The Little Book of Horse Racing E-Book

Anne Holland

• Herausgeber: THP Ireland
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 197

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Do you know what the oldest horse race in Britain is, where the term 'gee-gee' comes from, or who is credited with bringing racing to Ascot? Fact-packed but light-hearted in style, this reliable reference book and quirky guide reveals little-known facts, details of classic races, famous riders, racing records, amusing anecdotes and criminal goings-on. A compendium of the fascinating, strange and entertaining, The Little Book of Horse Racing can be dipped into time and time again to reveal something new about this ancient sport.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

1. Horse Racing comes to Britain

2. Influential Stallions

3. Owning a Racehorse

4. Racecourses

5. One-off Historical Races and Lady Jockeys

6. Betting

7. Crime

8. Jockeys down the Centuries

9. Racing Terminology

10. Racehorse Transport through the Ages

11. Miscellaneous

12. Literature

13. Top Racehorses

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

And my special thanks to: Jane Bakowski, Kent and Sussex Courier; Peter McNeile; Nigel Payne, Aintree Press Officer; Christopher Simpson; Jeremy James; Tom Walshe and John Warden.

www.aintree.co.uk

www.awchampionships.co.uk

www.bbc.co.uk/history

www.bettingbeauty.com/the-rise-and-rise-of-female-jockeys/

www.bettingsites.co.uk

www.bookiesindex.com

www.dailymail.co.uk

www.horseracinghistory.co.uk

www.independent.ie

www.jockey-club-estates.co.uk/newmarket-training-grounds/history

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-ten-betting-scandals-569158

www.newmarketracecourses.co.uk/

www.newzealand.govt.nz

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

www.racerate.com/

http://theapprenticejockey.blogspot.ie/2011/12/druids-lodge.html

www.thefreelibrary.com/

www.telegraph.co.uk

http://en.wikipedia.org/

www.zani.co.uk/sport

1

HORSE RACING COMES TO BRITAIN

Netherby, Yorkshire c.AD 210 – the Romans have been in occupation in parts of Britain for nearly 170 years; they have redesigned a number of major towns along a street grid format with forums (market squares), basilicas (assembly rooms), temples, theatres, bathhouses, amphitheatres, shopping malls and hotels – and many of the former Celtic warriors and druids who now run these towns for the Romans have ‘gentrified’ themselves and live in the fine houses.

Now, in c.AD 210, horse racing is coming to a Yorkshire village called Netherby near Harrogate. Soon most of Yorkshire will reverberate to the poundings of racing hooves as the sport spreads. The new gentry are keen to make their mark, and before long they vie with each other to donate cash prizes, an early form of sponsorship, believing their social status will improve as a result.

Today Yorkshire remains one of the most popular racing locations with no less than nine racecourses, at Beverley, Catterick, Doncaster, Pontefract, Redcar, Ripon, Thirsk, Weatherby and York. There is also a prestigious training centre near Middleham.

FOUL RIDING

War was declared in the Arab world in the sixth century AD over an alleged incident of foul riding. The Prophet Mohammed intervened to end it a few decades later by drawing up race rules, regulating the ages of horses, the size of fields, and the distances.

It was to be a 1,000 or so years later, in 1619, that England introduced formal rules for horse racing covering, among other things, foul play and disqualifications. Other strictures were also brought in.

Matters became better regulated with the founding of the Jockey Club in 1750, and it remained the sole arbiter of the sport until 2006 when the regulatory side was taken over by the Horse Racing Authority (HRA). The HRA merged with the Horseracing Regulatory Authority to form the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) in 2007.

Today, worldwide racing authorities keep an eagle eye on foul riding and foul play of all descriptions, with rigid penalties right up to lifetime bans to deter would-be offenders.

THE SPORT OF KINGS

In the tenth century AD ‘running horses’ were sent by Hugh, founder of the Royal House of Capet, as a present to Alfred the Great’s grandson King Athelstan (reigned AD 925–939, the first king of all England). Hugh wanted to marry the King’s sister Ethelswitha. The King married off four of his half-sisters to various rulers of western Europe, so Hugh’s attentions may not have gone amiss.

