Racing is famously described as living in its own little bubble. (People often say this crossly, with exasperation.) And it is, in many ways, a world of its own. It is so specialised and so absorbing and so difficult to understand for those outside it. It even has its own language – arcane technical terms and ancient slangs which few people beyond Newmarket and Lambourn understand.
Yet racing people are also human people. They do live in the real world. They watch the news. They feel the terrifying clashes of the geopolitical tectonic plates.
A friend rang up this week, a breeder and a writer, and she told me how she had gone out on the Heath and felt such simple gladness to see the Flat horses on Warren Hill after their winter rest. 'But,' she said, 'I bumped into a trainer and we did not speak of the horses. We talked for half an hour about Ukraine. Because it is so heartbreaking and we felt guilty entertaining even the merest hint of pleasure.'
Racing people are human people and this is a very human reaction to a catastrophic situation. How can we, in peaceful Blighty, laugh and smile when Ukrainian children are hiding from bombs in basements and underground stations?
This question cuts hard at the moment, because this is one of the most joyous times of the racing year. The glory of Cheltenham is shimmering on the horizon – those four glittering, heart-lifting days which National Hunt fans wait for like a child waits for Christmas. And then, the moment all of that is over, the promise of the Flat strides onto centre stage. It will be time to think of the Guineas, when a new star will shine on the Rowley Mile, and the whole panoply of the Classic series spreads out in the imagination of those who love Thoroughbreds.
For the people who work with these wonderful athletes, this time of year has other kinds of joy in it. Spring is in the air, and the horses are casting off their wintriness and starting to bloom. They will soon feel the warmth of the sun on their backs and unfurl, in body and mind, like daffodils turning their heads to the light. For the humans who look after them, working in a yard will no longer be a fumble of frozen fingers and a balancing act on icy surfaces. It is the hopeful season, in every sense of the word.
But the world. The pandemic has been bad enough, with its uncertainties and its odd tribalisms and its constraints and its griefs. Now there is a war, with its mournful note of human suffering and its sinister threat of nuclear action. How can anyone take joy in such a superficial thing as a horse race when that is happening?
As I struggle to find an answer to that question, I think of my dad. He started off as a steeplechase jockey, an amateur rider who faced the big birch fences for the love of it, and by the time I came along, in the late sixties, he was starting to train. The 1970s of my childhood were dark days indeed. The spectre of the Cold War hung over everything. Britain was a basket case, humiliatingly bailed out by the IMF, plagued with strikes, disfigured by unemployment. The Troubles were at their horrible height, and it was an ordinary part of life that bombs would go off in the cities and towns, in pubs and barracks. (It seems extraordinary, writing this now; extraordinary that people got used to this. Nobody thought it would ever end, and then, one day, with the Good Friday Agreement, it did.)
And yet there was Dad, riding his horses and singing his songs; dreaming of the Grand National and of the accumulator that would change his life. (It never did.) He was not a callous or a frippery man; he felt things deeply. But he would not let worldly horrors taint his love of his horses, the freedom he felt when he was up on the downs, the delight he took in his racing compadres.
Maybe, I think now, it was the horses that saved him.
Because here is the thing I truly believe about racing: it is different from other sports, because of the horses. Racing is another world because horses are another species. They know nothing of our human complexities. They don't watch the news. They have no politics. They don't get into shouting matches on social media. I think that the people who love them and care for them and cheer them on feel this, on a conscious or subconscious level.
There is something so pure about those racing Thoroughbreds. They are a very special breed, with a high intelligence. They are powerful and athletic and fast. They thrill, but they also inspire – with their courage, their honesty, their willingness. I often think that racing horses have many of the qualities I look for in humans: authenticity, generosity of spirit, grace. Horses, a very wise man once wrote, don't lie.
Because of this, I think they offer tired, fretful humans an escape, into another plane of being. And we all need a rest, sometimes, especially when the sorrows come not in single spies, but in battalions.
I want to answer my friend's question with a ringing yes, like Molly Bloom at the end of Ulysses. I want to say yes, and yes, and yes, and yes: we can feel pleasure, without guilt in it. I want to say that we lovers of the horse should feel pleasure, in these dark days. Because the point of life is that it can hold all the emotions. The anguish and despair are real, and there is no point trying to banish them with a bit of positive thinking and a pint of gin. But they can be balanced by the high emotions of life: that sheer, exuberant delight when a great horse comes storming up the hill at Prestbury Park to the collective roar of seventy thousand voices. That spine-tingling, otherworldly feeling that the racing tribe felt when it saw Frankel, appearing to break the laws of physics, as the commentator yelled, disbelief rising in his voice, 'But at the bushes, Frankel is fifteen lengths clear.'
