‘air-shots’, or superficial hits at best, with her hand slowing dramatically before the whip made any contact with the flesh. As on Scusami, she had lowered her back and there had also been plenty of elbow motion, but little of this had actually transmitted to her hands, the elbows going up and down rather than back and forth.
But the most telling thing was what had caused me to question her riding in the first place. Clare’s body movement had been all wrong. Instead of encouraging the horse to lengthen its stride as she had done on Scusami, her actions had had the opposite effect. It was like in a car engine, if the combustion in the cylinder occurred when the piston was moving up not down, the effect would be to slow the engine rather than to speed it up.
So it had been with Clare’s riding, and hence Bangkok Flyer had been easily caught and passed by Sudoku.
But she had been very clever. It was a real art to make it appear that she was riding out a finish for all she was worth while actually doing the opposite.
Indeed, the only reason I had been suspicious was because of a game we had loved to play when riding our ponies as kids.
The ‘Race Fixing Game’ we had called it — pulling up our ponies to a halt while looking like we were riding a tight finish. We had practised for days and days so that even our aged great-uncle couldn’t tell what we were doing, and he’d been a regular steward for decades at racecourses all over the country.
There had been no enquiry, so the Lingfield stewards obviously hadn’t spotted it, and the racing press clearly hadn’t noticed anything either, as there had been no difficult questions asked of me by the journalists in the press room when I’d visited there after the fifth race.