‘So, are you looking forward to the races tomorrow?’ he asks.
What do I say? I have absolutely no intention of being at the races, yet here I am this evening, availing myself of his hospitality.
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Then you must come and have a drink with us in our chalet next to the track. No, better still, come and have lunch.’ He turns to the young woman standing by his side. ‘Elena, tell Claude we have another guest for tomorrow’s lunch. Mr Pussett, here.’
‘Yes, sir,’ replies Elena, making a note on a clipboard.
I force a smile. ‘Thank you.’
Oh God! Why did I come?
And my torment goes on, with everyone else getting tipsy from the free-flowing champagne, while I stick religiously to my sparkling water.
I haven’t had a drink containing alcohol in more than six years.
I don’t make a big thing of it. I just don’t drink any more. Maybe my life would have been so much better if I’d never started.
And it was my move back to Lambourn that began it all.
9
That win at the Cheltenham Festival in March had a far-reaching effect on my career, and my life.
Rather than just being merely mentioned in Racing Post articles, I was now featured in one as an up-and-coming young rider and, of course, I was compared to my father. That in itself was not a bad thing, as I had started this journey with the hope and expectation that I would become him, as his memorial. Indeed, I welcomed the comparison. At least, I did to start with.
I was suddenly being offered more rides by both northern and southern trainers. By the close of my second season at the end of April, I’d had far more than enough winners to have my seven-pound allowance reduced to five, something that made my life a whole lot easier on the starvation front, for a while anyway.
Not that jump racing stops for long.
A short six days after the season finale at Sandown Park, the whole thing starts again and then runs on throughout the year, pausing only briefly for ten days or so in the height of summer, when the ground is often rock hard. However, the major jump races don’t return to the calendar until October or November.
But there is barely any let-up for the conditional jockey, who continues to work as a stable hand even when racing takes its holiday. And it was on such a day in early June when my employer came along to the box where I was mucking out and brusquely told me to drop everything and follow him immediately into the stable office.
I wondered what I’d done wrong.
Jerry Dickinson was waiting for us in the office and it wasn’t me that my employer was angry with, but him.
‘Mr Dickinson here wants you to go and work for him, but I’ve already told him you don’t want to. You’re happy working for me, but he insists he won’t leave until he’s heard it directly from you.’ He stared at me as if demanding I agree with him.
I knew Jerry Dickinson by his reputation, and also by his results.
He was one of the leading Lambourn jump trainers. Then in his early-fifties, he had recently launched a campaign to attract many fresh owners to the sport, all of them prepared to invest their considerable wealth in horses for him to train. The opportunities for me were obvious.
He was the younger son of a Birmingham-based former bookmaker. He had ridden a few times as an amateur jockey before becoming too tall and too heavy. So he had then turned to training racehorses instead, near Daventry, and had quickly proved himself a winner. On the retirement of one of the sport’s legendary names, he had taken over a major training yard in Lambourn and was forging success on success, including victory in the current year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Which jockey wouldn’t want to work for him?
‘I’ve been following your career so far,’ he said, turning and looking down at me, ‘and I like what I see. I’m offering you the opportunity to come and work in the best stable in the country. You may not get the chance again. So what do you say?’
What did I say?
My existing employer had been very good to me, taking me on as an untried and untested teenager, and providing me with good coaching and plenty of rides. And he clearly didn’t want me to go.
What price did I put on loyalty?
‘Thank you, Mr Dickinson. I am very flattered but I can’t make such a big decision just like that,’ I said diplomatically. ‘I need time to talk to my employer and also to my grandparents.’
I thought for a moment that Jerry was going to say that I had to decide right there and then, but he smiled. ‘Of course. I’ll give you a week. In the meantime, I’ll send you the details of what I’m offering. Do you have an agent?’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ said my current boss curtly. Conditional jockeys were not allowed to have agents without the express written permission of their employer, and mine hadn’t given his. Not that I’d asked him for it.
But perhaps I needed one now.
In the end, I went south eight months later with the blessing of all concerned, moving into shared digs just down the road from where I had once lived as a child.
I found the whole experience rather a wrench for a number of reasons, not least because Lambourn seemed to me to be far more of a racing pressure cooker than Malton – but maybe that was simply because Jerry Dickinson’s set-up was much bigger than I was used to, and he was much more demanding from all his staff, me included.
He had offered me a very attractive package to move but he clearly wanted his money’s worth. And I was happy to give it, starting early and finishing late, with precious little time off in between. However, I was now being treated far more like a jockey-cum-assistant trainer than a groom, and I no longer had to muck out or carry bales of bedding. Instead, I spent more afternoons at the races than not, either riding or assisting in the preparation of the mounts for his other stable jockeys.
With almost a hundred and fifty horses in his yard, and with perhaps up to a dozen of them running on a single day, sometimes at three or four different racecourses at the same time, the logistics for simply getting the right horse, ridden by the properly declared jockey, weighing the stipulated amount and wearing the appropriate owner’s colours, to the correct starting gate at the appointed time were unbelievable. Never mind about race entries, declarations, vets’ inspections, farriers’ visits and the transport that was also required, to say nothing of the training of the horses in the first place.
