The Allure Of The Horse

A review of two books, Courses for Horses and Frankel

I remember wet Easter school holiday afternoons when there wasn’t much to do other than sit in front of horseracing on TV. That was OK with me. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of watching horses and their jockeys galloping towards the winning line. And the race commentary is an important part of the magic.

For a couple of summers when I was about 10 or 11, while we were spending our regular holiday with my grandmother in the Sussex countryside, I became obsessed with a horse racing game on Hastings pier. I convinced myself that I had worked out a pattern to the results — or at least a special sequence that appeared before the highest paying horse colour won the race. You just had to watch carefully and wait for the sequence to begin repeating itself, then, just at the right moment, place your penny bet.

While the race was in progress, I would mumble my own commentary. “Red is two lengths ahead but white is moving up and now drawing level. They’re neck and neck, but wait, white, yes white, noses ahead on the line.” And there would be a rattle of coins dropping into the silver cup at knee level. The winnings.

I’m not sure how my parents and younger sister amused themselves because I would be stuck by that machine for at least an hour, placing a bet only when I was certain the pattern was about to repeat.

That first summer I always came away with a modest profit. Modest, I told myself, only because the time I had to spend on the machine was finite. If I were free to stand there the entire day, I could, I thought, become rich.

So, I was excited to try and do just that the following year. But the pattern wasn’t as I’d remembered it. They’ve tweaked it, I thought. I’ll just need to wait and watch and work out the new sequence. Maybe they’d made it more sophisticated or maybe I no longer had the patience. Perhaps I just enjoyed the risk. I began to place my bets on instinct.

I noticed that the winnings, when they came, brought more pleasure than the ones that had derived from the certainty of the pattern. I was still a cautious and only an occasional gambler — preferring, in the main, to simply watch. Nevertheless, the number of losing bets increased so that, in place of great profit, I would end level or slightly down.

Things haven’t changed. In this current 2023 year my online bookmaker balance has risen from £20 up as far as £45 and has now plummeted to just over £10. I do like to have a small monetary interest in any race I am watching but I am, like the author of one of the two books recommended below, and as the figures above show, someone who bets in pennies rather than pounds. (One of the benefits of online betting is that tiny bets are accepted.)

I daresay the ebb and flow of my account is typical of an average gambler’s fortunes, which is why I am never tempted to raise my stakes.

I had a seasonal job in the early 1970s working on a pitch and putt course on the East Hill in Hastings. (By then we had moved down from London to live in Sussex.) It was a job that fitted in well with university vacations. I remember it with much fondness.

In the first year, my colleague, Bill, a small, wiry Old Town character in his sixties, was a daily gambler, with a penchant for accumulators. His favourite was the Yankee, where, from four selections, you place 11 bets — 6 doubles, 4 trebles and a 4-fold roll-on. You could turn it into a Lucky 15 by adding four single bets.

It was the era in which Lester Piggott, Willie Carson and Pat Eddery were supreme and Bill’s method, in so much as he had one, was to pick one of these jockeys, or another showing a run of good form, highlight all their rides in the racing page of the daily paper, and make his four selections.

Sometimes, depending on our shift changeover time, I would have to take his slip down to the seafront bookies’ office and place the bet on his behalf.

I placed a few Yankees of my own but in general I’m not a fan of accumulators. They appeal most to those who like to buy lottery tickets.

Since that time, my interest in horse racing has been lackadaisical. When I was doing my PGCE in Exmouth, Devon, my wife and I would often enjoy a bottle of wine on the back of a lucky gamble. But for much of my life I have been too preoccupied to follow racing daily.

I prefer flat racing to the jumps and tend to be more successful on the big occasions — classics like the 2000 Guineas and the Derby, and Group 1 races at big meetings such as Royal Ascot.

Betting on a favourite has never appealed. The odds are so short it makes no sense for someone like me, who is reluctant to risk a sizeable sum of money on something as unpredictable as a horse race.

I like to look for a good each-way bet. (Let’s explain what each-way betting is for those unfamiliar with betting terms: Say you place a straight bet of £1 to win on a horse at 10–1. If it comes first, you win £10. But if it gets beaten, even by a short head, you lose your £1. Placing an each-way bet keeps your interest in the horse alive if it is placed 2nd or 3rd. If the field for a race is very small, the payout might be only for the first two places. Equally, if the field is very large, such as in the Grand National, the payout can be for as many as the first 5 places. The catch is that you must place another £1, so the each-way bet will cost you £2. £1 for the win, £1 for the place. The payout is usually a fifth of the odds so, in our example, with an each-way bet, if the horse is beaten but comes 2nd or 3rd, the payout will be a fifth of the odds, 2–1, so the return will be £3, or £1 profit. Of course, you place the bet hoping the horse will win (in this example the return would be £14 — £10 for the win, £2 for the place, and £2 the original bet — giving a profit of £12.)

