A very brief meditation on an absurd passion.

A quick bulletin, as it is another of those crazy days, and I want to get everything done in double quick time so I can watch the racing and listen to the cricket.

Sudden, pouring, Scottish rain. Gentle horse morning, but no riding as rain has stopped play. Work, work, work. 1178 words of book. The picture becomes a little clearer although I have made life difficult for myself by deciding the whole thing is set in the wrong season. Weather is important in fiction.

Dawn Approach did not win. Toronado finally fulfilled his promise, repaid all that hope and love the Hannons have put into him, all the faith they have kept, and he flashed up on the outside and took the race with a storming late run, by half a length. It was a brilliant, brilliant contest between two titans, and the strong bay horse prevailed on the day. I can’t wait now for the next chapter in that story. There must be a rematch for sure.

But I won my money back because a lovely, rather exciting filly called Ribbons won the 4.50 for the most excellent James Fanshawe. He’s a trainer I admire, and I think he might have a bit of a star on his hands.

She’s a diva for sure. She stopped dead, half way to the start, and her jockey James Doyle had to jump off and attempt to lead her down. She wasn’t having that either. Some poor hapless fellow ran down to wave his arms at the filly in a vain attempt to get her moving, and she stared at him as if she were Lady Bracknell confronted by a handbag. I’m not sure I ever saw such equine de haut en bas.

Once she eventually consented, purely on her own aristocratic terms, to get to the stalls, she went in kindly, leapt out like a running deer, and absolutely took apart a big field, dancing away with the thing as if she had never had a mulish thought in her pretty head. I love her. She’s my new heroine.

Stanley the Dog is happy; all the family is gathering for the highland games; I wish there were twenty-seven hours in the day instead of twenty-four. I have had slightly too much coffee. But the racing is glorious, the cricket is starting, and I feel keenly aware of my luck.

It’s a sort of blanket luck, to be alive when there are such sights to be seen. It’s a very specific luck too: to be self-employed, so I can switch about my schedule and watch it all. Mostly though, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, it’s the good fortune of having passions.

It’s all a bit nutty, my idiotic love for racing; my adoration of these horses I shall never meet, my forensic following of the form, my living through the triumphs and disasters as if they were my own. A nice man wrote, kindly, forgivingly, on my Twitter timeline yesterday that he did not understand a word of my racing tweets but quite enjoyed them anyway. I thought that was very generous.

It did make me feel a bit goofy. I am forty-six, after all, not sixteen. But I read somewhere not long ago that one of the vital ingredients of happiness in life is to have a passion. It’s quite tiring, minding about the things I mind about so much. But it does galvanise. It keeps me alive. It does not let me slip into blah existence, but acts as a roaring shot in the arm. I think I’d rather be a bit absurd than be bored and disengaged. Well, that is my story, and, my dear Dear Readers, I really am sticking to it.

 

Too wet for the camera today; here are a few pictures from the last 48 hours:

One of my favourite of the HorseBack mares:

The mare and her little filly foal. I rather love that I got this picture all wrong and that they are slightly out of focus. Sometimes I am quite fond of my mistakes:

Garden:

My lovely Red, last night, having a good old pick out in the wild grass:

LOVE:

The Older Brother and his Beloved came to pay the dear old duchess a visit:

We haven’t had a good Myfanwy picture in a while:

My most excellent sight dog, sighting things:

Yesterday’s hill. Today’s hill is lost in cloud:

All about Dawn Approach

It is Sussex Day. My heart beats like a big brass drum. Even as I run around, down to ride the mare (our best one yet, leaving me smiling so hard I thought my head would fall off), up to HorseBack for my work there, back to the computer to put on a respectable day’s word count, my mind is filled with Dawn Approach.

I love Toronado. He is just the stamp of horse I like: fierce, clever, strong, burly – a real competitor. At the time of the Guineas, I rather hoped he might stage an upset. But as the season has gone on, my heart, which was won last year by Dawn Approach in his two-year-old incarnation, has gone back to him. It was that awful moment in the Derby, and the courage he showed when he came out so quickly after that debacle, and lit up the Royal Meeting at Ascot. He won that day on heart and character as much as talent, and that is why today I shall be roaring his name.