Horseracing was big business, and no mistake.
Hence I very quickly learned how to do everything, from leading a horse around the parade ring, to properly tacking-up for the race, to giving instructions to the jockey, even to representing the trainer in a stewards’ enquiry. The only thing I couldn’t do was drive the stable’s horseboxes to the races – I hadn’t passed my normal driving test, let alone the one needed to drive a horsebox. But I could ride in the races themselves, and I did, with increasing frequency.
By my first Christmas back in Lambourn I had ridden enough winners to have my weight allowance reduced to three pounds and I was lying third in the Conditional Jockeys’ Championship.
But I was lonely.
When I first arrived, I had moved in with two other conditional jockeys, who were sharing a rented three-bedroomed house, and neither of my older housemates took kindly to me as the young newcomer, especially as I was riding more often and with more winners than they were. And they made it abundantly clear that they didn’t like the fact that my father had been a champion jockey. For some reason they believed it gave me an added advantage, with better horses to ride, something they perceived as being unfair on them, and they were damned well going to make me pay.
Hence they tended to socialise just the two of them, purposely shutting me out – not that I had much time to socialise anyway. I was always so tired at the end of the day that I mostly went straight to bed. But my lack of any life away from my work was beginning to have an adverse effect on my happiness.
I wasn’t even able to
go home to my grandparents’ farm for Christmas as I was riding at Kempton on Boxing Day and North Yorkshire was simply too far away.
Each evening, I would walk back to the house I shared, dreading what so-called prank or unkindness the other two had come up with this time. They never seemed to tire of their nasty little games, and the more angry I became with them, the more they seemed to enjoy it.
The route to the house from the stables took me past the local convenience store and I would normally pop in to buy myself a low-calorie microwavable curry to have for supper. One day, a few days before Christmas, I also picked up a six-pack of beers, to drown my sorrows.
If there was one point when I could say my life began to unravel, it would be that moment.
I went straight home, shut myself in my bedroom, and drank three of the cans straight off, even before I switched on the microwave. By the end of the evening, I’d drunk all six.
Did it make me feel any better?
Fleetingly.
The next night, I bought six more.
* * *
‘More champagne, sir?’
I look at the waiter holding a bottle of Moët.
‘No, thank you. I’m on sparkling water.’ He isn’t to know that I’m now drinking my bubbles from a champagne flute. Better that way. Less obvious. Not that I’m really self-conscious about it, just that it takes the inevitable explaining out of the situation.
It seems easier at home in England – you just say you’re driving.
Jerry comes back over towards me and this time he has Susi in tow, and he is holding his phone.
‘We need to ask you a little favour,’ he says.
Uh-oh.
‘Can you help us out tomorrow?’ Susi asks, diving straight in. ‘Jerry’s man has just called to say he’s in the local hospital. He’s slipped over on the ice and fractured his ankle.’
‘I’m not riding,’ I say adamantly. ‘I haven’t got a licence any more.’
Jerry laughs. ‘No, not that. You couldn’t do the weight, anyway.’
He laughs again and I wonder if he’s having a go at me. But, in truth, I have put on a bit since my riding days. A higher bodyweight is good for the Cresta. Another of its attractions.
‘No, I need someone to saddle Susi’s runner while I do Brenda’s.’
‘Can’t you saddle them both?’ I ask. I knew it was not unusual for a trainer to saddle more than one horse in a race, sometimes three or four.
‘I could at a pinch, I suppose, but I can hardly lead both of them from the stables and into the parade ring at the same time. I only brought one lad with me and he’s now useless. It’s all I could spare from the yard at home. I was going to lead the other one myself anyway.’
Typical Jerry. Always doing things on the cheap.
‘Surely there’s someone else you could ask,’ I say in desperation. This is really not on my agenda.
He looks over my shoulder into the room as if looking for someone else, then his eyes fix again onto mine. ‘Come on, Miles. I taught you how to do it years ago. Piece of cake for the likes of you. You’ll enjoy yourself.’
No, I would not.
‘Please,’ wails Susi, taking my free hand in hers. ‘I’ll be so much happier knowing that it’s you looking after my baby, rather than someone I don’t know.’
I sigh. Why did I come here? I knew it was a mistake.
‘Oh, all right,’ I hear myself saying.
Am I stupid, or something?
‘Great.’ Jerry slaps me on the back. ‘Would you also like to give them a pipe-opener first thing? Just a couple of gentle turns round the track to stretch their legs.’
‘I told you I wasn’t riding.’
‘But you don’t need a jockey’s licence for that.’
‘I thought you said I was too heavy.’
‘Not for a little gentle exercise. You’ll do well. What do you say?’
It has been ages since I’ve sat on a horse.
I hesitate.
‘I’d do it myself,’ Jerry says, ‘but I am too heavy. And too damn old. Bloody nuisance Herbie injuring himself or he’d have done it. He’s been riding them out all week.’
