Racing
First time out
Jeffrey Bernard
It's highly unlikely that any of you will have noticed the 2.15 last Monday °t Wolverhampton, the Lichfield Maidt Fillies' Stakes, run over five furlongs, bUt saw the debut of my horse Deciduous. Tali.' Thomas rode her, she was very badly avig' made up quite a lot of ground, but theft when Thomas realised she was never go!rig to win, he didn't knock her about and give her a hard race. Those are the bare facts.; Dear Oh Lord, what a lot more there is WI when you're personally involved. I travelled up to the course from Eustfli with an extremely hard nut, physically piat is, of a bookmaker called Mr Allen wit°. warned me to expect nothing of Deciduon! — as if! didn't already know — and during the journey, discussing people who've g°°„t down the drain via the Turf, he came °,:e with what, for me, was the saying of t", week. 'Yes,' he said, this racing game tante'
bleedin' tigers'. Quite so.
It was the first time I've been to Wolverhampton for six years and I'd forgotten just how underrated a track it is. Forget the town, the track is very worthwhile going to if ever you have the bad luck to be in that part of the world. There's a good restaurant in the Members where you can sit and eat and drink and see every yard of the running, and they've also got a new seafood bar.
As soon as I got to the track I walked over the course to see Deciduous being saddled UP. She was walking around the tiny Paddock with the others, awaiting their various trainers, and she looked really sweet. There's something very touching about looking at two-year-olds who've never been out. You know they don't really know what it's all about and when you're personally "Ilvolved you realise what a hell of a thing it Is: You wonder how on earth they must feel when they see that seemingly endless stretch of gallop in front of them from the stalls. They're just big babies. Deciduous looked in very good nick and the only fault You could find was that she needs a bit more time and a bit more muscle on her arse, Which is where it counts and where the Propulsion comes from. I'd been pretty sure from the day before that she wasn't going to win, since Doug Marks had written to me from Lambourn the week before warning me that on the evidence of home gallops she didn't like soft gc)ing. Her dainty feet got stuck in too far. But then, if she had won and I hadn't had a Penny on her, I would have been furious. In toe end, I made a sort of compromise, not ,too little and certainly not too much, and I !lad a fiver each way. In the parade ring she certainly wasn't put to shame by any of the other runners. By the time the jockeys Walked in to mount the adrenalin was fairly bubbling and here was one of my fantasies at last about to become reality. In fact it was a tremendous let-down. I thought Taffy Thomas would walk up to us, tug his torelock and address me as 'Sir', instead of w_hich he walked over and said, 'Hallo, Jeff. tlow's it all going on then?' I'd forgotten while I'd fantasised that I ,used to get legless six years ago in Taffy's the White Lion in Newmarket. Any'Y, Doug Marks told Thomas, Win if you ean' and I went into the Ring to place my bet while they cantered down to the start. It came as something of a shock to me when I saw that Deciduous had opened at as little 4-1 and was third favourite. Did someone row something that the connections ual.dn't? In fact, what the hell was going on? I Tdn't have to wait long to find out. She tarted drifting and ended up being returned at 10-1. From the off I knew she was going to get stiaffed since she'd come out of the stalls so (3w .._1Y, but it was some consolation to see ip colours making some sort of headway as sta,eY came to the halfway stage. At the death _a.e finished eighth of the fifteen runners "Ytth Thomas sitting pretty quietly on her.
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