Horse racing

Thank God for jump racing. The Flat has its glitz and speed and glamour, and we could not help but thrill to the sheer quality on view at Ascot’s Champions Day this year with Solow and Muhaarar strutting their stuff. But as Jack Dowdeswell, champion jump jockey in the days when it was £3 a ride and a fiver for a winner, once said of the Flat: ‘In the end it is just going down and coming back.’ With jump racing there is a story in every race — not just the thrills and spills from extra risks over obstacles but the promising novice chaser who catches your eye and who you follow until he runs three years later in the Gold Cup.

I was both delighted and unsurprised that Denis Healey made it to 98. One day in the 1970s I took him to lunch at L’Epicure. As he encouraged the waiter to pile his plate higher and higher from the hors-d’oeuvre trolley, my astonishment must have been plain because he grinned and declared: ‘Don’t worry about me — both my parents lived into their nineties.’ Another time, Mrs Oakley and I were in a dusty square in Collioure in south-west France when music began blaring from a loudspeaker to advertise a nearby circus.

‘The last owner who tried to ride his own horse got tanked,’ said the trainer, looking up at me as I perched on Darcy, knees nearly up to my chest like a pixie in the racing saddle. ‘After three circuits he threw himself off into the muck heap.’ ‘I get the picture,’ I said, running my gloved hand against Darcy’s neck. ‘Please, look after your mother,’ I whispered to her. She was perfectly calm beneath me. Because I raised her, I have always felt like I can trust this horse with my life. I was about to find out exactly what that meant. It is all very well trusting a horse you have raised from a yearling while cantering her around the woods. It is quite another when that thoroughbred has grown into a gleaming racehorse.

One of Alan Bennett’s characters once lamented, ‘We tried to set up a small anarchist community ...but people wouldn’t obey the rules.’ Perhaps he should have found a job within horse-racing. Just look at the aftermath to this year’s St Leger. I was at Bath Races that day when the authorities thoughtfully broadcast the Doncaster Classic on their big screen, and I am not writing without prejudice. Some near the Bath screen endured the undignified spectacle of a tan-trousered spectator, now well qualified for his bus pass, giving a passable imitation of a whirling dervish while shouting home Ralph Beckett’s filly Simple Verse as she flashed first past the post after a battle with Bondi Beach.

The Indian summer was still fending off the mists and mellow fruitfulness. But the autumn term was about to begin; the season’s changes would soon be manifest. So it was a day for anecdote and recapitulation; for telling amusing August tales, behind which lurked deeper meanings. A couple of friends had been to the Palio, as everyone should, once. I remember being surprised that several hours of mediaeval pageantry could hold one’s attention, which it certainly did: but more than once? No one would watch Psycho twice. I also remember being surprised that the young of Siena would spend weeks rehearsing: hard to imagine that happening here. The spectacle ends with a horse race: several circuits of the Piazza del Campo. It is excitable viewing.

For all their formidable physical presence, racehorses spook easily. A sudden gust of wind flapping a plastic sack, a page from yesterday’s Racing Post blowing across the stable yard can provoke a fit of the twitches: eyes rolling, nostrils flaring and back legs snapping out a lethal kick. Trainers need a capacity for quiet reassurance and you don’t need long at Clive Cox’s Beechdown Farm in Lambourn to be struck by its overriding calm. His charges had pounded up watered gallops dried by a breeze like a hairdryer and as Clive hosed down their sleek coats afterwards, he declared, sponge in hand, ‘This is the best part of the day, a proper de-stress.’ ‘Yes, they love it, don’t they?’ I replied — but he meant for him.

On Saturday, the Daily Mirror published a front-page photograph of the racehorse Wigmore Hall with a gun to his head, about to be put down, having broken its leg. Unsurprisingly, the paper’s decision was met with dismay and anger from the racing community. But perhaps more surprising is that the RSPCA appears to be on racing’s side. In February last year, Melissa Kite wrote in this magazine that she feared that the RSPCA might have set their sights on horse racing. But it seems promising – and strangely sensible – of the RSPCA to have spoken out against both the Mirror and the pressure group Animal Aid, which supplied the photographs.

A stint in dry dock — the ‘dry’ literally — has one advantage. There is time for lots of long reading. After many decades since the last opening of Middlemarch, I had forgotten how good it is. I had completely forgotten a delicious minor character, Mrs Cadwallader, who is a blend of Aunt Dahlia and Lady Circumference. A Marxist heedless of his safety might describe her as declining gentry. She would have rejected both words with scorn. In those days, many Church of England livings were bestowed on parsons such as Mr Cadwallader, who needed the money to preserve their social status. ‘The C of E was always better at ministering to the deserving ex-rich than to the indifferent poor’: discuss.

In this week’s ‘The Turf’ column, Robin Oakley bemoans the lack of female jockeys in horse racing. This, he claims, is a result of the sport's lack of opportunities for women: 'I have banged on for years about the lack of opportunities for women jockeys in Britain. Some horses go even better for a girl and the good women jockeys like Hayley [Turner] … are as good as the boys. The problem is that few get the chance to become that good because they are denied enough rides by owners and trainers. You have to go 67 places down the championship list to find Hayley as the leading woman rider.

Channel 4 have gone all out with their coverage of today’s Grand National (sponsored, for the first time, by Crabbie’s). As well as the race itself, the channel boasts of having devoted 20 hours of related programming. This included Jockey School – an insight into the Northern Racing College in Doncaster, and what they describe as the ‘troubled teens’ aiming to be the next AP McCoy – and How to win the Grand National, an insight into the breeding and science of race horses. And for those who complain that the National is cruel, it’s worthwhile bearing in mind that it was presented by a vet, Mark Evans.

The jewel in the crown of the Cheltenham Festival – the Gold Cup – starts this afternoon at 3.20. And, unsurprisingly, today is also one of the biggest betting days of the year, with both bookies and punters hoping to recoup their losses – or improve on their winnings. We asked some of our experts who they will be putting their money on. Peter Oborne, The Spectator’s associate editor: Willie Mullins and Ruby Walsh is the combination to follow at this festival, on which basis I will be backing On His Own at decent odds of around 20-1. Robin Oakley, writer of The Turf column: I am going for Triolo D'Alene. Alysen Miller, producer of CNN’s racing programme, Winning Post: On paper Bobs Worth is the one to beat.

The Cheltenham Festival kicks off today, and this year marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Arkle’s winning streak of 3 consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups, from 1964-1966. Here he is winning in both ’64 and ’65: Known to many racing fans simply as ‘Himself’, no other horse has even come close to beating his astounding triple in the Gold Cup. Indeed when he first ran, in 1964, many believed that his rival Mill House was invincible. But beaten he was, and Arkle went on to be thought of as at least one of the greatest – if not the greatest – steeplechaser in history. Nowadays many racehorses are household names – just think of Black Caviar, or Frankel. But Arkle was the very first to establish himself as a media star.

Here’s a tip for the gamblers among you, albeit one that you’ll have to sit on for a while. Danedream, winner of the 2011 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, has given birth to a filly foal sired by Frankel, the legendary hero of flat racing. With lineage like that, the filly already has a fair bit of weight upon her shoulders. Last week, her half sibling (the first filly foal of Frankel’s) made the front pages as she gambolled in her field days after her birth. But although the mare, Song, is well bred, she has never raced and therefore doesn’t have the same prestige as Danedream. The only other Frankel foal to have been born so far has been a colt, born on 11th January to Chrysanthemum, both of whom have been kept hidden away in Ireland.