The Sport of Queens

by Dick Francis

  I remember how startled I was when I first heard the cheers for M’as-Tu-Vu at Lingfield, and they were a whisper compared with the enveloping roar at Liverpool; so I think one must seriously consider whether Devon Loch may not have been struck down by joy.

  Heart failure, ghost jump, cramp, and a shock wave of sound may still not include the real cause of Devon Loch’s fall, and in this tantalising mystery there is no Sherlock Holmes to unravel its elementariness on the last page. What happened to Devon Loch is Devon Loch’s secret, and I doubt if he even remembered it afterwards.

  But what would have happened, I wonder, if we had taken him to Aintree and galloped him along the straight to the winning post? Would he have noticed when he came to the fatal place? Would he have stopped and backed away from it with any show of distress, or even have fallen there again, or would he, as I certainly believe, have galloped on without faltering past the water-jump and past the unattained winning post? Would he have heard the echo of the roar which met him there so long ago?

  Devon Loch, a noble and courageous horse, will not be forgotten in racing history. Fifty years from now, about National time, newspaper articles will mention his tragedy as a curious event in a distant past. Octogenarians will sigh, ‘I was there….’ The old photographs will be pulled out, and one’s grandsons will wonder at the horse’s sprawled legs, and perhaps smile at the old-fashioned clothes of the crowd.

  And my fate? I know it already.

  I heard one man say to another, a little while ago, ‘Who did you say that was? Dick Francis? Oh, yes, he’s the man who didn’t win the National.’

  What an epitaph!

  13

  Afterwards, 1957–1987

  TIME NEVER stands still, and neither for Devon Loch nor for me did life end with the 1956 Grand National. In the short term, the horse went out to grass for a summer holiday and his jockey picked himself up and got on with business as usual, and six months went by before the two of them were reunited on a racecourse.

  Few fanfares attended the event. The time was an inconspicuous midweek afternoon at Nottingham at the end of October, and the race, two-and-a-half miles over hurdles, was of such extreme unsuitability that a thumping failure could easily be explained away. The sparse crowd, cottoning unerringly to this ploy, kept their money in their pockets and let the Aintree flyer start at eight to one. The owner, not surprisingly, was not there to watch.

  Well. Off went the field at two mile hurdle pace (usually faster than two mile speeds on the Flat) leaving Devon Loch well to the rear, insulted and surprised. He practically snorted. He tossed his head with displeasure and set off in pursuit. For me, feeling this thrusting enthusiasm, the biggest question was already answered: the old boy still did have his spirit and still did want to race, and I knew in view of that that it wouldn’t really matter where he finished.

  From Devon Loch’s own angle things were much simpler. He was not aware that long-time ’chasers never re-find their speed over hurdles, or that two-and-a-half miles is a sprinter’s distance to a stayer, or that he was half-fit, first time out, and not expected to produce much against a better than useful field of nineteen which included the recent Cesarewitch winner Sandiacre. All he knew was that he had been offered a race, and that races were there to be won. Still near the back a mile from home he suddenly took hold of his bit and unmistakably announced that he was not out there running for nothing: so I too threw overboard his intended quiet return to the game and went for the lot. We passed bunches of incredulous jockeys all the way up the straight and won by two resounding lengths; and came back to more cries of ‘Good Heavens’ than ‘well done’.

  I rode him in three more races. One was a winner—against National winner Early Mist at Sandown—and in the other two we came second. Of these undoubtedly the bitterest was the George VI on Boxing Day, because we were beaten by our stablemate Rose Park, who set off at a tearing gallop with Michael Scudamore, led all the way, and still had two lengths in hand at the winning post.

  In January a fall put me out of action and Arthur Freeman rode Devon Loch in the Mildmay at Sandown. All went beautifully until three from home, where the horse, who had been leading, suddenly faltered and fell back, and limped slowly home. His tendon had given way again, and this time, from the racing point of view, hopelessly.

  When he was patched up enough for an easier life, the Queen Mother gave him to Noel Murless, who used him as a lead horse for his two-year-olds at Newmarket. By early 1963 my old pal was seventeen and stumbling about with old age, and as the deep freeze of that winter compounded his miseries, it was thought kindest to put him down. It was sad to know he had gone. The end, for me, of an era.

  Peter Cazalet never won his National though he sent several to victory round the course in other races. In the 1972–73 season the Queen Mother’s Inch Arran won the B.P. Chase in October and the Topham Trophy two days before the National, but these were the last great Cazalet successes at Aintree. The following May, Peter Cazalet died.

  As for myself, the fall which stopped me riding Devon Loch in his last race turned out to be my last, because I too never raced again. If Devon Loch had not broken down and had been fit for another try at Aintree, I would have gone with him, because given the chance, I could not have borne not to; but with him off the scene I was suddenly face to face with the agonising choice that all sportsmen and athletes come to, which is between retiring before physical deterioration is obvious to all, or clinging on until kicked out.

