Sporting Aspects
The Goodwood Cup
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU IN the middle distance there are rounded hills, tufted with chimps of trees and worked into patterns of green and yellow and gold by the growing crops. From these hills the land falls away into a semi-circle of meadows before rising steeply again to the white rails of the racecourse. Standing near the Paddock, on the other side of the course, you can look down on the Sussex plain, broken here and there by a graceful spire and bounded by the glinting sea. Goodwood indeed is the loveliest of all sporting settings.
The course itself lies along a rim overlooking the semi-circle of meadows below and, except in the longest race of all, when the horses disappear for a few seconds behind rising ground, you can see a race from start to finish. You do not need the loudspeaker to tell you that "They're off ! " You see the starting gates fly up for yourself. You see for yourself the group of horses, so hunched together at first that they look like one undulating, scurrying caterpillar, gradually string out as they take the long, curving incline to the straight; and though your amateur eyes may not distinguish one horse from another the loudspeaker gives the placings with un-BBC-like accuracy until you can. pick them out for yourself as the horses thunder down the straight, past where you stand on the rails, past the finishing post and up the braking rise of Trundle Hill. I do not know of another sporting ground where the spectators, however much or little they pay, can get such a good view. Even the cows can see, for they climb from the meadows to the rails and stand there, now chewing the cud, now passing rude comments out of the sides of their mouths as the snorting horses expend themselves in the hot sun.
Beyond the beauty of the setting, beyond the convenient comfort of the course, spectators on one day last week were able to enjoy as good a race as I can hope to see. This was the Goodwood Cup over two miles and five furlongs—a course so long that the horses have to start at the finish and work their way back via the start.
Before other races, the little jockeys step rather diffidently into the Paddock, touch a forelock to their owner and listen With apparent respect to whatever he chooses to say. But from the moment they are swung into their saddles they become different men. They become supreme craftsmen in sole charge. As they canter away from owners, trainers and crowds to the lonely starting post, they look masters of themselves. They are at one with their horses, man and animal preparing to Pit their speed and skill against a dozen others like them; and for them, from that moment until the race is over, there is no world beyond their horses' ears.
In the Goodwood Cup, however, jockey and horse do not at once enter this world when they leave the Paddock. There is no immediate flurry of hooves, no quick assumption of mastery. Instead they come from the Paddock, not haphazardly and on their own, but in stately single file. The horses do not Canter up the course. They walk close to the rail, and the riders, instead of standing in the stirrups and gripping the reins tight into their stomachs, sit stiffly upright in the saddle With their reins loose like a school of greying boys gingerly taking their first riding lesson. They stared straight in front While last week's good-natured crowd kept them in touch with the outside world with such pleasantries as "Anything good for this race, Charlie ? "—this to Charlie Elliott riding Souepi --or "Good afternoon, Sir 1 "—this to Sir Gordon Richards 4 riding Blarney Stone.
When the leading jockey suddenly sprang to life, peeled his horse from the line and galloped back . to the Paddock, I merely thought that he had forgotten something. I had not then realised why like the other jockeys he had walked his horse a little way up the course. Since, for this race, the Start was alongside the gate to the Paddock, there would other- wise have been no chance of a loosening canter or of parading before the Big Race.
Soon they were off and, as they passed us the first time, a horse called Colonel Bagwash was in the lead. This amused a bookie whose stand was immediately behind me. He rolled the name derisively round his tongue. I did not like his grin. When at the half-way the loudspeaker told us that Colonel Bag- wash was still in the lead I looked to see if the bookie had taken the grin off his face but he hadn't. He was looking through his glasses and offering 15 to 1 against Bagwash. Shortly afterwards two horses began to draw clear and neither of them was Bagwash.
The two horses were Souepi and Blarney Stone. They came level down the straight, they passed us level and it looked as though they were level as they passed the post with their jockeys straining as though to lift them that vital inch ahead. When the photo was developed it was found that Charlie Elliott had succeeded, succeeded in lifting Souepi three inches in front, three inches in two miles and five furlongs.
So there we had it—the setting, the course, the wonderful race. But when in the evening people said to us, "Have you had a good day ? " they were thinking about none of these things. They merely meant, "Have you won any money ? " In other sport it's the match, the game, the bout that matters. But in racing—whether it is horses or dogs—it is only the betting. It's not for the view or the day in the sun that people travel for a hundred miles by car or coach, travel in such numbers that even an hour after the last race the steep road leading towards home is still jammed with traffic. It's only for the betting. They know that punters have never yet made money out of betting, that the only way to beat a bookie is to switch horses and cut the blower and that this, besides being too much like work, is frowned on by the police. Yet they still bet. I can't understand it. True, I put money on Huddersfield Town, but that is just obstinacy, not betting. I would not back a horse for anything in the world. From now on I will not back one for ten shillings. Blast bookies and their superior smiles 1 Blast Bagwash _
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