Low life
High horses
Jeffrey Bernard
There has been a very slight improve- ment in my eyesight. The injections must be working. When I was at prep school my headmaster predicted I would go blind but I don't think he had a vitamin deficiency caused by an excess of vodka in mind when he made that gloomy forecast. I hope today's jab will enable me to read Time- form publications by the time this column is printed because I am completely in the dark at the moment about the Grand National. I also want to read the even smaller print of the Michelin Guides to help me to escape this dump.
But as for the National the horse that keeps crossing my mind is Rhinus, trained in Penrith by the dour and clever Gordon W. Richards. What a beautiful part of England are the surrounds of Penrith. My only other feeling about the race is purely negative and it is the hope that Mrs Jenny Pitman won't win it. You could say that Mrs Pitman's yard is full of extremely tall horses which she amazingly manages to get on. The idea of seeing her doing so puts me in mind of an incident years ago at the stables of the great Captain Ryan Price. A stable girl built on the lines of a battleship was trying to mount the National winner Kilmore. He watched her struggles for a couple of minutes with a wry smile on his face and then said, 'Throw your tits over and the rest will follow.' How lucky for him that Andrea Dworkin didn't witness the scene and hear the advice.
The girl that 'did' Kilmore, by the way, was so in love with him that she asked the 'Don't worry, my wife is entirely on your side.' good Captain if she could take him on holi- day with her. He was, not surprisingly, amazed at the request and asked her, 'How are you going to look after him and feed him?' She replied, 'Oh, I know of a good hotel in Bournemouth that has a lawn. He could graze there and I could watch him from my bedroom window.'
A naive but good girl she was and she loved the Captain. He was a tremendous chap, Price, but he once said one of the most conceited things I have heard a man say. I congratulated him one day on a cer- tain training feat and he said, 'Yes, when they made me they broke the mould.' Remembering him now they probably did in some ways.
And thinking of Price and the lately departed Fulke Walwyn on Grand National day I can't help wondering where have all the 'characters' gone? I remember the National in which Doug Marks ran Boom Docker, a goodish handicapper but no more. When to Doug's amazement Boom Docker was leading the field at Becher's Brook on the second circuit he turned to the owner and said with a very straight face, 'I must remember to feed that horse in future.' The owner must have been a lit- tle daft because he thought that Doug was being serious. You can tell an owner what you think about his wife or children but the horses are sacred.
Three years ago I won exactly £1,000 on the race and the National has always been a good betting race for me ever since the days of Russian Heron. I even backed Ayala who won at 66-1. That broke the pub bookmaker. But unless the eyes make an extremely rapid improvement it will only be what they call an 'interest' bet this year. All you need is to find a horse that can jump a bit and stay. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Thank God the flat is now with us and beginning to really warm up. I need another Saumarez or Dancing Brave. Everyone does.
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