When America was mired in the Great Depression, a little horse with the heart of a lion came along and gave the benighted citizens something to hope for. Seabiscuit didn't look like much, and he seemed to prefer sleeping to racing, and he didn't come from a grand yard. The snooty bluebloods in the East sneered at what they regarded as little more than a scrawny cow pony, until he came out and silenced them in his famous match race against the huge, gleaming War Admiral. (The amazing thing is that, in his retirement, Seabiscuit did indeed ride out to check on the cows.)
The Little Horse That Could famously sold out the cheap seats; the infield, where people without much money could go to watch the racing, was rammed when he appeared. He seemed to chime a resonant note with all those people who were struggling: he too had been counted down and out, and yet he somehow rose, to defy the doubters. He was probably the first true People's Horse. For a glorious, giddy, breathless moment, ordinary Americans could forget their troubles and dream of something fine.
You could say the same for Secretariat, who came along in the tumultuous, divisive times of the seventies. Soaring inflation and a country bitterly divided over the Vietnam War gave the American public a lot to deal with. Secretariat, fondly known as Big Red, seemed to unite everyone: young and old, rich and poor, left and right.
The horses, with their beauty and their courage, take people away from the sorrowful and the humdrum and the frightening. But it is more than that. There are always the great human stories. At Cheltenham this year, perhaps the story of the meeting is that of the Hamiltons.
When you arrive at Prestbury Park, the infield is not crowded with the ordinary people who came to cheer on Seabiscuit. It is filled with shiny helicopters, as the millionaires and billionaires fly in to watch their expensive stars. In the car park by the stables, fleets of vast, gleaming horse boxes are lined up, like slumbering giants. Many of them come from Ireland, transporting the conquering army of Willie Mullins. He'll have around fifty horses sailing across the Irish Sea. Ann and Ian Hamilton will have one runner, and they'll bring him to the races themselves.
They are farmers, up at dawn to see to the cows and the sheep, living and dying by the weather, devoted to a lifetime of relentless work. They have six racehorses. I read that they almost didn't come to Cheltenham this year because it would be a three-day trip, and they wondered who would look after the livestock while they were away. Anything further away from the vast operations of a Nicholls or a Mullins could hardly be imagined.
And yet there they are, rolling the dice. They've got a beauty in Tommy's Oscar, and he's a proper horse, and they adore him, and he has every right to take his place on the biggest stage of all. You never want to underestimate Ann Hamilton. The 69-year-old might only train six horses, but she's got a 43% strike-rate this season, which the big trainers can only dream about. Tommy's Oscar will almost certainly not take the crown of the majestic Honeysuckle, the reigning queen of racing, but he'll give each-way punters a shout for their money. To me, the very fact that he takes his place in the line-up is a victory. The Hamiltons have already won, because they have proved that you can outrun the odds with belief, and hard work, and a dream.
The other beautiful, hopeful story is that of Paisley Park. There was a time when this grand fella drove all before him. When he was in his pomp, the others might as well not turn up, he was so invincible. Then he had a physical setback and when he returned he was a bit in and out. He remained adored, because he's a lovely horse in his own right, and also because his owner is blind, and comes to the races with a crew of good friends, who tell him what is unfolding out on the track. Andrew Gemmell's smile could illuminate the whole of Cleeve Hill, and I'm not sure I ever saw an owner who got so much joy from his racing.
But the feeling was that dear old Paisley was past his prime, that he might even have fallen out of love with the game. On his last run, he whipped round at the start, so he was facing the wrong way as the field set off. By the time Aidan Coleman got him sorted out, he was twenty lengths behind the rest. Ruby Walsh, who has forgotten more about winning races than most people ever know, said they might as well go back to the parade ring. Watching my old favourite, I couldn't disagree.
Paisley Park, however, comes as close as a horse ever can to having a sense of humour. It was almost as if he heard Ruby and thought he'd have a little joke with him. He kept on galloping and kept on galloping and suddenly, unbelievably, he was in front, back where he belonged. Ruby, with tremendous grace, said, 'It just goes to show you should never give up.'
Paisley Park will line up again in the Stayers' Hurdle, and it's impossible to know what he will do. But rather like Tommy's Oscar, just the fact that he is there is a win, a source of delight, and a reminder that perseverance is one of the greatest of all qualities.
These individual stories might not add up to a hill of beans in the face of the wider world. Yet they are much more than the sum of their constituent parts. They are symbolic, even totemic – their ripples reach wide and deep. In the end, I believe that everything comes down to connection, and the tales of the great horses and their marvellous humans touch something deep in the spirit. Racing, at its best, is a soul thing, and we all need a bit of that.
So I come back to my Molly Bloom yes. I'll be shouting on my equine heroines and heroes next week. I will, as I always do, cry unashamed tears of joy. For a few short days, I will move from the real to the magical. That is the gift that Thoroughbreds give me, and thousands like me, and it is a gift that is beyond price.
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