He has a very slight look of Red. Well, he is chestnut, and he has a white blaze. He is of course related to her through the Northern Dancer line. I can’t tell you how glorious she was this morning; the kindest, sweetest, most relaxed ride. As I slid off and stood with her for a moment, in quiet and gratitude, I told her that I would be watching her cousin later in the day. She nodded and looked at me out of the corner of her quizzical eye. She often looks at me as if to say: I’ll just let the old girl do her thing. She quite obviously thinks that the thing is sometimes a little peculiar, but she is too polite to say so.

Up at HorseBack, the filly foal is galloping round the field as if she is practising for the Sussex herself. In the round pen, men for whom a night’s sleep is a dreamt-of luxury (PTSD, like Macbeth, murders sleep) are smiling with almost disbelieving delight as the dear quarter horses they work with perform quiet miracles for them. It’s a good day for the equines.

But only one equine champion fills my mind now. I want Dawn Approach to blaze, to stamp his class, to make the crowds gasp and roar. He is today’s great love, the one that makes my idiot old heart beat. I shall be shouting his shining name.

 

Just time for some very quick pictures:

This girl was very wonderful at HorseBack this morning. She made a veteran who has been through things I can’t imagine very, very happy:

The foal, going like the blazes:

My ivy. Bet you weren’t expecting ivy:

My champion girl:

Giving me The Look:

The hill:

Happy trails, my darlings. May all your horses win.

The Royal Meeting, Day Two. In which I look back on a quite extraordinary opening day.

What a day.

I didn’t think, after the imperial procession that was Frankel’s Queen Anne, an opening day at Ascot could ever match it again. And yet, somehow, the Royal Meeting awoke, stretched itself, and put its dander up. There was more drama and delight than you could shake an ebony walking stick at.

First there was the sombre business of the day, done with elegance and grace. There was a minute of silence in memory of Sir Henry Cecil. Ladies in extravagant hats bowed their heads and clasped their hands, almost as if in prayer, and gentlemen stood ramrod straight, their top hats by their sides.

On the television, Clare Balding said a very clever thing and true thing. She said: ‘I always think the best way to remember someone who has died is to keep talking about them.’ I remember that exact thing after my father died. All I wanted to do was speak of him and his glory days. It’s a way of keeping the lost ones alive in all our hearts.

And there is so much to say of Sir Henry Cecil, especially in this week, the space of some of his greatest triumphs and most extraordinary records. He had seventy-five winners at the Royal Meeting, a number that may never be matched. It is so far ahead of the herd, stretching into the realms of myth.

Then it was time for the American star to come and dazzle us. Anticipation was intense. But, in the way of thoroughbreds, with all their mystery, Animal Kingdom did not run his race. There was no obvious excuse. He did not settle and raced too freely and then fizzled out, falling tamely back through the field, his fine brilliance extinguished.

It’s always sad to see a champion not give his running, but up at the front an Irish horse finally fulfilled his promise. Declaration of War is one of the apples of Ballydoyle’s eye, but he was sadly disappointing last time out, and there was suspicion he was a bit of hype, not quite as good as they all thought. I had an each-way saver on him, because those Ballydoyle boys know what they are talking about, and I could not believe they would send him to Ascot for nothing. He did run his race, and won beautifully, starting to look as if he will make up into the good horse they all thought he was.

But then the real drama unfolded. Amazingly, against the odds, Dawn Approach was back. He had imploded so fatally, so publicly, so humiliatingly, in the Derby, that the connections could hardly speak, except to say that he would be put away and there were no plans. Suddenly, without warning, Jim Bolger announced that his mighty colt would be back for Ascot.

