I WAS HARDLY daring to breathe, not wanting to move even an inch, but my heart was beating so fast I feared it would burst clean out of my chest.
Come on. Come on.
I didn’t so much say it as think it.
Come on. Hang on. You can do it.
The pounding in my chest increased both in rate and in intensity.
Epsom Downs. The first Saturday in June. The Derby.
“Whatever happens, don’t be late. Our first guests will be arriving at seven, and you have to be here, dressed and ready. And please try to remain sober.”
My wife of twenty-five years, Georgina, was leaning over the banister at the top of the stairs.
I looked up at her. “Yes, dear.”
Whose crazy idea had it been for us to hold a party on Derby Day?
Mine probably, but nearly a year ago, when we’d booked the marquee and the caterers, I hadn’t been expecting to own the favourite for the race. And today was our actual silver wedding anniversary, so it had been an obvious choice.
I say “own” the favourite for the Derby but that wouldn’t be entirely true. I possessed just one twelfth of the horse in my own name, but I managed the whole animal as the syndicate organiser.
“I need the place cards,” Georgina said. “Have you done them?”
“They’re on my desk,” I said.
“Can you get them for me?”
“But I have to go. The traffic is always horrendous around Epsom for the Derby.”
“A couple of minutes won’t make any difference.”
I glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway—twenty past nine.
Did she not realize how important this race was for me? I had hardly slept a wink all night because of my nervousness, and I’d been up since five. All I wanted to do was to get going, to ensure I was at the racecourse in good time.
Calm down, I told myself. It’s just another race.
Except it wasn’t just another race. This was the Epsom Derby, the preeminent flat race in the U.K., if not in the whole of Europe.
I walked into the kitchen, on the way to my office at the back of the house. Our daughter, Amanda, was sitting at the kitchen table in a dressing gown, eating toast and typing into her mobile.
“So are you looking forward to this evening?” I asked jovially.
“No,” she replied blandly, without looking up. “Darren says it’s stupid to have a combined party. I should be having my own birthday party, and not having to share it with James and all your dreary old friends.”
The party was to be a celebration not only for Georgina and me, but also to mark our son, James’s, twenty-first, and Amanda’s nineteenth birthdays. James’s birthday had been two days previously, and Amanda’s was next Friday.
“But you were really keen on the plan to hold a joint party. Indeed, if I remember correctly, it was your idea in the first place.”
“Well, I’m not keen anymore,” Amanda said, still not looking up from the screen. “Darren says we would have much more fun, like, down at the pub, wearing jeans and T-shirts than having to dress up here in fancy suits and bow ties.”
Darren was an unemployed twenty-six-year-old college dropout who had been Amanda’s boyfriend for the past eight months, and as far as Georgina and I were concerned, he was not a suitable match for our daughter. In fact, he was totally unsuitable.
Not only was he eight years older than Amanda, but he had also been convicted for joyriding in a stolen car the previous summer in the nearby town of Didcot. And we were also extremely worried about the way he tried to control our daughter’s life. He demanded that she tell him where she was at any given time, and he became angry if she didn’t or if she went out anywhere without him. He even stipulated what she could wear. And he had done his best to cut her off from all her other friends, especially the male ones.
She had planned to go travelling during her gap year between school and university, but Darren had put paid to that too, telling her she would be better off getting a job and staying here. So, instead of backpacking around Australia with a girlfriend for three months at the beginning of the year, she’d spent the time working as a checkout girl in the local Tesco supermarket, something she still did.
“Darren says I should have had a party last year for my eighteenth birthday, not this year for my nineteenth.”
I didn’t actually care one iota what Darren said, but decided not to say so. I wasn’t in the mood for another argument with her—not here, not today.
“If you remember,” I said calmly, keeping a tight hold on my temper, “we all decided that it wasn’t sensible to have an eighteenth birthday party right in the middle of your A levels, and that we would do it this year instead as a joint celebration.”
“Darren says it’s just because you want to do it on the cheap.”
“Darren doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Now, please be helpful to your mother today. She has lots to do to get ready for this evening.”
Amanda finally looked up from her phone.
“Where are you going all dressed up?”
I was wearing morning dress and carrying a top hat.
“To the Derby. Potassium is running.”
