Robin Oakley
Nothing in racing writing this year had the elegance of Lord Jenkins's report on elec- toral reform or the ingenuity of Turf clas- sics like Jack Leach's Sods I have Cut on the Turf. But if you want character delineated in a sentence or colourful personal history compressed into three paragraphs, then no one does it better than the scribes who put together Timeform's annual Racehorses of 1997. Discipline with wit.
As a man who used to take £30,000 a year out of the bookies' satchels even in the 1980s, Julian Wilson knows his racing like few others. Pity then that Some You Win (Collins Willow, £16.99) spent too much time chronicling the commentator's bedroom conquests and too little on his observations on the Turf. But he can do it in style, as when he recalls making love to a girl on a sofa after a bottle of Dom Perignon and a hefty wager on the Corona- tion Cup: 'As my horse passed the post, so did we.'
Another stranger to modesty is gambler and trainer (in that order) Barney Curley. His autobiography, Giving a Little Back (Collins Willow, £15.99), chronicles the his- tory of a one-man awkward squad, con- stantly at odds with someone and ever convinced that he is the best punter, trainer and race-reader we have seen. His gambles are worth recording. But on a desert island you would throttle him in a day.
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