Henry II (1154–1189) described races at ‘Smoothfield’ (Smithfield, London) in which ‘jockies inspired with thoughts of applause and in the hope of victory, clap spurs to the willing horses, brandish their whips and cheer them with their cries’.

Couplets penned during the reign of Richard I (1189–1199) refer to horse races taking place.

Edward III (1327–77) is said to have bought ‘running horses’ for £13 6s 8d each and was given two by the King of Navarre. Shortly before his death in 1377, his grandson, who was about to become Richard II (1377–99), raced against the Earl of Arundel.

By the time of Henry VII (1485–1509) a royal stud was well established.

Henry VIII (1509–47) kept a training establishment at Greenwich and a stud at Eltham.

James I (1603–25) discovered ground ideal for hawking and coursing by the New Market near Exning and this became Newmarket racecourse. He built a grandstand and ran some of his own horses; he was followed by Charles I (1625–49) and Charles II (1660–85) who really established Newmarket as a racing venue in the seventeenth century.

Spring and autumn meetings were held at Newmarket around the start of Charles I’s reign, and the first Gold Cup was competed for there in 1634.

The burgeoning sport was banned by Oliver Cromwell but Charles II not only restored it but was a keen participant. It was he who introduced the Newmarket Town Plate in 1664, and wrote the rules for it himself (see page 51).

DID YOU KNOW?

William Hill opened a book on a horse race in Ireland in 1690; at least one of the three contestants fought in the Battle of the Boyne a couple of months later.

The winner of the 1880 Derby, Bend Or, was really a horse called Tadcaster. The long-held rumour was proved to be correct in the 2010s by DNA testing.

In 1711 Queen Anne (1702–14) founded Ascot. One of George II’s sons, the Duke of Cumberland, bred the two highly influential stallions, Herod and Eclipse, and the future George IV, as Prince of Wales, won the 1788 Derby with Sir Thomas.

The sport continued to flourish throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was recorded in James Rice’s History of the British Turf in 1879 that ‘for some two hundred years the pursuit of horse racing has been attractive to more of our countrymen than any other outdoor pastime’.

Queen Victoria maintained the Royal Stud at Hampton Court and her son, the future Edward VII, was a keen and very successful racing aficionado. He won eight Classics and a Grand National. He won the Derby three times, with Persimmon in 1896, Minoru in 1909, and Diamond Jubilee in 1900 in which year he also won the 2,000 Guineas and the St Leger, making him the only royal winner of the Triple Crown. It was some year for the prince because his Ambush II also won the Grand National. George V also won one Classic, the 1,000 Guineas with Scuttle in 1928; infamously his colt Amner was brought down in the 1913 Derby when suffragette Emily Davidson ran out in front of him; she died from her injuries. George V’s son, George VI, won four Second World War substitute Classics with Big Game and Sun Chariot (see Sir Gordon Richards, page 80).

Queen Elizabeth II has been a lifelong racing supporter and knowledgeable breeder. Her first winner was in joint ownership with her mother, the Queen Mother, with Monaveen in the Chichester Chase at Fontwell Park, Sussex.

But flat racing became her greater interest and her first winner as sole owner was Choir Boy in a handicap at Newmarket in 1952. She has won more than 1,600 races and four of the five Classics, but the Derby has eluded her. Aureole was second in 1953 and Carlton House was third in 2011. Her Estimate won the 2013 Ascot Gold Cup, which resulted in her being voted Racehorse Owner of the Year by the Racehorse Owners Association.

Two of her children, heir to the throne Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, have both not only owned but also ridden racehorses on the track. Prince Charles made his debut in the Madhatter’s Charity flat race at Plumpton, Sussex, and finished second to TV racing commentator Derek ‘Tommo’ Thompson.

Princess Anne rode out for David ‘the Duke’ Nicholson in Gloucestershire. Her first win came on the flat at Redcar on 5 August 1986 and she also raced over fences with success.

It is no wonder, therefore, that, from the earliest times, horse racing became known as the Sport of Kings.

RaCING HUmOUr

An apprentice was summoned to appear before the stewards at Salisbury, accused of not trying on a horse. The stewards asked him what the trainer’s instructions had been to him before the race.