This was not what anyone expected. The Derby is not even three weeks ago. For a horse to boil over like that could leave not only physical but mental scars. Up until that terrible moment, Dawn Approach had had everything his own way. He had dominated good fields, always had luck in running, never encountered anything to shake his famous sang-froid. His record was unblemished. He was the boss horse indeed, alpha to his hoof tips. Would he come back so quickly with his appetite for the game undimmed? Could his star shine again?

To complicate matters, the lovely, strong colt Toronado, the equal apple of the Hannon eye, who had had his own disaster in the Guineas, was also returning to the track, on another retrieval mission. And then there was Magician, so dominant in the Irish Guineas, but who had suffered a freak accident in his last week of preparation. He was having a nice relaxing time in the equine spa when a swallow flew straight into his forehead, and the horse leapt out and bashed his legs. He had missed a piece of work, so his carefully calibrated training schedule was interrupted.

The question marks hovered over all these lovely equine heads. I adore them all and could not choose between them. I went back and forth, like a confused metronome. But there, suddenly, was Dawn Approach, coming into the pre-parade ring, looking exactly like his old self: athletic, shining, utterly relaxed. That’s the fellow I know, I thought. On pure instinct, I put the house on him. I suddenly realised that I wanted him to redeem himself more than I could say.

I had a bit each-way on Toronado, for loyalty and love, and paced about with screaming nerves as the horses went into the stalls.

And they were off. Dawn Approach once again fought for his head. Poor Kevin Manning, who had had such a nightmare in the Derby, was fighting to settle his horse all over again. Manning is a quiet, interior jockey. He does not showboat. He is a man of very few words, and has said little about the whole debacle. He puts all his energy and talent into riding, not talking. I could not bear it if the same ghastly battle was going to be waged all over again.

But then, miraculously, as if Dawn Approach was remembering his true self, he dropped his head and settled into his big, rolling stride, balanced his strong body, and began to race. Now the story would be told. Would the Derby exertions and his early exuberance take its toll? Could he see it out?

He powered down the outside. Toronado, who had sat quietly out the back, came to join him. The duel which had not materialised in the Guineas looked as if it would finally be joined.

And then a horse on the inside jinked left, creating a disastrous domino effect. The horse outside him was hit, who crashed into Dawn Approach, who bumped into Toronado. Both the principles veered and lost their stride. This kind of thing can be enough to finish a challenge. It’s not just the loss of vital rhythm; that sort of barge at forty miles an hour can shock a horse into submission. But these two were made of doughty stuff. Kevin Manning and Richard Hughes got their fellows rolling again, and the two brave colts stuck their heads down and charged into the final furlong ahead of the rest, matching strides.

On the television, Simon Holt was shouting. In the room, I was shouting. My mother, a quiet polite person, suddenly yelled, at the top of her voice: COME ON KEVIN. Stanley the Dog went nuts.

The real Toronado, the stellar colt that the Hannons loved and believed in, was finally revealing himself. For a moment, he drew ahead. But Dawn Approach is not just brilliant, he is brave. He stuck out his neck, put his ears flat back, got a bullish, bugger off look in his eye, lengthened once more, and flashed past the line a nostril ahead.

The beautiful bold chestnut was redeemed. The risk paid off. Jim Bolger, one of the cleverest and canniest men ever to train a horse, was right. The crowd went wild. The drama rating ricocheted off the scale.

And that, my darlings, was, in the words of the song, a thrilling, absolutely chilling Ascot opening day.

I’m not sure we’ll see anything to match it.

Today, the ladies move into the spotlight. There is the Duke of Cambridge, for the older, polished fillies, and then the Queen Mary for the babies, raw two-year-olds who are still revealing their potential. There are so many I love that I can’t split them, and this will not be a betting day for me, but a watching for sheer love day.

If Chigun could win for Lady Cecil then I would expire from happiness, but she has the talented Duntle and Dank to vanquish.

I love little Oriel in the Queen Mary. She had no luck in running last time out and I’d adore to see her have her revenges.

