by Dick Francis
It was when I won a race for them that the horse’s owners found it was embarrassing that I was an amateur. They were forbidden by the rules to give me any reward, or even to pay for my petrol or my train fare, however far I had come to ride for them, and they seemed to think that just saying ‘Thank you’ was not enough. Quite illegally, therefore, I was given a small collection of briar pipes, framed photographs, and bottles of wine, which I prized very much, and I ate several celebration dinners as well.
It took me quite a while, after I had become a professional, to shake off a definitely guilty feeling when anyone pressed upon me their thanks in an envelope.
My collar-bone mended again, while I watched the Sandown meeting and the Grand National from the stands, and when next I rode, the ‘Mr’ had gone from my name on the number boards. For better or for worse, I had married by licence the life I was leading, and knew that even if I failed completely as a professional, I could never ride in amateur races or point-to-points again.
Many people had told me that I would not be offered so many horses when the owners would have to pay me, and that another amateur would be engaged in my place. Luckily for me, however, George’s owners had become used to seeing me on their horses, and most of them must have decided not to change, for I found I was riding almost as much as before.
The season was nearly over, and George as usual sent several horses up to Cartmel for the Whitsun meeting. I think we all looked forward to Cartmel. We had the greatest fun there, and every Whitsun in the south I wish I could be racing up there instead. We used to stay beside one of the lakes, Grasmere or Windermere or Coniston Water, and motor over for the races.
Hound trials and puppy trails used to be held at Cartmel, one before and one after the horse races. A man would have run miles over the surrounding hills dragging a bag of aniseed, and shortly afterwards twenty or more hounds were loosed to follow the trail and race each other back. As soon as the returning hounds could be seen in the distance, their owners began blowing whistles to encourage them home. It was so funny to see their cheeks swell out with the effort of blowing, and the deep lungfuls of air bursting their chests, because they were making no sound at all. The whistles were all too highly pitched for human ears to hear them, but no one seemed to doubt that the dogs did.
There was tremendous excitement over these hound trails, and the betting was fast and furious. We were told that some keen punters had been known to go up in the hills with a rifle, and fire at the favourite as it was streaking away from the field, but no such dastardly skul-duggery took place while we were there.
The racing at Cartmel had the same unorthodox air as the hound trails and the fair-ground which crowded upon them. The course is almost round, and all the bookmakers, race-goers, marquees, and the little stands, are circled by it. Straight through the middle like a diameter runs the flat stretch to the winning post. It has a rope across it closing it off during the first part of the race, and this is taken away, last time round, for the horses to turn up into the straight for the finish.
On Whit Monday I had been round the mile-long circuit about twelve times, and ridden in so many races, that I completely lost count in the three-mile hurdle race. I moved up, and started to make what I thought was going to be a winning run, when I came round the bend and found the rope was still in position. Feeling extremely foolish, I went on round again, but I had upset my mount, and we came in second. George, however, forgave me, as I had earlier that day won two races for him, and he knew of old how misleading the course could be.
The season was over, it was a wonderfully hot and sunny day, everyone was in high spirits, and all that remained was for us to celebrate these things in a proper manner. The directors of Cartmel invited us to a farewell drink in their square marquee, with their usual hospitality.
I was very happy.
I drank three glasses of excellent champagne on an empty stomach, and the whole of Lancashire whirled around me.
4
Black, Gold Sleeves, Red Cap
A TELEPHONE call one spring evening in 1948 entirely altered the pleasant routine I had fallen into with George Owen. Harry Bonner, a friend of Father’s, whom I had known from childhood, rang me up to ask me if I would ride some of Lord Bicester’s horses during the next season. Martin Molony was his regular jockey at that time, but was often claimed to ride in Ireland, where he lived, and Lord Bicester wanted to retain a second jockey, to be available when Martin was away. Mr Bonner, who was a neighbour and bloodstock adviser to Lord Bicester, suggested me, and so the offer was made.
I could hardly believe my good fortune, and Mary thought I was joking when I told her. It meant that I would be riding the best horses in England, in some of the biggest races, and I was little more than a novice. Lord Bicester’s colours carried such prestige on the racecourse that some of it was bound to extend to me, if I did not utterly disgrace them.
George did not hesitate when I asked him what I should do. I did not like to desert him when he had been so kind to me, and had given me such a good start.
‘You can’t possibly refuse that job,’ he said, ‘it is one of the best there is. Ride Lord Bicester’s horses when he wants you, and ride mine in between.’
So it was all settled, the contract was drawn up, and I began an association with Lord Bicester that ended only with his death. I always thought it a great honour to ride for him, and with his passing National Hunt racing has lost one of its greatest men.
Lord Bicester’s horses did not run in any races during August or September, so I went down to Devon for George as usual.
Mr and Mrs Dennis drove us down, and we stayed in Torquay. The town that summer was full of people and decked with flags, and the sea was dotted all over with boats, for the Olympic Games yacht racing was being held there. The Canadian team was staying in our hotel, and by the end of the week, when someone said, ‘What’s won?’ it was boats and not horses that we were concerned about.