‘To wait, sir.’

‘What do you mean, to wait?’

‘To wait for Kempton next Wednesday, sir.’

THE FIRST STEEPLECHASE

In 1752 two keen hunting Irishmen in County Cork each boasted that their horse was better than the other’s. They decided to prove who was correct by racing from St John’s church, Buttevant, to the distant steeple of St Mary’s church, Doneraile, some 5 miles away. This would be no ordinary flat race, but they would negotiate whatever obstacles confronted them as they made their way from point to point. They wagered a cask of wine on the outcome.

Thus were born the joined-at-the-hip sports of steeplechasing and its amateur twin point-to-pointing.

On the appointed day many people congregated to witness the race between Cornelius O’Callaghan and Edmund Blake as they set off on what was to prove a momentous occasion. Starting with their backs to St John’s church, they set off down the hill and over the River Awbeg, probably jumping fallen logs. They galloped up the hill on the far side where they reached a boreen, a sunken lane; they jumped off the bank into it, then immediately leapt up the bank on the far side to get out of it. Here the Cahrimee opened up into open farmland and more boreens, skirting boggy ground and on to a number of stone walls. They crossed another loop in the river, the church of St Mary’s now plainly visible, ducked under willows, crashed through thick undergrowth and spurred their mounts on to the end.

Posterity does not record which of the two gentlemen won, yet somehow that is fitting, for they deserve to share equally the role they played in the birth of steeplechasing.

THE GRAND NATIONAL

Eighty-seven years after that first steeplechase the inaugural Grand National took place at Aintree, and in 2014 the most famous steeplechase in the world had a prize fund of £1 million – a far cry from the cask of wine that was competed for by Messrs Blake and O’Calleghan in 1752. Victory in 2014 went to Pineau De Re. The first winner, in 1839, was the appropriately named Lottery, for the race has always had an element of chance about it, although it only became a handicap in 1843.

It did not always have only large, fearsome fences. In the early years, most of the jumps were little 2ft banks topped with a bit of gorse and faced by a small ditch. The last two fences were ordinary sheep hurdles, but there were three – a 5ft stone wall in front of the stands, Brook Number One and Brook Number Two – that were huge. The first brook was dammed, making the water 8ft wide with a 3ft 6in timber paling in front of it, jumped out of deep plough.

It was into this that one Captain Martin Becher fell in the very first running of the race, immortalising the obstacle with his name. The second big brook, for the record, was the one known today as Valentine’s.

For its first 100 years the Grand National was the pinnacle of the steeplechasing calendar and the one race all owners aspired to win. However, once the Cheltenham Gold Cup was introduced in 1924 that soon took over the mantle for top honours, because it is run on a level playing field, i.e. all horses carry the same weight, thereby giving them an equal chance of winning and decreasing the chance of luck, good or bad, playing a part in the result. The Grand National, however, remains the world’s most famous race, and more bets are probably wagered on it than any other.

Right from the start there were those that decried it, from the very first race when a horse called Dictator died.

Much has been done over the years to modify the fences, beginning in 1841, its third running, when the 5ft high stone wall in front of the stands was removed and replaced by the water jump 10ft wide and 3ft deep, with a thorn fence on the take off side.

The wall found its way back in 1843 but only for one year, after which it was gone for good, even though its height had been reduced to 4ft and was padded with turf on top. It is the water jump that remains today as the spectacle right in front of the stands. The water is 9ft 6in wide and 6in deep, faced by birch that stands 2ft 9in high. The shallow water is another safety feature, with a gentle slope to the far side turf instead of a lip; this prevents a horse tripping up if it lands just short of clearing the water.

Over the first 100 years the fences became uniformly big. The bases were made from upright stakes and growing thorn until 2013, and they are dressed with spruce, making them look different to the usual birch fences which are faced with gorse – or these days sometimes green plastic instead. From 2014 the inside of all the fences are now made from plastic and birch, making them more pliable and ‘softer’.