“Will he win?”
“I hope so.”
God, I hoped so.
I went through into my office and picked up the place cards from my desk—one hundred and forty of them in four stacks, one for each of the four long tables set up in the marquee. Amanda and James had a table each for their friends, while Georgina and I had one apiece for ours. I carried the cards back through the kitchen, where Amanda was still sitting at the table.
“Remember what I said about helping your mother,” I said to her.
She looked up at me and didn’t answer.
“Please,” I said imploringly. “Mum’s not very happy about me being out all day at the races, and you know how stressed she can get.”
“Okay,” Amanda said reluctantly.
“Right. I must get going or I’ll be late.”
I went back into the hallway and put the place cards on the hall table.
“The cards are all in the right order,” I called up to Georgina. “I’ll see you later.”
“What time is the race?” she asked, coming back onto the landing from our bedroom.
“Twenty past three.”
She drew her breath in through clenched teeth. “That’s cutting it a bit fine.”
“We’re actually lucky,” I said. “It’s usually run at four thirty, but it’s been brought forward so as not to clash with the football at Wembley.”
“Well, don’t be late. Leave as soon as the Derby is over.”
“I can’t just leave if Potassium wins.”
Georgina waved a dismissive hand, which I took to mean she rather hoped he wouldn’t win.
“It would pay for the party,” I said.
And some, I thought.
The Epsom Derby might not be the most valuable horse race in Europe, but the purse was still £1.5 million, with £850,650 of that going to the winning connections. To say nothing of the future value of the horse as the Derby winner. Potential stud fees could easily run into the tens of millions.
The way things had been going in recent months, with increased inflation, higher wage costs, and people being more careful about buying racehorses, my personal finances, and those of the syndicate company, could really do with the boost. A year ago, when we’d planned the party and booked the marquee plus the caterers, my business had been buoyant. No expense had been spared. Now I was worried that we couldn’t afford it.
Too late to think of that now, I told myself. We’re committed.
As expected, the traffic between the M25 and Epsom Racecourse, through Ashtead, was bumper to bumper and mostly stationary with it, but I eventually drove into the car park reserved for owners and trainers just before midday.
I parked my Jaguar as close to the exit as I could, ready for a quick getaway, and climbed out, collecting my coat and hat from the car boot.
My hands were shaking.
“Morning, Chester. Lovely day for it.”
I turned to find Owen Reynolds, a racehorse trainer in his mid-fifties. He was walking towards the car-park exit.
“Ah, good morning, Owen,” I said. “And how is Potassium today?”
“Never better. He seems to have slept well and ate up his breakfast at six o’clock before departing my yard at seven. He’s already safely here in the racecourse stables and raring to go.”
“All good then?” I asked.
“I think so,” Owen replied. “We could have done without that band of rain that came through in the night, but I don’t think it will have made much difference to the going. And this sunshine should help dry it out.”
Potassium had shown that he preferred racing on firm ground, having suffered his only defeat at Newmarket in early May, when the turf had been very soft, almost a bog.
Owen and I walked across the road towards the racecourse entrance together.
“Have you backed him?” I asked.
Owen was renowned for being a betting man.
“I put a grand on him to win this race the day he broke his maiden at Newbury, well over a year ago.”
“What price did you get?”
“Twenty-five-to-one.”
Some bookmakers were now quoting Potassium as short as two-to-one.
“You did well.”
“Only as long as he wins. How many of the syndicate are coming?”
I laughed. “What do you think? No one wants to miss out on this one.”
“Have they all got badges?”
“Some have had to buy them, as Epsom are so miserly with their allocation, and not all of them will be able to get into the parade ring, but they’re all here, some with their extended families too. Many have booked restaurant hospitality.”
“Let’s hope Potassium doesn’t let them down.”
“Or us,” I agreed.
Being the favourite in the betting certainly didn’t guarantee success. Far from it.
In the past thirty years, only eight horses that were favourite or joint-favourite have gone on to win the Derby, and since its first running in 1780, there have been three winners returned at odds as high as a hundred to one.
Owen Reynolds and I walked towards the entrance into the Queen Elizabeth II enclosure.
“Excuse me, Mr Newton,” said a man on my left, just outside the gate. “Could I have a word?”