In a week of gaiety and high spirits, Mr Dennis contrived to be outstanding. He seemed always to be in the centre of a group of laughing people, and he saw to it that nobody was left feeling lonely. He talked a lot with the Canadians, who were greatly drawn to him. He took us all out in a speedboat round the moored yachts, and kept urging the poor driver to go faster and faster, while the spray rose around us in leaping spurts six feet high.
One evening he climbed over the balcony of his room on to the floodlit glass roof which stretched out over the pavement. With him, over the slender metal spars and the brittle glass, he took two intimate articles of bedroom china, which he tied on the front of the hotel among the Olympic flags, just over the head of the people passing below. He crawled back to his room, dusted his hands, and happily waited for the storm to break.
A large crowd soon collected on the pavement outside, looking up as if they could hardly believe their eyes. As their numbers grew, they overflowed into the roadway, and caused a three-way traffic jam. A slight breeze caused the china objects to clang together every few minutes, and the crowd was becoming hysterical.
The manager of the hotel hurried out, gave a horrified gasp, and disappeared again. A policeman came along and looked too, but the long arm of the law could not stretch six feet above his head.
The manager went up to Mr Dennis’s room, and asked him, as he stood watching with glee the disorganisation of Torquay, if he would please go out and recover the hotel’s property at once. Mr Dennis, however, pointed out that it was very dangerous to climb out on the flimsy canopy, and he did not intend to do it again.
At length the hall porter went out on to the pavement with a pair of steps, and, sarcastically encouraged by the enormous crowd, he mounted them and cut down the offending objects. Torquay was gradually restored to normal.
A few weeks later, when Mr Dennis was suddenly dead, we learned that he had known before he went to Devon that he would not live long. Instead of spoiling his own and everyone else’s holiday by his gloomy knowledge, he mu
st have been determined, and able, to enjoy to the full the little time he had left.
Some time after our return from Devon, George went down to the Newmarket bloodstock sales, and left me in charge of the stables while he was away. I was going round one evening, giving the horses their late feed, and seeing that all was well, when I came to Russian Hero’s box. Here to my horror I found the pride of the stable grunting with pain, getting down and up again in his box, and sweating a great deal.
Bobby O’Neil arrived at top speed, and said Russian Hero had colic. The horse, he said, must not be allowed to lie down. He must be kept walking. So turn and turn about with the lad who usually looked after him, I walked Russian Hero round the yard. The night lengthened, and still we walked. The sky turned grey in the cold dawn and found us trudging on and on, numb and mindless, automatically.
At last the knots in the horse’s stomach unwound themselves, and he began tc walk normally. Wearily we put him back in his box, but there was no time to sleep, for it was almost time to take round the early morning feed.
When George came home he was greatly relieved to find that the horse was quite recovered, because he was looking forward to running him in the Grand National.
In October Lord Bicester’s horses came out for their first races of the season. Almost my first appearance in his black, gold, and red colours was on Silver Fame at Worcester. I was thrilled to be sitting on one of the best horses in England, and the race was supposed to be an easy run round for him, for it was certain that he would have no difficulty with the moderate opposition.
We cantered down to the start, and when we got there, blood was trickling out of his nose. Silver Fame had obviously broken a small blood vessel.
I did not know what to do.
I did not know if it was usual for the horse to bleed, and that it was not serious, or if it had never happened before. Silver Fame’s presence at Worcester had been one of the attractions of the meeting, and everyone would be disappointed if he did not run.
Finally, I asked the starter for permission to withdraw, and after looking at the horse’s nose and the blood that was still slowly oozing down, he gave it. As I led him back I was still wondering if I was being foolish, but the horse was so valuable that I could not risk harming him.
George Beeby, Lord Bicester’s trainer, was hurrying up the course towards me with a worried expression, but when I explained what had happened he said:
‘It’s a good job you didn’t go on. He’s never done it before.’ And as far as I know he never did it again, although we watched him anxiously for weeks afterwards.
Later on, the same afternoon, I rode Roimond, the second of Lord Bicester’s great horses. This time nothing went wrong, and to my great relief we won the race.
As George Beeby’s training stables were in Berkshire, and George Owen’s are in Cheshire, I found I was spending a great deal of time driving from one to the other. Often, as the weeks went by, I was in the south when George Owen wanted me in the north, and it became more difficult than we had imagined for me to combine the two jobs. George in the end found it necessary to engage a more regularly available jockey, although I still rode out, and did some schooling and his secretarial work for him, until I moved to Berkshire eighteen months later. I have always been grateful to George for the start he gave me; we have remained firm friends, and to the end I rode for him occasionally at the northern meetings.
Shortly after the Worcester outings on Silver Fame and Roimond, I rode in my first race at Liverpool. Parthenon, a staid old-fashioned horse of Lord Bicester’s, trained by Reg Hobbs, was to run in the Grand Sefton Steeplechase.