And then there is the fascinating rematch between the progressive Al Kazeem and the old conqueror Camelot. Camelot, the Derby winner of last year, suffered a severe bout of colic over the winter and had to have an operation to save him. No one knows how much this takes out of a horse. He was thoroughly beaten by Al Kazeem last time out, and there is no scientific reason to see him reversing that form.

But again, Ballydoyle must be keeping the faith, to bring him back here, onto the highest stage of all. And there is almost nothing I love more than seeing a once-dominant horse reduced to underdog, with all the doubters and knockers out in force (last year’s three year olds were an average bunch; the Derby form does not add up to a hill of beans; etc, etc) and then, once again, having his day in the sun. So I’d love to see Camelot come back to his rampant best, and I’ll have a tiny loyalty bet from the heart.

Who knows? Day Two may give us drama again. It is Ascot. The Queen is there, with her match greys; there are crowds in improbable hats; there are Welsh Guards with trumpets. The best horses in the world are gathered. Anything could happen.

I relive the Derby and Red the Mare imitates her more famous cousin. Or, a shaggy horse story for a Sunday afternoon.

It’s been a wild 24 hours. The Derby was one of the most dramatic I can remember. All the talk was of the mighty Dawn Approach, and my love for the great, unbeaten colt made me convince myself that he would get the trip and run away with the thing.

But as the time grew closer, my head said that the doubters had a point. It was that damn bottom line. So I looked at all the runners again, and had what they call a saver.

Oddly enough, it was not just Dawn Approach; pretty much all the runners had some kind of question mark over their heads. The track might not suit Libertarian’s way of running; the German form of Chopin was impossible to assess; Battle of Marengo had been workmanlike rather than thrilling last time out.

With my forensic betting hat on, I decided on Ruler of the World to get me out of trouble, for two reasons. He was the only horse in the race whom we knew stayed a mile and a half, and he had been very impressive at Chester. The twists and turns of Chester do not compare to the slopes and cambers of Epsom, but they do show whether a horse is well-balanced or not, and Ruler of the World had handled them with aplomb. Plus, he had Ryan Moore up, who is riding as beautifully and powerfully at the moment as any jockey I’ve seen.

And then came the great irony. Dawn Approach’s stand-out characteristic is his wonderful temperament. It was that which gave me hope he might stay, after all. His calm and dignity would conserve energy, and enable him to use every ounce of his power to get home. He was fine in the preliminaries, which test the thoroughbred to the limit. Seething crowds, barking loudspeakers, trumpet fanfares, men with television cameras; all this could be designed to freak out a flight animal. As if this were not enough, The Derby is unlike any other race meeting. The infield is free, and seventy thousand people gather there. The place is thronged with charabancs and monstrous funfair rides. Earlier in the day, Richard Hughes did well to keep Thunder Strike running straight when he spooked at some buses in the final furlong.

By the time Dawn Approach got to the start, he was sweating and on his toes, most unlike himself. As the stalls clattered open, he finally boiled over. He jumped and strained and fought for his head. The funereal pace gave poor Kevin Manning no chance to settle him. Rhythm wins races, and the great horse never came anywhere near a rhythm. He was less galloping than leaping.

He was still pulling at Tattenham Corner, when Manning had to let him go. ‘Oh, this is bad,’ said Simon Holt. For an impossible, hopeful moment, the colt hit the front and at last found his stride. But it was too late; the race was gone. The field overwhelmed him and he faded tamely away; all Jim Bolger’s Derby dreams and a million betting slips fluttering into the sunny air.

And Ruler of the World, my other fella? He put on an astonishing burst of late race speed which propelled him to the front two out, and kept on, straight and true, to the line.

For a while, I was too sad to appreciate the win. After all the anticipation, it was truly melancholy to watch a fine colt throw a race away like that. But later, I ran the replay and could finally thrill to a majestic performance. Ruler of the World doesn’t look much. He’s quite lightly furnished, a washy chestnut, with a narrow head. He does not have the powerful frame of Libertarian or the lovely outlook of Chopin; he does not have that preening presence which some champions carry. But he has talent, and he is bred in the purple, and he has an indomitable racing heart, and that was what got him there.