  It is tough at the top all right, and for jockeys as much as anyone. You have to prove with every ride that you are worth the fee, the trust, the horse. Prove you still have skill, strength and resolution. It is not enough to have confidence in yourself: you have to promote confidence in those who employ you. Some owners, not prepared to admit that their horse is simply too slow, always say that if the jockey had ridden differently he could have won; and however secure a jockey’s status may seem he is always vulnerable to the public doubt which follows if he is ‘jocked off’ a good horse.

  In my case, though I was not taken off many good horses, the warning signs were clear. The Cazalet owners, among the best and kindest in the world, began to refuse to let me ride their bad horses, and not just the dicey old jumpers, but the new young green ones. They did not want me to fall. They did not want me to hurt myself. Not on known tumblers. They did not want my fractures to be their fault.

  Dear, dear good owners. That was the kiss of death. No jump jockey can afford not to ride the green unpredictable youngsters, because those are the stars of tomorrow. And in their kindness, the owners could not and would not have removed the jockey who actually had ridden the risky early rides, and put me up later for the ‘safer’ ones. I could see that I would be inevitably eased out, and not by doubt but by concern.

  In truth I had not far to look for the cause of this killing kindness, because I knew perfectly well that my body was no longer mending as fast as it had. At thirty-six I was losing the power to shake off injury overnight, and after every bad fall that last season I tended to feel chilled and shaky, symptoms which had never troubled me before. However, as I had always vaguely thought of forty as a possible retiring date, I shrugged off these unwelcome signs of age and would not face their implications. And in fact I think I must have been riding as well as ever because the winners came without more effort than usual and I was leading the jockeys’ list most of the time.

  At the end of December I won a strenuous hurdle race by a whisker in a hard finish and was really pleased by the kind things which were said, and during the next fortnight there were victories in a chase or two, and one on Crudwell at Leicester. Friday, 11th January I rode three races at Newbury; an also-ran, a second and a fall.

  It didn’t seem so bad when I hit the ground, even though several horses trampled over me. I stood up, had a ride back in a Land Rover, walked into the first aid room and told the doctor I was fit to ride the next day. In the car going home the cold shakes appeared, and
I began to feel ill. Once home things got rapidly and fairly terrifyingly worse. It seemed I had been kicked in the abdomen, and I spent the night lying on the bed, still clothed, in a series of fierce head-to-toe muscular spasms into which I went whenever I tried to undress. Doctors and specialists galloped to the rescue but it was three days before anyone noticed I had broken my wrist. By then things in general were much better. Nothing internal had ruptured, and exactly eight days after the fall I was fully mobile with only a black-bruised stomach, mending metacarpels, and an anxiety to be back racing again within the month: and that was the day that Devon Loch broke down.

  Lord Abergavenny, friend of the Queen Mother and later the Queen’s representative at Ascot, had over several years given me helpful advice on many matters so that when he asked me to call at his flat one day in London I went without particularly wondering why.

  What he said was stunning and simple, and was, in effect, ‘Retire at the top.’

  No one ever did, he said. Everyone always said they would, but in the end they didn’t. He thought it would be best for me in the long run if I actually did. Maybe so, I said, if I wanted to start training when I stopped riding, but I didn’t. All the same, he said.

  In great depression I discussed his views with Mary and we both saw him for another talk. His message was unchanged: go while it is a surprise to everyone, not a long-awaited anti-climax. We both saw the good sense of this course easily enough, but settling for it emotionally was much harder. The decision itself took a heart-searching fortnight but the miserable sense of loss lasted for months and months.

  Anyway, thanks to more advice and a little stage-management, I had the luck to be able to say first on the T.V. programme ‘Sportsview’ that I was hanging up the boots, and Lord Abergavenny’s hopeful predictions at once came true, for within a fortnight I was offered three jobs.

  One was that of official judge. This was a then unheard-of position for an ex-professional jockey, and I accepted, feeling that I had been paid a considerable compliment. I said, however, that I would really prefer to be a starter, but was told to wait a few years until I was not so much one of the boys!

  The second job was that of race commentator. I accepted that too, and tried my hand at public race-reading at a succession of meetings like Birmingham, Fontwell and Towcester. I found it hard work to learn the colours and horses for every race, but at least twenty runners gave one plenty to say. It was the two and three-horse affairs which had me most tongue-tied.

  The third job offer was from the Sunday Express They would like four articles, they said, or perhaps a few more, which would be written by their staff to appear under my name. How about if I did them myself, I asked, and they said O.K., I could try.

  During the early summer of 1956 an elderly lady called Mrs. Johnson went to tea with my mother; and this totally ordinary and fortuitous afternoon altered the whole course of my life.

  Mrs. Johnson was accompanied by her son John, who was doing his good turn for the day by driving his aged parent to and from. To pass the time while the two ladies chatted he wandered round the room looking at books and antiques and photographs: he had a pretty sharp eye, which my mother approved, as he had worked for some time for the Arts Council.

  I was not there that day, but I’ve been told the same story identically by both sides. He stopped before a framed photograph of Devon Loch jumping the last fence in the National.

