Racing
Champagne
Jeffrey Bernard
A day at the races can be nearly made or broken by the race train. When I first started going to the more distant courses from London some ten years ago [looked forward to those journeys almost as much as I looked forward to the racing itself. Traditionally, the restaurant car to Salisbury, for example, would be taken over by bookmakers, their workmen—the tic-tac men, clerks, runners etc,—the spivs and the touts. Out would come the cards for kaluki or gin rummy, and out would come the most fantastic yarns of villainy and chicanery that would keep me spellbound and laughing for most of the journey. On the return journeys, the generosity of the bookmakers would be. on occasions, stupendous.
At one time, the race trains to and from York during the August meeting were, I think, the only trains on British Rail to carry champagne. They didn't carry it for long. After Peterborough, the passengers carried it. Brighton races are almost worth going to for the journey alone and I once came back from Chepstow races on a train that was something like a night club travelling at 80 mph. But it's not all fun. British Rail should be ashamed of the service to and from Lingfield Park and if ever you miss the first of the two trains that are the specials to Newbury, you might just as well forget it. I did just that last Saturday and found myself going to Newbury on a nasty, buffetless, corridoorless pay-train of the sort British Rail lay on to give you an inkling of what it must have been like to have been a Jew in Germany a few years ago.
Anyway, once at Newbury the nasty taste of the journey didn't in fact last very long. I kicked off with 10-1 winner Destino and there's no better way of starting a day. The winner of the first race always gives you the necessary confidence as well as the enemy's money to play around with. Then when Oats got beaten a head and I lost only a tenth of my w innings I was most sorry since I'd mentioned it with some confidence in last week's Spectator. It's that vanity again and can you imagine having to tip a horse in every race every day ? It's most unfair. And to prove it, Richard Baerlein of the Guardian, who's long ago forgotten more about racing than most of us will ever know, is bottom of the Sporting Life Naps Table. But as for Oats. I spoke to trainer Peter Walwyn after the race and he seemed pleased enough with the animal s performance. He said he'd go much better in the St Leger and with a month more to work on the horse, he's happy enough. Maybe the money's only lent. Maybe. The winner Swell Fellow start ed at 16-1 and I feel rather bad about that one. Ten minutes before the off I was talking to an ex-colleague, Alan Jamieson, who was on the Sun, when he turned to me and said, 'Shall I put a tenner on Swell Fellow or buy a bottle of Bollinger ?"Buy the Bollinger,' I told him, 'Swell Fellow's got no bloody chance.' Yes, well people shouldn't listen to people, should they?
It was at that point that Roger Mortimer —the author, incidentally, of the best book on racing, The History of the Derby Stakes— appeared at the bar and gave me a short but fascinating lecture on matters of stallions covering mares. His theory, an interesting one and one that might connect with humans possibly, is that a stallion needs to be something of a shit to be good at stud. He told me that the great racehorse The Tetrarch was very sweet-natured and found sex a most fearful bore. He only got 120 foals, eighty of which won. When he covered a mare, apparently they had to keep dead quiet because if he heard someone sawing a piece of wood or drop a bucket, it put him right off. St Simon, on the other hand, who was a bit of a bastard and who would eat a groom for breakfast, got 550 foals. Mr Mortimer was leading up to his opinion that Brigadier Gerard would turn out to be a better sire than Mill Reef for those very reasons. It reminds me of that great stallion Hyperion, who had an odd idiosyncrasy for a horse. As a general rule, animals don't take all that much in that isn't immediate, but Hyperion, they say, in his old age, was fascinated by aeroplanes and if one flew overhead while he was covering a mare, he'd stop and follow it around with his head and eyes until it was out of sight.
But back to the races. The day continued well enough and in the fifth race Princess of Verona obliged at 3-1. The last race was won by a rather flashy-looking individual called Oriental Rocket, but the second horse, another out of the Henry Cecil yard and called Badajos, should pick up a race soon. He's a nice-looking Royal Palace colt out of Lerida and I'll thank Mr Cecil not to give me patronising whacks over the head with his race card when we say farewell in future.
Most disappointing in recent excursions to the races recently have been the ladies. Now it's a fairly well-known fact that racing doesn't attract many grey people. Racing folk tend to be either the salt and mustard of the earth or they're utterly ghastly. But there used to be some wonderful-looking women at the race track. Where are they now ? Discussing this serious shortage with a trainer at Newbury I was fascinated by the way—and it's simply a habit and not an insult—he refers to them as though they were horses. I have observed this before though, come to think of it. I once asked Fred Winter what he thought of a certain trainer's mistress and he said, 'Oh, she's very moderate.' The trainer I spoke to on Saturday described one woman there as being 'of little account'. Well, he that as it may, I am now winding up this week's column to go and buy a drink for a woman whom Mr Winter and his colleagues would describe as 'Promising, useful, scope:
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