The other lovely thing is that Libertarian ran on like a train to snatch second, a triumph for the north, which has not sent out a Derby winner since the mighty Dante in 1945.

Even lovelier than all of it was that dear old St Nicholas Abbey, one of my favourite horses in training, absolutely cruised home in the Coronation Cup, making history in the process. He’s the first colt to win it three years in a row, a soaring achievement. He didn’t need shouting, but I roared him on all the same.

This morning, inspired by all that power and speed, I took Red the Mare for a long Sunday ride. We went out into the west meadow, Stanley loping by our side. There were fleet deer running out of the woods and the sun was shining and my mare was perfect. She is generally uncertain about going out on her own, so I was especially delighted by her sang-froid.

But as we came back towards the paddock, Autumn the Filly was getting a bad attack of separation anxiety. Her good leader had left her, and she was shouting and racing up and down the fenceline, almost in panic. We will have to work on this, I thought, before putting my full mind on Red, who was suddenly imitating her more famous cousin of yesterday.

All her high thoroughbred blood raced through her, and she did the thing she  does when fired up, which is to grow about a hand instantly, as if someone has blown her up with a bicycle pump. Her head went up in the air, and she switched into full emergency mode. She takes her job as lead mare very seriously, and one of her girls was in trouble.

Autumn continued to gallop back and forth like a barrel racer, Myfanwy trundling behind her like a little grey shadow. All Red wanted to do was gallop with them. It was the first time since I’ve been riding her in the rope halter that her blood was really up, and it was a fascinating moment. If she had decided to go, she could have. I am a ten stone human; she is a half ton horse. There’s no contest.

I sat deep and held her. She jumped and snorted and cavorted. I laughed and joshed her. ‘Come on, old lady,’ I said. ‘They are fine.’ I turned her in a couple of circles to get her mind back on me and her feet moving. If in doubt, always move the feet. And then she took a decision. She was going to listen to me, not the flight voices roaring in her ears.

And on we went. She was still pretty lit up and I had to concentrate and be strong and easy in the saddle. But there we were, my ex-racing girl and me, with a bunch of stimulus thrown at us, and it had worked out perfectly fine. I laughed in delight. I even sang her a little song. She likes a song.

There was a rather touching postscript to this story. When I took her back to the paddock, Red and Autumn touched noses and breathed at each other in delight and relief. As I took the halter off and let Red go, I was convinced she and the filly would roar off together, doing their Spanish Riding School of Vienna schtick. But instead, they gathered on either side of me, lowering their heads for love.

So the three of us stood there for a while, in the gentle Sunday sunshine, just happy to be together. It was one of my small things. And at the same time, it was a huge thing. I felt very vivid and very alive and very present in the world. The gifts that horse gives me are worth more than rubies.

 

 

Today would have been my Dad’s birthday. I’ve shown you this picture before, but it’s one of my favourites and I show it to you again. I don’t know if riding is heritable, but my father had a thing when he was in the saddle, a sort of gritted teeth determination, and I think of that quite a lot when I am on my mare. He was not the most stylish jockey in the world, but my mother always says that horses just ran for him. That’s a gift; you can’t teach it.

I miss him a lot.

Derby Day; or, my racing heart

It is Derby Day.

This is the day that I go down to my quiet field, ringed by Scottish hills and deep woods, and tell my mare of the great moment in 1970 that her grandfather won the storied race.

This is, of course, absurd, and not just because she does not speak English and the name Nijinsky means nothing to her. He was a prolific sire; there are hundreds, possibly thousands of his descendants running round green fields and emerald racetracks.

And yet, it is a daily source of idiot pride to me. It is one of the things that makes me singingly happy. On dark evenings when my spirits fall, I lift them again by going back through her pedigree, finding the mighty names of Hyperion, Gainsborough, St Simon, Mahmoud, Eclipse, and all three of the foundation sires.

Pedigree is what everyone is talking about today. The breeding of racehorses is a science and an art. It is also a lottery. My darling Red was the slowest horse in England, despite her illustrious bloodlines.