Riding for the first time at Liverpool is like crossing the equator: an experience to be looked forward to with awe, a graduation, a widening of horizons. Parthenon, however, was a very safe jumper, so I did not fear an equatorial ducking in Valentine’s Brook.
The late Lord Mildmay won the race. It was a great day for him, because he had been trying for years to win a race at Aintree, and never done so. Davy Jones ran out with him at the last fence with broken reins, when he was almost certain to win the Grand National, and Cromwell had been third in the same race some years later.
Parthenon finished second in the Sefton. He climbed carefully over the large fences all the way round, and as we went over Becher’s I had an extensive view of the whole of Liverpool, for what seemed a very long time.
Aintree is a grand racecourse. After two or three fences I began to enjoy my first excursion there, and there was nowhere afterwards that I liked better, as long as I was on a good horse. It is not a place for cowardly horses or bad jumpers, for even the brave and the bold sometimes fall there, and the others would do better to stay at home.
Liverpool is not, as many have heatedly protested, a cruel course. Certainly the fences themselves are larger than anywhere else, and there is a drop to each one on the landing side, which is peculiar to Liverpool and at first alarming. It is true that the height and spread of the great open ditch ‘Chair’ jump in front of the stands are daunting when viewed from the ground, for the fence is taller than a man and three feet wide, the ditch in front is six feet wide, and the guard rail on the take-off side of the ditch is eighteen inches high. No one could say it is an easy course. In addition to the landing drops, and the size of the fences, there are several awkward corners, especially after Becher’s and at the Canal Turn. Quite often loose horses used to miss the sharp bend to the left there, and gallop straight on into the canal, but recently the corner has been fenced.
The two mile circuit is therefore a testing one, as one might expect from the greatest steeplechase course in the world, but it is also fair. Above all, there is plenty of room. The first five fences are so wide that twenty-five horses could jump them abreast without coming to any harm, and on some country courses there is barely room for six.
People who write indignant letters to newspapers do not realise that Liverpool is a comparatively safe course. Few jockeys are ever badly hurt there, and no more horses die there than anywhere else, although they are given more publicity. If those who strive to have the National course made easier would turn their attentions to improving some of the small courses which really are dangerous in places, there would be more point in them.
The far end of the National course is three-quarters of a mile away from the stands, and it is lonely and silent down there for all races except the National itself. No one is about; there is only the wind, the flying turf, and the long fences. There, everything is simple. The confident stride of a good horse, the soaring lift over the birch, the safe landing, these are the whole of life.
I find I cannot properly describe the ectasy of Aintree: no one who has not ridden there can understand it, and some of those who have, do not feel it.
Most of the horses which run there positively enjoy Liverpool. Sometimes there have actually been more horses jumping round in the National loose than with jockeys on, even though they could get off the course if they wanted to. Bullingdon, a horse which George Owen trained, and which ran in the National in 1948, fell at the first fence; but he got up without his jockey, and completed the course of four and a half miles alone. He finished first.
No horse will race properly anywhere if he does not like it. Every rider knows only too well the ‘dog’ who swishes his tail round like a propeller and makes no effort to quicken his pace when asked to, the soft animal who gives up as soon as he is challenged, the brute who puts his head in the air and sticks his toes in when he does not like the look of a fence. It is simply not economic to run horses which hate racing, for they very rarely win.
There have been qualifying conditions of entry for the National since 1929, when there were sixty-six starters and almost as many casualties. There were a great many runners the year before that also, and only one, Tipperary Tim, finished the course without mishap. It was decided that in future horses must prove their ability before they were acceptable for the great race; they must show they could c
limb rocks, before they attempted Snowdon.
The qualifying rules are simple. Any horse may enter which has:
(a) been placed ist, 2nd, 3rd or 4th in any race at Aintree round the Grand National course.
(b) won a steeplechase of three miles or more (of varying qualifying values) during the preceding two years.
(c) won the Maryland Hunt Cup (the amateurs’ Grand National) in America.
One can therefore be satisfied that no unwilling horses run in the National, and the people who pity the runners as poor goaded animals with no choice in the matter, just do not know the facts.
Parthenon was to have been my first mount in the Grand National, as he had been my first at Liverpool, and Martin Molony was to ride Roimond, Lord Bicester’s main hope for the race.
All through the season I had lived for Saturdays, the day that Martin had to be in Ireland. He flew backwards and forwards over the Irish Sea every week, but he was always faithful to Ireland on Saturdays. He was such a brilliant jockey that I could not resent playing second fiddle to him, but I used to long, sometimes, for the air over Dublin to be too turbulent for him to take off.
Martin began his career as a flat race jockey so he had learned young to ride a hard finish. Also he was a great horseman, and he had such magic in his hands that all horses ran well for him. While I have been racing, there have been few jockeys to compare with him. We were all sorry when, after a very bad fall, he decided not to race any more, but to devote all his time to his farm in Ireland. He still comes over to watch some of the big meetings, and it is always a great pleasure to see him.