My ideal criteria for betting on a race are as follows: • the field is large enough to pay out for at least three places • the field contains a horse or horses who have CD against their name — this means they have previously won over the same distance on the same course • the form shows that these wins were not several seasons ago • both the jockey and owner have had some success over the past month • the favourite is not a horse like Frankel • the price of the horse I end up being interested in is at least 5–1

That is not to say that I don’t often throw all such considerations aside and do what old Bill used to do — highlighting an in-form jockey’s rides, or picking all the horses drawn number 7, and backing all of them regardless of form (but laying straight bets if the odds are less than 5–1). I have had some of my most profitable days following Bill’s method, which says something, I think.

I’ve attended very few race meetings — Brighton Races a handful of times, and Glorious Goodwood once. So, it was especially enjoyable to read Nicholas Clee’s Courses for Horses, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson this summer (2023).

Clee is the husband of Nicolette Jones, Children’s Books critic for the Sunday Times, someone I have met at children’s book events many times. It was via Nicolette’s Twitter (x.com) feed that I first became aware of her husband’s book.

As its publication coincided with one of my periodic renewals of interest in racing (I’ve recently been enjoying ITV’s The Opening Show on a Saturday morning), I immediately bought a copy. Subtitled A Journey Round the Racecourses of Great Britain and Ireland, it’s a book that can be savoured a chapter (or racecourse) at a time.

Altogether, there are 59 racecourses in Britain and 26 in Ireland. Clearly, Clee could not include all of them in the book but he has been to thirty of them, arriving at each one by public transport.

The book is wonderfully informative about a multitude of aspects (historical, geographical, technical — the Brighton chapter all about bookmakers and betting odds) of the horse racing world, and full of entertaining asides about his travel arrangements and observations about the quality of the food stalls and the character of the clientele. (He does not care for the Ascot crowd who “move about like commuters rushing for a train”.)

Many of the chapters feature interviews with key characters from the racing world. At Exeter, for example, he chats with Richard Hoiles, well-known for his race commentaries, both on ITV and at various venues.

At times, Clee’s comments made me giggle. “Occasions arise from time to time when lager is the ideal beverage…” And then I giggled some more at the follow-up. “I had a half, expecting to be charged as if it were champagne, but was amazed to find that the cost was reasonable — I’ve paid almost as much for a bottle of water at other race meetings. Then I had another half.”

Clee doesn’t feel the need to be polite about any of the venues. Even the big ones. He is not a fan of Goodwood. In particular, the noise. “The noise here comes from the Earl’s Lawn, where a DJ plays, very loudly and all afternoon, a succession of beat-heavy R&B tracks, occasionally with a saxophonist or trumpeter joining in… it is torturesome.” He also, as a Londoner well might, notices that the crowd is “a bit white”.

But on the whole he comes across as a great enthusiast and his book has certainly prompted me to get out to more race meetings. I am within easy reach of Plumpton and Lingfield.

Given Newmarket’s central place in both the present and the history of horse racing I was a little surprised that it didn’t warrant a slightly longer chapter in Clee’s book.

Newmarket, obviously, does have pride of place in Simon Cooper’s biography of Frankel. The book was first published by William Collins in 2020. I was given the 2021 paperback this summer and have just finished reading it.

Cooper takes the reader through every stage of Frankel’s life, presenting such a rich amount of detail that it is almost possible to experience things from the horse’s point of view. One of my favourite books as a child was Black Beauty, and I would have welcomed an even greater sense of identification with the author’s subject here.

Be that as it may, and especially as Frankel’s career (2010–2012) coincided with years in which I didn’t give horseracing much of my attention, the book is the gripping story of a racing legend, unbeaten in fourteen races. Henry Cecil, Frankel’s trainer, had been a leading figure in the 1970s and 1980s, decades when I did follow racing quite closely. I had not appreciated quite how low his star had fallen when Frankel came to be placed in his yard.

From the midpoint to the end of the book, when Cecil is carefully managing Frankel’s pathway to greatness, while at the same time declining in health and strength himself, there is a painful poignancy about it all.

Frankel has a wilful temperament. When it is felt that more appropriate quarters should be provided for such a successful horse, increasing in value with each win, currently stabled in an old garage, attempts were made to move him to a new stable wing. Frankel will have none of it. So back to the old garage he goes.

I can see material here for a rather moving picture book autobiography of a racehorse.