Low life
A load of nobblers
Jeffrey Bernard
So they've started doping horses again. It's a pity that. It isn't even clever and
requires no more skill than it does to mug an old lady. What worries me more than unscrupulous people making money by criminal means is the fact that horses stopped by drugs hardly ever recover. This is not just sad for the horse and his or her connections, it injures the breed as well. Who can say what Gorytus may have achieved on the racecourse in 1983 and then later at stud? In 1982, as a two-year- old, he won his first two races and in the second one he broke the course record at York. I was there on that memorable day. In his third race, the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket, he finished last in a four-horse race, tailed off 30 lengths behind the winner. He never recovered. The police in- vestigation drew a blank, but he had been spoken of as a possible superstar and Derby winner. .
At the time of writing it is not yet clear to me just how well Bravefoot, the new victim, is recovering. What is uppermost in my mind is that he is by Dancing Brave, one of the greatest horses for my money since the second world war. It is fervently to be hoped that one day Dancing Brave will transmit his quality to a colt that won't be got at. Unlike many English men and women I regard human beings as being more important than horses and domestic pets, but I would like to see the likes of horse-dopers, badger-hunters and those who steal osprey and peregrine falcons' eggs made into galley slaves.
Bookmakers are at the receiving end of a lot of undeserved stick, but who else can benefit from stopping a red-hot favourite? Another outstanding horse, Pinturischio, was 'got at' twice in his own yard. You would have thought that they might have improved the security of the yard after the first incident. Having been in and around stables and yards in Newmarket, Lam- bourn and on racecourses for some years I can tell you that anybody wearing jodphurs and carrying a bucket can go anywhere they please without being asked a ques- tion.
People can be even nastier than plain pill-pushers to horses. I knew a man some years ago who was reputed to have gone into the box of a horse very much fancied to win a big race at the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival and smashed one of his knees with a hammer. It would be a little kinder to pay a jockey to pull a horse. I knew a jockey once who fell foul of a bookmaker in a nasty way reminiscent of a Hollywood movie. He told me that the horse took hold of him and was so good he simply couldn't pull it. Serves them all right.
What I can grudgingly admire is a skilfully engineered betting coup in which only bookmakers' pockets suffer injury. The substitution of a horse — putting in a ringer — must be an exciting business for a cheat. The case of Francasal springs to mind, when the gang cut the telephone wires at Bath so enabling the horse to win at 10-1. The bookmakers all over England hadn't a clue as to just how much money the said gang were putting on the beast. I consider that a mere con. A game for naughty grown-ups. But the bookmakers very soon twigged what had happened and they suffered very little agony.
What strange and diverse people sport attracts. There are deeply good men like Fred Winter, Peter Walwyn and Bravefoot's trainer, Dick Hem, and then I knew a boxing promoter who had a fight- er's leg broken after he reneged on taking a dive. I knew the fighter too and he said that when it came to the crunch he just felt it was beneath his dignity. He didn't use the word dignity but I knew that was what he meant. I also knew a charming trainer in Yorkshire who used to dope his horses to win. Talk about strange substances. His tack room looked like a chemist's shop. Oh God, I suppose all this means another bloody Dick Francis novel.
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