The question now is how will that lottery shake out for Dawn Approach. His sire, New Approach, won the Derby himself. New Approach’s daughter, Talent, won The Oaks yesterday. There are no stamina worries there. But it is the bottom line that people often say counts for more, and although there are stayers further back in his dam’s pedigree, Dawn Approach’s mother never raced over further than a mile, and ran mostly at shorter distances.

This is what makes today most extraordinarily exciting. Dawn Approach is a beautiful, well-made, athletic horse with a thrilling degree of natural talent. He also has the advantage of a glorious temperament, taking all the hoopla and razzmatazz of big race days with a gentlemanly calm. Nijinsky, by contrast, used to get wired to the moon. My mother still remembers watching him getting hotter and hotter in the paddock, even after forty years. It was only the genius and patience of Vincent O’Brien that made him into the racehorse he was.

I think of Nijinsky today too because people forget that many serious pundits said he would not stay. He too had questions over his bloodlines, but Lester Piggott and Vincent O’Brien had faith, and he repaid it in spades. He not only won the Derby but completed the Triple Crown when he trounced them in the St Leger, winning on the bridle with Lester cheekily easing him up at the line.

If he stays, he wins, is the line on Dawn Approach. His good temperament will help to conserve energy; his soaring talent will see him through. I’d love to see him make monkeys of them all, with his good heart and his big white face, but there is a possibility he will just pack up two furlongs out, and the glittering dreams will smash to the ground.

The truth is, nobody knows. We shall not be certain of anything until about four minutes past four this afternoon, when the cards are played and the hand revealed. Because of this uncertainty, it is one of the most exciting Derby days I can remember. We have an unbeaten colt, of visceral speed, incredible ability, high class, in the hands of a master trainer. And we have the hovering question mark, dancing over his lovely head.

As I write this, my fingers are trembling faintly. My heart is beating in my chest. There are still three hours to go and I can hardly sit still. I always ask myself why, on these great days. It’s just a race, it’s just a horse; what can it matter?

It is love, for me. It is an antic, vivid, visceral love. I love these racing horses because they are so beautiful, and brave, and bold. So much is asked of them, and so much is given.

But thinking now, I wonder if it is something even more profound than that. Despite Dawn Approach’s lovely, easy temperament, there is something of the wild still in these fast thoroughbreds. They are different from other horses in their pure breeding for the perfect combination of strength and velocity. Any of them, running from the gaff tracks to the famous courses, must go back through eight straight generations even to take part.

I think there is something in that purity, which produces the brilliance and the will to win, which touches an untamed part of the human self. Racehorses are not quite domesticated in the way that riding horses are. It is fanciful, but I think they still hear their ancestral voices, calling down the generations. There is something untrammelled and uncontained about them, which touches the depths of my own human heart.

In life, especially in middle age, I must learn to be sensible and practical and reasonable. (I do not always succeed.) I must live in the civilised world and play by the good rules of civilised society. Watching a great thoroughbred, at full stretch, with all that mighty, wild brilliance, that soaring spirit, that fierce determination, that gleaming loveliness, I feel released from my ordinary, workaday self. I too am untrammelled, taken back to the elemental, wild parts of my sometimes confined spirit. In some odd way, these brilliant creatures set me free.

I love them because they are beautiful, and I love them because they are true. They are truth and beauty; that is all I know and all I need to know.

And I hope that Dawn Approach does defy the doubters. I hope he does stay. I hope he swoops round the impossible camber of Tattenham Corner and sets the crowd on a roar. I hope his sun also rises.

 

Only time for two pictures today. I wanted to show you Red at her most thoroughbred and aristocratic. You can see her here after a damn good gallop round the field, her veins up, her grand blood coursing through her. I had to go back to last year for these, because now she is so relaxed that she rarely breaks out of an amble, and spends most of her time looking more like a dozy old donkey than a descendant of Derby winners:

Have a great day, my darlings. Win or lose, I think it will truly be a race to remember.