I looked across and recognised one of the BBC radio reporters, complete with microphone and headphones.
“I’ll see you later, Owen. In the saddling boxes.”
Owen walked on, waving a hand while I turned to the reporter.
“Just a quick interview for our listeners,” he said. “Ready?”
I nodded.
“I have here with me Chester Newton, syndicate manager for Victrix Racing, the owners of Potassium, which is the favourite for today’s big race. Well, Chester, do you expect Potassium to win?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that I expect him to win, but I hope he does.”
“And will he make all the running as he has in the past?”
“Race tactics are for the trainer and jockey to decide, not the owner. But the Derby is a mile and a half, and that’s a lot farther than the horse has ever raced over before, and all his six previous races have been on straight, mostly flat courses, while here he will have to negotiate the stiff rise to the top of the hill and then the sharp downhill bend at Tattenham Corner.”
“Are you making your excuses early?” asked the reporter, with good humour in his voice.
“Not at all. I’m just saying that to win a Derby requires a special horse, but we feel that Potassium is that special horse.”
“You heard it first here folks, straight from the horse owner’s mouth. Thank you, Chester Newton, and now back to the studio.”
The racecourse gateman scanned the Privilege Racecourse Access app on my mobile phone, and I walked into the enclosure.
In spite of what I had told the reporter, did I, in fact, expect Potassium to win?
He was certainly in the best shape of his life. Even though he had failed to triumph in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket on his last outing, he had been training really well since. Sixteen days ago, Owen and I had opted for the horse to miss the ten-furlong Dante Stakes at York, instead running him over the full Derby distance at home on the gallops on the same day, upsides with two older horses from Owen’s yard, and Potassium had still been pulling at the end.
But if I’d learned just one thing during my more than thirty years working with horses, it was that nothing in racing is ever certain. It had a habit of producing the totally unexpected—Devon Loch’s collapse in the 1956 Grand National was testament to that. So, while I wouldn’t say that I exactly expected Potassium to win, I’d be sorely disappointed if he didn’t.
Hence my nervousness.
I looked again at my watch, desperate for the time to pass quickly, but the hands stubbornly refused to move round the dial any faster. I had been itching to get here early, and now that I was, I didn’t know how to fill my time.
Potassium was the only Victrix runner today.
In all there were forty horses owned by the Victrix Racing syndicates that I managed, all but six of them running on the flat. Owen Reynolds had four of them, including Potassium, while the others were spread amongst nine other trainers all around the U.K., and one in Ireland.
Some of the syndicates had twelve members, as with Potassium, but most had twenty or even twenty-five, depending on the original cost of the horse and my expected take-up of the shares.
I would buy the horses at the bloodstock sales in the autumn, in either the U.K. or Ireland, and then hold a “yearling parade,” where prospective syndicate members were invited to view the horses, sign the ownership papers, and enjoy a good lunch.
I had now been doing this job for the past twenty-four years, having initially set up Victrix Racing when I was thirty with just a single syndicate made up of willing friends and family prepared to invest their hard-earned cash in my new venture.
Over time, I had acquired a pretty good idea of which horses to buy and how many shares in each to make available, as well as establishing a comprehensive list of people willing and able to participate in shared ownership.
I didn’t purchase the most expensive horses, those that went for in excess of half a million pounds. Indeed my top limit would be less than half of that, and most were around the hundred thousand mark.
Sometimes they turned out to be really good buys, and sometimes they didn’t. Potassium was definitely in the former category, having cost exactly a hundred thousand guineas at the Newmarket October yearling sale, a remarkably low price for a horse that turned out to be the champion European two-year-old of last year.
Now aged three, Potassium had stepped up to compete in the Classic races for three-year-olds, including the Two Thousand Guineas and The Derby, where success would put him into the “greats” list.
I didn’t normally keep any of the horse shares for myself but there was something about this particular animal that had made me think we were onto a winner. So, by December, eighteen months ago, when the last of the twelve shares had still not been taken by anyone else, I decided to buy myself an early Christmas present and registered the final share in my own personal name.
And how glad I was now that I had.
My share of Potassium’s prize money, won in his six previous races, had already repaid my initial investment of nineteen thousand pounds. Anything won today would be a bonus.
All my fingers and toes were crossed.