  ‘How odd,’ he said, ‘That you should be interested in racing. And in that horse in particular.’

  ‘My son rode it,’ she said.

  After a very surprised pause he said ‘Has he ever thought of writing the story of what really happened?’

  ‘I’m sure he hasn’t,’ said my mother.

  ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘That he would be interested in a suggestion that he should?’

  ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Well… could you arrange that I meet him, to discuss it?’

  Mother told me, and I met him. He said he was an authors’ agent. He said he could get a ghost writer. He said how about it? And the consequence was, as the schoolroom game would put it, that I had a go myself.

  I started the book—this book—in the summer of 1956, on a boat on the Norfolk Broads. During the autumn I was told that as professional jockeys were not allowed to appear in print the book could not be published, so my enthusiasm for what had turned out to be extremely hard and unfamiliar work diminished to a standstill. If I couldn’t publish, why bother to write? But by February 1957, when I gave up racing, nearly two thirds of the book was done.

  (The rules have been changed since then, and professional jockeys may now appear in print to their hearts’ content.)

  The one good thing about an autobiography as a first introduction to writing is that at least you don’t have to research the subject: the story is all there in your own head. I was lucky to have my first efforts published, as most writers fill copious waste baskets before this happens, and I know that if this first book had been rejected everywhere I would never have written another. I was not filled with the burning zeal to write which survives three or four unpublished tomes and sets to work on the fifth. I would have accepted at once that I should forget about writing and do something else.

  But there we were. Michael Joseph, for whom I had ridden a few races, said he would publish the book when I’d finished it; and the Sunday Express printed the first article I wrote for them and said I could carry on with the others. I never really decided to be a writer. I just sort of drifted into it. For months, all through the summer of 1957, I looked upon the articles I was still producing weekly in the Express as only a stop-gap until I decided what to do for the rest of my life. The Express kept offering me a permanent job on the staff and I kept saying no, not realising how many sports-writers would have jumped at it, but by the autumn the message had got through to my sluggish brain that I really did quite like what I was doing and that this was not some temporary marking time, this was IT. In November I signed on the dotted line, and in December this book came out and sold out its first (small) printing in a week, and the exchange of saddle for pen was no longer a vague possibility but a fact.

  Whatever I now know about writing I learnt from the discipline of working for a newspaper. There was small space allowed so that every word had to be worth it, and a deadline to be met so it was no good turning in a masterpiece tomorrow. For most people, writing is hard work (though those who don’t do it never believe it) and actually sitting down in front of the empty sheet of paper is something to be put off whenever possible. Any publisher who gets work from me on time has the Sunday Express’s training to thank.

  My first year on the paper brought home to me a little forcibly that jockeys can earn more than journalists. The transition was softened a good deal by the proceeds from the book and also by something else particularly heart-warming, a retirement present given me by the whole racing fraternity. Peter Cazalet, Hugh Sumner, and the then Lord Bicester were the organisers and major contributors, but so many people sent gifts to the fund that it took me weeks to write and thank them. In all they collected a thousand pounds, which in 1957 was no mean sum. If it is of any interest to anyone who subscribed, I have never forgotten it (I still have the list of their names), and I appreciated the money itself as much as the generosity with which it was given.

  Looking ahead, though, it was clear that the drop in income meant either changing the way we had grown used to living, or spending all our savings, or earning more money. We did the first to some extent and tried not to do the second, but the most sensible seemed the third. So I regret to say it was not inspiration which prompted me to start another book, but the threadbare state of a carpet and a rattle in my car: and I thought that if a novel could cover those few expenses the labour might be worth it. I underestimated twice. Writing a novel proved to be the hardest, most self-analysing task I had ever attempted, far worse than an autobiography: and its rewards were greater than I expecte
d.

  The book, called Dead Cert, was accepted by the firm of Michael Joseph Ltd. (Michael himself having died) who published it in January 1962, and on publication day I received a preliminary cheque for three hundred pounds which felt like turning from amateur to professional all over again.

  Encouraged, I started anew, and Nerve was published two years later. Since then I have written one novel a year, and hope to continue for as long as anyone wants to read them. They have bought a new carpet or two by now, and a car or so, and of course a good deal more. I have been very lucky indeed in the rewards, but I still find the writing itself to be grindingly hard, and I approach Chapter 1 each year with deeper foreboding than I ever felt facing Beecher’s.

  The process of producing fiction is a mystery which I still do not understand. Indeed, as the years go by I understand it less and less, and I am constantly afraid that one day I will lose the knack of it and produce discord, like a pianist forgetting where to find middle C.

  People often ask me where I get ideas from, and the true answer is that I don’t really know. They ask me how or why I write the way I do, and the answer is that I don’t know that either. It seems to me now that one can’t choose these things and that one has very little control over them. Jane Austen couldn’t have written Charles Dickens, nor Charles Dickens, Jane Austen: and although I’m not in that league, I couldn’t write, for instance, Desmond Bagley nor he me with any sort of credibility. Books write authors as much as authors write books.