‘Can’t you get the jockeys to do it – those riding for you in the race later?’
‘I’ll have to if you won’t.’
And he’d have to pay them extra, I thought. And that won’t please him.
I hesitate some more. Can it do any harm?
It’s not that I’m particularly worried about falling off and getting injured. Hurtling head-first down the Cresta Run is far more dangerous than cantering a horse for a gentle pipe-opener round a racetrack, even one built on a frozen lake. Perhaps I am more worried about making a complete fool of myself. But why? It’s what I used to do best, and one surely doesn’t forget. Just like riding a bike.
‘I have no gear.’
Am I fishing for excuses?
Jerry laughs once more. ‘Don’t worry about that. You can use Herbie’s helmet and back protector, and we have an exercise saddle. Wear whatever else you like. No one from the BHA will be watching.’
The British Horseracing Authority have strict regulations concerning what exercise riders must and must not wear, at least in Great Britain.
‘What time?’
I can’t believe I’m asking that.
‘It gets light about seven-thirty but it’s bloody cold so wrap up. Should only take an hour at most.’
Jerry is getting excited by the prospect. Am I?
‘Do I get a fee?’
‘Fuck off.’
10
‘Pussett. Ten stone, four pounds. That’s one pound overweight.’ The Clerk of the Scales made a note in his ledger and then looked up at me.
I was at Kempton on Boxing Day, riding in the second race for Jerry Dickinson, and he was standing right next to me, waiting to take my saddle to put on the horse.
‘Overweight? At ten-stone-three?’ he said with a mixture of anger and irony. ‘What the hell have you been eating?’
It wasn’t what I’d been eating that was the problem – I’d had next to nothing for my Christmas lunch – it was what I’d been drinking. A single pint of beer is equivalent in calories to a large slice of pizza, and I’d had a lot more than just one. So many, in fact, that I was also a little hung over.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled as I handed him the saddle, diving back into the jockeys’ changing room before he could say anything more.
Worse was to come.
We were beaten by less than half a length, and Jerry made it quite clear to me in the unsaddling enclosure that it was totally my fault we didn’t win because of me being overweight. One of the losing punters clearly thought the same, shouting abuse at me as I went back into the weighing room.
I sat on a bench in the changing room with my head in my hands, wishing I were anywhere but here. But I had another ride in the sixth race, again at ten-stone-three, again for Jerry.
I stripped off and went back into the sauna – where I had already spent some time before racing – hoping to sweat out a pound of fluid. I’d also had no breakfast and was really hungry, but I dared not eat anything.
Accepted medical advice is that you should only remain in a piping-hot sauna for a maximum of twenty minutes at a time, and you should drink plenty of water both beforehand and afterwards. I remained in there throughout the next three races, well over an hour, and, needless to say, I didn’t drink any water at all.
‘Pussett. Ten stone, three pounds,’ said the Clerk of the Scales.
I handed my saddle to Jerry, who raised his eyebrows fractionally but said nothing. I, meanwhile, could hardly put one foot in front of the other, such were the cramps in my legs brought on by dehydration. I hobbled back to the changing room and drank several handfuls of water from the cold tap in the loos; eventually, the cramps eased.
I finished second again, beaten by a head this time, and, if Jerry thought it was because I lacked the strength to ride the best finish I
possibly could have, he’d have been right. But he didn’t say anything, for which I was grateful.
An hour later, I started back to Lambourn from Kempton in the horsebox, sitting on a bale of straw in the rear with the horses so I didn’t have to talk to anyone human, and I popped into the village convenience store for another six-pack on my walk home from the yard.
Just one more beer wouldn’t do any harm, surely, and I needed it.
Boy, did I need it.
* * *
Jerry wasn’t kidding when he said it is bloody cold at half past seven in the morning in St Moritz. But I suppose the ice on the lake wouldn’t be thick enough to race horses on if it wasn’t.
Wondering what on earth I am doing, I turn up at the temporary racing stables in jeans, snow boots and a thick ski anorak, with lots of thermal layers beneath. Gloves and a woollen bobble hat make up the rest of my ensemble, and I am still shivering.
Jerry is there ahead of me and he’s not happy.
‘Bloody Herbie,’ he says. ‘They’ve kept him in hospital overnight and now they’re saying they need to operate to insert a metal plate in his foot. I’ve had to muck out both of mine this morning.’ He sounds totally exasperated by this state of affairs.
It’s as much as I can do not to laugh. It’s clearly been a very long time since Jerry has had to do any manual work.
I stamp my left foot in a vain attempt to get some blood to my freezing toes. ‘Come on, then. Let’s get this show on the road before I change my mind.’
Jerry looks down at my footwear. ‘You’re surely not riding in those.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’ll get stuck in the stirrups if you fall off.’
‘But I have no intention of falling off. And these are all I’ve got.’ Other than my Cresta boots with the vicious-looking spikes on the front or indoor moccasins, and I’m not wearing either of those.
We walk down the row of stables to where Jerry’s two are housed at the far end. ‘Here,’ he says, handing me a back protector. ‘Wear this.’
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