Racing
Grooms
Jeffrey Bernard
There was nothing remarkable about last week's Newmarket Sales. I only saw one record broken and that had nothing to do with horses. The record in question was a drink one. I saw one trainer from the West Country move into the bar at 10 a.m., buy himself a large whisky and sit rooted to the spot for five hours without budging except to replenish his glass. This beats, by two hours, a record I saw set by an Irish trainer six years ago at Ballsbridge. Now I'm not sitting in judgment on the man, particularly since it took me five hours of my own time to observe, console and accompany him. I'm simply saying that it must be tremendously difficult to buy, let alone bid for, a horse if you don't see one and aren't in the ring.
But still, trainers move in strange ways. Originally, these people were known as training grooms. The title was accurate. They took orders from owners who knew as much about the business as they did and they fed and cantered the horses. It was the Hon George Lam bton who first made racehorse training a posh occupation and he did that round about the turn of the century. It was he, incidentally, who made my favourite snob remark of all time. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, he rode over regularly to Newmarket to ride work and one day on the Heath, when a gentleman work-watcher asked him what college he went to, he replied, 'I don't know. Trinity I suppose.'
Since then the training of horses has gathered about it an utterly out-of-proportion glamour only equalled by the recent and ridiculous reverence heaped on fashion photographers who are known to sleep with their models. Dear reader, I fancy you detect a note of sour grapes in my tone and if there is one there then it's because I'm fairly convinced that, with the help of a good Irish head lad, then I too could train the likes of a Nijinsky or a Sea Bird II. In fact, I'm pretty sure that a horse of the stamp of Nijinsky could be galloped up the side of a slag heap every morning and still win the Derby.
Perhaps it's not quite as simple as that ; and yes, of course, there are trainers who are tremendously skilful—generally speaking they are the ones who can train dogs to win races. Nevertheless, hanging around the sales, and that's where you meet racing characters more than on the track, you really do meet some idiots who are entrusted with thousand upon thousand pounds worth of horseflesh. It so happens that my friend the five-hour marathon drinker is an extremely good trainer, so I'm not saying that it's the booze that numbs the trainer's brain, but more the fool who's lucky enough to marry enough money to enable him to set up. There is the typical one in this group. He is young, fairly arrogant and treats stable boys the way he treated fags at school. (There's even a PRO in the racing business who's so shabby that when he was an assistant trainer he actually did beat stable staff.) The young idiot trainer is thankfully rare. He appears at the sales in the morning in jodhpurs, roll-neck jersey and anorak and he immediately loses house points for boasting about his hangover. He then spends most of the morning trying to ingratiate himself with anyone with a title and more than £10,000 in his account.
In the afternoon, at the races, he appears on the stands in a curly-brimmed, soft hat with an accent borrowed from St James's Street and then they talks horses until about 9 p.m. at which time the wheels fall off from his act. The usual form then is to go with his chums to the posh country pub that does food, where they revert to prefect days at public school again and throw bread rolls at people and scream at their lady friends, all of whom are called Cynthia or Emma.
There are three trainers like this, one racing correspondent from a posh paper and the dreaded PR. Then—and this is why the comparison's so odd—there's my boozy friend who has a struggle to make ends meet. With all his five-hour sessions in the bar, he's the heart and soul of racing. He once won one of the biggest handicaps in the calendar, only had L50 on the horse and celebrated the victory for four weeks. He treats his staff well, tells his owners they're fools if they are and by so doing loses their custom and he's ridden over the sticks himself and broken more bones than banks. He never moans when he has a bad run and he doesn't gloat when he beats his colleagues and rivals. He doesn't suffer rich fools gladly and so he's unfashionable. When he does train a winner the butcher, baker and garage-keeper appear at his backdoor within four hours. He lends impecunious stable boys money, gives handouts to anyone in the business who needs them if he can and he cries all the way to the bank. He's in his fifties now and it's unlikely that he'll ever strike it rich, but he can show' the young trainers a thing or two. Thank God for him, and for making the sales, the courses and the bars worth visiting.
The Cambridgeshire turned out to be yet another graveyard for handicap good things, Welsh Flame running as though he was carrying two tons through a bog. Back to the drawing board and with an eye on the weather we must see if we can't do better with the second leg of the autumn double, the Cesarewitch. At the moment. I'm tempted to have an ante-post tickle on Grinling Gibbons and Empress Regent.
Grinling Gibbons hasn't done much to recommend him recently, but I can't forget how impressive he was when he won right at the beginning of the season before the drought set in. I shall save some of the Ivanjica money for him and pray that he comes back to form. The weather makes tipping hazardous at the moment, but if Aspect and The Czar run at York on Saturday they should be worth supporting.
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