The Little Book of Horse Racing (eBook)

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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).

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.

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...