End piece
Old boots
Jeffrey Bernard
I'd got almost used to there being no racing during the spell of bad weather and I was beginning to wonder what it was that I missed most about it when it wasn't on the cards. The resumption at Kempton Park last week brought it all back in every sort of a way. Firstly, let it be said that Kempton Park is a dump which is just a little better than no racing at all. I'm not altogether sure why it should be so, but I think it's probably because the place has less 'atmosphere' than any other track and the grandstand is a kind of institutionalised building half way between a hospital and a greyhound racing stadium: Anyway, there it was, damp and bleak and embracing a gravel pit and there she was in the owners' and trainers' bar — legless, speechless and mindless. She is one of the country's more successful owners. She wears angora jerseys that encase the sort of tits you haven't seen since the fifties — torpedoes — and she wears fur hats that make her loqk like a pantomime rabbit.
It's always comforting to see a bigger idiot at the races and, anyway, she's very good at pushing the boat out. As soon as I'd put my head round the door, looking for a certain trainer in fact and some information, she shouted, "Allo darling, come and have some champagne.' Now although champagne isn't a very good mount for gin and tonic I had just the one bottle to be sociable. She had a runner in the second race, said she didn't fancy it and only had £100 each way to prove it. Her husband must have been turning in his grave, poor sod. Fancy being dead after all that hard work and looking down, or up as the case may be, and seeing all that hard earned loot frittered away on horses and bubbly. Never mind. As I say, she's a lovable old boot and thinking just that I was prompted to have a small bet on Bootlaces who duly obliged at 10-1, although you could have got a little bit of 12-1 if you'd been paying attention.
Never mind, a winner's a winner and Kempton started looking better with every move. So much so that after the last race no one wanted to go home. The bar was packed until dark and until the barmaids ran out of steam. There was one fairly sensible interval in the lunacy when someone who'd spent some time in Ireland recently sang the praises of Monksfield loud and clear and said that we should all get on him for the Champion Hurdle on 15 March. Earlier in the afternoon, Richard Baerlein of the Guardian who actually knows what he's talking about, was still very sweet on the chances of another Irishman, Brown Lad, for the Gold Cup on 16 March. He was particularly sweet on him in view of the atrocious weather and we all know how Irish horses love the mud just as the navvies do. Perhaps a little each way double on the two might show a profit.
The only other interesting and sober remark I heard during the afternoon was made about Fred Winter's appalling run of luck at Cheltenham over the past few years. This chap said that it wasn't bad luck, but that Winter's horses were always 'over the top' by the time that Cheltenham came round, I'm not sure quite what to make of that. It sounds a plausible theory, on the other hand you might think Winter to be far too shrewd a nut to allow that to happen.
After all this and that, Richard Hannon drove me to Newbury in what seemed like five minutes. Racing people do tend to drive like they bet. In Newbury I stayed the night with Jimmy Lindley. Over breakfast the following morning and while looking at an old form book, I remarked to him that 1963 and 1964 had been good years for him since he'd won the 2,000 Guineas with Only for ,Life and the St Leger on Indiana. I was surprised when he said that they'd been bad years too. He told me, 'For the sake of one
and a half lengths, host ten per cent of close on £1 million,' I asked him how and he said, 'I got beaten half a length in the Derby, half a length in the Arc de Triomphe and half a length in the Grand Prix de Paris.'
What he didn't say though but proves he's a clever chap is that he rightly decided not to become a trainer when he hung the saddle up. Take a look around at the flat jockeys who turn to training. They're, by and large, useless. The jump boys do so much better.
Winter, Rimell and Mellor, to name' but three, You wouldn't have sent a gift horse to Gordon Richards and it's all very odd because he isn't exactly daft. Perhaps the jump people simply have better social con nections and so manage to get some decent animals to care for. Whatever it is though isn't or wasn't apparent at Kempton Park. If you can actually manage to exist through a Saturday without going to the races, then I advise an avoidance of that place. It really is awfulapart from her and her champagne,
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