The early National fences were very upright, making it difficult for a horse to judge its take off. A number of them have a drop on landing, notably Becher’s Brook, the Canal Turn is set at a right-angle, probably unique in steeplechasing. The Chair is the biggest fence of all, standing at 5ft 3in high with a 6ft wide open ditch in front of it. The chair has seen just three equine fatalities since 1839, and the death of jockey Joseph Wynne is 1862. It is also the fence at which jockey Paddy Farrell broke his back and was paralysed in 1966 which, along with a similar injury to Tim Brookshaw soon afterwards, led to the founding of the Injured Jockeys Fund.

The most famous Aintree fence is Becher’s Brook, not for its height, but for the big drop on landing (that is, the ground is considerably lower on the landing side than on take off.) Originally the drop was some 3ft on the inside, and a few inches less on the outside leading the inside to be called ‘the brave man’s route’. To have a horse soar over such a fence is truly like flying; but if it makes a mistake the drop will catch him out and he may well fall. Unfortunately, the landing sloped back towards the brook itself and this proved an added hazard for a fallen horse.

The first modification to Becher’s Brook came in 1954, when the drop was reduced but major changes were made for the 1999 running after a particularly unfortunate mishap the previous year when a fallen horse slipped back into the brook and drowned; it had broken its shoulder so it would have been humanely put down anyway.

After this, the sharply sloped ground leading into the brook on the landing side was levelled off significantly. The brook itself was raised by 30in to include only an inch of water and the outside running rails were splayed out to allow more room for horses landing wide.

DID YOU KNOW?

The Derby could have been called the Bunbury – the name was decided on the toss of a coin. Lord (Charles) Bunbury lost, but got the last laugh because his horse Diomed won the 1780 inaugural running.

The skeleton of Eclipse is on permanent display in the National Horse Racing Museum (loaned from the Royal Veterinary College).

The skeleton of Arkle was dug up from its resting place to be displayed at the Horse Racing Museum at the Irish National Stud in County Kildare.

After a big pile-up at the fence in 2004, where some horses again slipped back into the by then almost dry brook, 2005 saw the brook completely re-modelled and covered in rubber matting. The first major change to the fences in general came in 1961 when ‘skirts’ were added on the take-off side; the size of the fences remained unchanged but the sloped skirt on the lower half of the fence gave horses a ground line.

In 2012, following increased pressure from various groups, the most substantial alterations to date were made. The drop at Becher’s Brook was reduced by between 4 and 5in. This left the drop about 10in on the inside of the course and 6in on the outer – a far cry from the 3ft drop of a century before.

In addition the landing side of the first fence was levelled to remove minor contours, and the height of the fourth fence was reduced by 2in to 4ft 10in. All the take-off boards were increased in height to 14in.

In 2014 no horses were seriously injured for the second year in a row. Press Officer Nigel Payne said this was a great tribute to the sophisticated safety measures introduced.

2

INFLUENTIAL STALLIONS

Racing in Britain prior to the end of the seventeenth/early eighteenth century was between ‘common’ horses, bred to fight in war, to work on the soil or to pull carriages. It was the introduction of three particular Middle Eastern stallions, who were built more lightly and were faster, to breed with the English mares that began the foundation of the thoroughbred racehorse as we know it today. The three were the Byerley Turk, himself a warhorse, the Godolphin Arabian and the Darley Arabian.

Many Arabian horses, and Turkish horses, too, were imported to England between 1660 and 1750, but it is the direct descendants of the three foundation stallions that contributed the most to the breed through three of their descendants: Herod (The Byerley Turk), Eclipse (The Darley Arabian), and Matchem (The Godolphin Arabian, sometimes called Barb).

BYERLEY TURK

Standing at least 16 hands high, the Byerley Turk was not only bigger than the two Arabians that were to follow him into thoroughbred history a few years later, but he would also have been taller and finer than most English horses of the time. Unlike the Godolphin (14.1½ hands high), and Darley (15 hands high) Arabians he had a long back, plenty of bone and masses of heart room (as did both Eclipse and Arkle in later years). Above his elegant neck was a beautiful head with long ears, big eyes, and a commanding ‘look at me’ presence.

A deciding battle between the Protestant Williamites and the Catholic Jacobeans was to be fought on the banks of the Boyne at Oldbridge, near Drogheda, in July 1690.

