SPoItTING ASPECW •
On Being a Racehorse Owner
by C. H. BLACKER THIS season I go racing as an owner and not as a rider. There are many advantages to this; I can enjoy my luncheon; I can remain muffled in my warm overcoat, and I can visit the racecourse bar with a clear conscience. I can also (though I try not to) make knowing remarks about other people's jockeyship, a pastime which was altogether too risky while I was still riding. Thus the role of the owner at a race-meeting is a comfortable One—comfortable but, I have found, sadly minor. Naturally, between meetings and during the planning stage the owner (and his cheque-book) play an indispensable part, but the race and its preliminaries are a combined operation in which only the trainer, the jockey, the horse and its ' lad ' have positive roles. The owner's smart overcoat, his bowler hat, his badge, his knowledgeable conversation, and his favoured position in the paddock can none of them obscure the painful fact that his hor'se's chance of victory would be in no way impaired if he had remained 'quietly at home. It is a saddening experience to find oneself thus relegated to the sidelines.
Looking back on past seasons I now realise that I hardly remember the owners for whom I rode; it is the trainers who stand out. It was the trainer who would engage me to ride a certain horse, the trainer for whom I looked on arrival at' the meeting and on entering the paddock before the race. Then from somewhere behind him he would produce a rather diffi- dent gentleman whom he would introduce as the owner. This gentleman would be allowed to 'mutter a few wbrds of encouragement, but only until the trainer was ready to deliver himself of his riding instructions. After the race, particularly if unsuccessful, I often never saw the owner at all; he was probably in the bar somewhere muttering about incompetent Jockeys. But win or lose I saw the trainer, and it was his words I remembered.
I certainly do not want to give the impression that all owners are nonentities. You only have to witness a certain lady owner putting her point of view to her jockey after an unsuc- cessful race to know that some can have a very positive Impact indeed. Important owners with large strings are a law unto themselves. But most owners are like me, unimportant, and, although I am not in any way complaining about my change of role, its chief drawback is the feeling that I have lost the power to influence events.
In my riding days (to use a thoroughly middle-aged expression) I always thought that owners must have a very dull time compared with jockeys. Now, though the sensations are quite different, I am pot so sure. The jockey on his arrival at the meeting is confronted with a cold and cheerless wait, with neither lunch nor aperitif to prevent his mind from revolving at ever-increasing speed round the forthcoming test. He finds it a relief to be able to change, weigh out, walk to the paddock and mount. By the time he has arrived at the start his anxieties seem to have succumbed to a local anaesthetic which has left his brain clear and his body relaxed. And during the race he is too busy for either excitement or worry. figgling doubts begin to trickle into his mind. Is his hors* eally as good as he thinks ? Is not the opposition really far oo strong, despite his trainer's assurances ? Are not the sporting press sure to make wounding references to it in the morning papers ? Might it not fall ? Or even hurt itself, or the jockey ? As these questions loom larger in his mind the owner's confident air begins to evaporate and he falls silent.
Those who own a large string of horses are probably immune to these feelings, but for one whose hopes (and spare cash) centre round one horse only the whole occasion has begun to matter far too, much. The jockey has other rides, the trainer other charges, but many owners have no other horse. For them the stakes are high. In the paddock before the race it is sometimes difficult to make the cheerful conversation which the occasion demands. The jockey appears and the, trainer usually cracks a joke to relieve the tension, the more futile the better. Once my trainer could not be in the paddock and the onus of making this joke fell on me. I am no good at that sort of thing and nothing came; we stood a gloomy and silent little group in the middle of the paddock until it was time to mount. When the horses leave the paddock, the trainer, having given his final instructions, becomes as powerless to influence events as the owner. Together they move pensively towards the stand, feeling like a general who has just hurled his last armoured division into the battle and is hastening to a view- point to watch its progress. Assuming a frozen smile to mask the fact that he has got a bad attack of jitters, the owner stares intently through quivering binoculars at the scene below him. In the melee of the race he is constantly losing or mistaking his colours—now he locates them right up in front, next a long way behind. For half a mile he watches the wrong horse struggling in the rear, then loses it altogether and with a gasp of relief finds the right one with the leaders. He discovers that his colours, so proudly worn by himself in previous seasons, consist of the one combination which is quite invisible at long range. As the race reaches its climax, the crowd around begin to shout, but he, if his horse is in any way concerned with the finish, becomes rigid and silent with tension. As the horses pass the post a tidal wave of relief or disappointment passes over his head, but at least he is able to relax, and it is then that he finds that he has not only practically lost the use of his legs but, also most of the power of speech. So it is not dull to be an owner, whatever the jockeys may think. On the whole, in fact, I am enjoying my new role very much. I would like to feel rather less of a passenger, it is true, but I have quite decided that one day, after my horse has won the Grand National, I shall become a Leading Owner, Then I shall really throw my weight about.
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