The turf
Feeling cursed
Robin Oakley
There were those who thought that the momentary grimace which passed across the Queen's face during the opening cere- monies of this year's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Edin- burgh might have had something to do with the curious synthesised version of the National Anthem played. I suspect I know better. It was at virtually the same time that Her Majesty's home-bred, nine-year-old bay gelding Whitechapel, ridden by Richard Quinn and trained by Lord Hunt- ingdon, was winning the Vodaphone Hand- icap at Newbury, and she was probably wishing, just for a moment, that she could have been elsewhere. Mind you, one's sym- pathies extend only so far. If she did let on to any of those in the Commonwealth media whom she was earlier entertaining to cake, coffee and shortbread at the Palace of Holyroodhouse that she had a good thing going on that day's Newbury card, then I was not among those privileged.
I could have done with one to set me up before what proved to be an expensive weekend. I always take note of what Olivier Peslier comes over to ride on a Saturday, and of his rides at Doncaster I looked long and hard at Sean Woods's Little Indian in the Racing Post trophy, Tim Easterby's Jo Mell in the 7f Racing Post Conditions Stakes, Rudi's Pet in the 5f sprint and Brian Meehan's Cloudberry in the Charles Sidney Mercedes Benz Doncaster Stakes. I plunged heavily on Little Indian, which I knew from visiting his stable to be the apple of Sean Woods's eye, and backed Cloudberry substantially because she was wearing blinkers for the first time. I had a little bit on Jo Mell and, on the basis that even a treble for Peslier on such a hotly contested card would be pushing my luck and that Rudi's Pet had twice this season carried my money unsuccessfully, I struck off the Hannon colt. Jo Mell won at 11-8, Cloudberry came nowhere. Little Indian ran without sparkle and finished last and Rudi's Pet, of course, stormed home at 20- 1. Sometimes you just feel cursed.
Richard Hannon Junior said of the French jockey after Rudi's Pet's success, `He doesn't have to speak much English when they win!' True enough. M. Peslier's English, in fact, is not that bad. But I once learned from Lord Healey that when your repertoire in a foreign language is restrict- ed to a few phrases it can be dangerous. A few of us enjoyed a drink with him at the Chesterfield by-election years ago as he recovered from the effort of coming up to support Tony Benn. One journo inquired if it was true that he spoke half a dozen lan- guages. 'Not quite,' said Denis. He spoke, I think he said, French, German and Italian. But then after his past services to his party's international department he also had a few phrases memorised in such lan- guages as Czech, Bulgarian and Serbo- Croat. 'I can do "Darling, you have beautiful eyes and I would like to have a drink with you" and "Gentlemen, I bring you fraternal greetings from the British Labour Party and I wish you a successful Congress".' The only trouble, he added, came when you got the two mixed up ...
With other duties at the Edinburgh CHOGM it was a paper racing weekend for me. And with Christmas looming I can recommend a new racing book. The Racing Man's Bedside Book by Julian Bedford (Colt Books, £18.95) contains some pre- dictable old favourites, with chunks from Jack Leach, Damon Runyon, Graham Greene's Brighton Rock and Ernest Hem- ingway. But there are also some passages which don't often show up in the racing anthologies. A teenage Emile Zola fan, I had forgotten all about Nana's day out at Longchamp. He includes a truly touching Philip Larkin poem about former champi- ons out to grass, and I had never before encountered Disraeli's report to Queen Victoria about a Berlin conversation with Bismarck in which the German predicted that there would never be socialism in Britain while its horseracing thrived. 'You are safe as long as the people are devoted to racing. Here a gentleman cannot ride down the street without 20 persons saying, "Why has that fellow a horse and I have not one." In England the more horses a nobleman has the more popular he is. So long as the British are devoted to racing, socialism has no chance with you.'
All I could recall of the 1952 Derby was Charlie Smirke's famous cry of 'What did I Tulyar?' as he rode into the winner's enclo- sure. But there is an intriguing passage from trainer Marcus Marsh in Julian Bed- ford's collection about the tactics which won Smirke the race, and about the diffi- culties of training for Aly Khan. The book is too Newmarket-centred and how can any modern racing anthology worthy of the name fail to include anything by John Oak- sey? But it is an attractive selection worth room in any racing man's stocking, not least for its inclusion of some of Jeffrey Bernard's best pieces, including the tale of the twittish Hooray Henry young trainer, the type who throws bread rolls at dinner and only knows girls called Arabella or Felicity, who did his money on a horse which Lester Piggott rode for him and who declared pompously, 'That's it, Lester, you'll never ride for me again.' Dry as you like, Lester replied, 'Oh well, I'd better hang up my boots then, hadn't I?'
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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