Two years earlier, Byerley, aged 28, had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and by that 1690 date of destiny he would have known how good the Turkish horse beneath him was. He may have spent most of 1689 in Ulster, and possibly took part in the siege of Carrickfergus Castle.

A year later, in March, he stopped off in Downpatrick, and while there he and two other officers decided to race their horses against each other. It could have been just another race between officers but for two things: one of the participants, the Byerley Turk, would be remembered for posterity; and King William was to lend his name – and money – to it.

The Byerley Turk was already well known in Hounslow Barracks and Whitehall Palace stables and was considered something of a mascot in England.

It is believed that Lt-Col Byerley and his opponents, possibly Col Heyford’s Barb (Royal Dragoons) and Major Hamilton’s borrowed cob (20th Lancashire Fusiliers), started their race from the crossroads outside the Flying Horse pub, Downpatrick. Soldiers from all three regiments, having heard of the event, went absent without leave to support and wager on their respective leaders; a man called William Hill, believed to be the forebear of he whose betting shops are a household name today – opened up a book.

The contestants were not allowed to whip or unhorse or use swords against each other. Spectators were not allowed to throw missiles at them, and the race was to be run on a clean circuit that the contestants had walked in advance; it was probably in the region of 3 miles. One source puts Col Heyford’s Barb as the winner and while that may be more reliable there is another story of the race that has come down the centuries as told by the Governor of Hillsborough Castle to King William and unearthed by Jeremy James, author of The Byerley Turk. It was said that the Byerley Turk arrived at the start awash with sweat, reared high into the air when the starting pistol shot and promptly galloped off in the wrong direction, to the dismay of his 6th Dragoon supporters. By the time he got back on the right course, his rivals were half a league, about 1½ miles, ahead, as they set off in what appeared to be vain pursuit.

Yet as the race neared its end it was as if the Byerley Turk sprouted wings; suddenly he galloped past the cob and was closing in on Col Heyford’s Barb, and according to some reports he got up to win in the last stride.

It was after hearing this story, and learning that the race was short of a sponsor, that King William endowed it with £100 in perpetuity, and declared that the King’s Plate should be raced for annually. It still is, and is usually run over 1 mile 5 furlongs at Down Royal.

The magnificent Byerley Turk died in 1714, at the age of 25, and is buried at Goldsborough Hall, Yorkshire.

DID YOU KNOW?

The Oaks and then the Derby came about following the success of the St Leger on Town Moor, Doncaster, organised by Anthony St Leger and first run in 1776. It allowed three year olds to compete for the first time and, judging it to be a success, a group of friends dining at Lord Derby’s Epsom home, The Oaks, decided to hold a similar race for fillies. The new race was named after Lord Derby’s home and it was his filly, Bridget, who won the inaugural running of The Oaks in 1799. This was also deemed a success, and so the following year, 1780, Lord Derby and Lord Bunbury introduced a similar event for colts or fillies, and that was when they tossed a coin to decide on its name.

GODOLPHIN ARABIAN

The Godolphin Arabian (or Barb) was born in Yemen, exported to Tunis and from there was sent as a gift to King Louis XV of France. It seems, however, that he might have pulled a cart through the Paris streets before one Edward Coke bought him for £3 and brought him to England. Coke died aged 32, and the horse passed to Francis, second Earl of Godolphin.

To begin with, because he was considered too small, he was employed as a ‘teaser’ at stud – testing to see if a mare was ready, and if she was, she was immediately taken off to the intended stallion. But a mare called Roxanna rejected the main man, so the Godolphin Arabian was given his chance and, far from spurning him, Roxanna produced one of the era’s great horses, Lath (nine wins from nine runs).

A second mating with this mare produced another good horse, Cade, and finally, best of all, Regulus. He was leading sire in Britain and Ireland in 1738, 1745 and 1747.

Today the majority of thoroughbred horses’ sire lines trace to the Darley Arabian (and the Byerley Turk line is in some danger of dying out). Many famous past American horses trace their sire line back to the Godolphin Arabian, including Seabiscuit, Man o’ War, War Admiral, and the dual Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Tiznow.