Racing
Confederacy
Jeffrey Bernard
The thing that delights me most about racecourse con-men is their method of approach. One man at Kempton Park last Saturday who tried to chat me up had a good new one for openers. I'm on the brink of something great,' he said to me. 'Count me out,' I said. I liked that ; the use of the words 'brink' and 'great.' It made such a nice change from that stale approach that you should always beware of which is, 'I'll tell you what I'll do with you.' That's a dead giveaway, since the word 'do' lets you know straightaway that you're going to be used in some way to their advantage.
Nevertheless, it's sad that the straighter racing gets the less characters you see about. I wish I'd seen the dreaded chalk-and-water men at the dogs in the old days. These were a nasty bunch of strong-arm men who wandered in and out of the bookmakers' pitches carrying a bucket of water and an old cloth. They offered to wipe the bookmakers' boards after each race for a halfcrown. If the offer wasn't accepted the bookmaker would get duffed up.
Apart from the fellow who told me he was on the brink of something great, the crowd at Kempton who turned up for the Yellow Pages Pattern Chase and Hurdle were an amiable bunch of alfresco boozers. went to the meeting with a Soho publican called Charlie Stevenson who used to be a tic-tac man up North before he decided to make a• profession out of his hobby. In between no less than eight bottles of Bollinger he managed to win £750, which is a good illustration of keeping your head when all about you are losing their all.
An appalling bit of vanity stopped me from backing the 20-1 winner Don't Hesitate. And I mean sheer vanity. I fancied the horse to beat Pendil in receipt of thirty-one pounds, and I approached my man on the rails with the intention of sticking a tenner on it. Now it frequently happens, when I'm transacting my tiny business on the rails, that the bookmakers go in for a bit of banter at my expense. They shout out things like, 'Hey Charlie, guess what Jeff's backed? He must be mad.' On Saturday, thanks to Mr Stevenson's Bollinger, I was taking myself a touch too seriously and I didn't want a load of mickey-taking on the lines of 'The madman's at it again Bill. He's gone and backed Don't Hesitate.' So, idiot that I am, I switched to Brown Admiral and lost my tenner instead of winning £200.
Oh, well. It was still one of the best days' racing I've had for an age. There was one hell of a tip for the last winner, Mourndyke. As so often happens in this game someone must have done too much talking. I'd heard from an inside source three days previously that it was going to be off and we thought we'd get something in the region of 5-1, with luck maybe 11-2, on the day. To my irritation, when I got to Kempton, the world and his wife seemed to know about Mourndyke. According to the Sporting, Life betting report in Monday's edition, 'After isolated offers of 4-1 were quickly taken, Mourndyke was heavily laid from 3-1 to 9-4 (including two bets of £2000—£800 and £2250£1000).' As for the race, Mourndyke drew clear approaching the last flight and won comfortably.
It seems that as time goes by it gets harder and harder to keep good things dark. You can't imagine a leak from an organisation like the 'Druids Lodge Confederacy' or 'the Netheravon Syndicate' as it was sometimes called in the old days. This was a group of extremely clever and very heavy betting owners that was generally thought to have been founded by Mr A. P. Cunliffe who won the Derby in 1913 with Aboyeur. The brains behind the organisation was probably Captain Wilfred Purefoy, one of the hardest nuts ever seen on the Turf, and the other members were Mr J. H. Peard, Captain Frank Forester and Mr E. A. Wigan. Cunliffe died in 1942. He was the poorest of the confederacy and he left £150,000. When Hackler's Pride won the Cambridgeshire in 1903 and again in 1904, they won something in the region of a quarter of a million.
It's an old adage that no man will commit suicide when he's holding an ante-post voucher. This makes it almost certain that shall live at least until Grand National day, 2 April. In a mad moment in Compton tvvo weeks ago I struck a £22 bet : a £1 each way yankee on the next four big betting races. I have Dramatist at 9-1 for the Champion Hurdle, Border Incident at 16-1 for the Gold Cup, Rhodomantade at 16-1 for the Lincoln and Gay Vulgan at 16-1 for the Grand National. Both Dramatist and Border Incident have won since I struck the bet and both have had their odds trimmed. But hear Border Incident is reported to be suffering from sore shins which is worrying for all concerned.
The bookmaker in Compton, Steve Fisher, said he's going to double the bet and come in with me since it's not worth his while holding it. So he's made it a £2 each way yankee and he's put it on with one of the big firms. Without bothering to think about it or work it out I asked him why wasn't it worth his while ? He whipped out a pencil and paper, made some rapid calculations and said, 'Well, your share will come to £52,500 if they all oblige.' D'you know, if they do all oblige, I think I might go quite seriously stark, raving mad. That is to say I will be seen sitting in pubs in my solitary way grinning and laughing oat loud. Eventually I suppose they'llcart meat
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