OWEN WAS OVER the moon.
“I told you,” he said, beaming. “Never in doubt.”
I smiled at him, at least on the outside. “Well done.”
The two of us walked the short distance to the unsaddling enclosure while I reflected on what might happen now.
The syndicate members were already waiting for us and gave a great cheer as their horse was led into the place reserved for the winner.
“Champion. Champion,” said one of them, grinning from ear to ear.
In racing, having a winner was the important thing, irrespective of the class of the race or the size of the purse, and there were multiple high fives and back slapping going on amongst the jubilant owners.
Tim Westlake, also smiling, dismounted and removed his saddle, the sweat dripping in a stream from his head.
“Don’t forget to weigh in,” Owen said to him firmly, and he went off towards the weighing room as the horse was washed down with several buckets of cooling water.
“Horses away,” called an official and our still-steaming hero was led away, back to the racecourse stables for a well-earned rest before the journey home.
The public address system suddenly emitted a triple-tone alert, the signal that there would be a Stewards’ Enquiry, followed by an announcement reminding racegoers to retain all betting tickets until after the result of the enquiry was known.
“What’s that all about?” Owen said sharply. “It surely can’t affect the winner—he was too far in front for there to have been any interference.”
But the public address wasn’t finished. “Would the trainer Owen Reynolds or his representative report immediately to the stewards’ room.”
Owen looked at me and shrugged his shoulders before rushing off.
“What’s happening?” asked one of my syndicate.
“I’ve no idea,” I said. “But the result will not be made official until after the enquiry.”
“Does it mean we won’t keep the race?” asked another.
“Let’s just wait and see.”
The syndicate members began to disperse, and I sauntered over towards the weighing room and met Owen coming out. His face was puce with rage.
“I don’t bloody believe it,” he said to me.
“What?”
“Dream Filler has been disqualified and placed last.”
“Why?”
“They say the jockey weighed in two pounds lighter than he weighed out.”
“How could that happen?”
“God only knows. I told them it must have been them that made the mistake, weighing him out wrong, but they refuse to believe it. They say they have CCTV to prove it.”
“So how did it happen?” I asked.
“Tim told them that he might have lost the weight in sweat. It is a very hot day today. He claims he’s been sweating profusely under his safety vest and skull cap, but the stewards say that the rules clearly state that the maximum weight loss allowed for sweating is only one pound, not two. To add insult to injury, they’ve also fined me £750 and given Tim a three-day riding ban. They said it’s the standard punishment, irrespective of who is to blame. I tell you, I’m bloody furious about it, and I intend to appeal.”
“I’d better go and tell the syndicate,” I said. “They’re not going to be happy.”
But I didn’t need to tell them because, at that point, the triple-tone alert sounded again through the public address, followed by another announcement.
“Here is the result of the stewards’ enquiry. The Clerk of the Scales lodged an objection to the winner on the grounds that the rider weighed in light. After due consideration, the Stewards have disqualified Dream Filler and placed him last.”
There was a loud groan from the betting public, many of whom had invested heavily on the favourite. There was also some anger, much of it directed towards Owen Reynolds and Tim Westlake.
To assist the official handicapper in his job to rate each racehorse each week, the British Horseracing Authority calculates a performance figure for every horse in every race at every racecourse. They work out how much less weight each losing horse would have needed to carry for it to have finished in a multiple dead heat with the winner.
Clearly the length of the race also matters, as the less weight would have to be carried over a greater or lesser distance. For example, the Grand National is four and a quarter miles long, so a decrease of one pound in weight carried all that way has more effect on a horse’s finishing position than the same pound less when carried over only five furlongs.
Many years of statistical study have shown that, on good ground, a one-horse-length difference in performance in the Grand National is the result of a 0.7-pound difference in weight carried, whereas in a five-furlong sprint the same one-horse-length difference will only be produced by a weight difference of 3.4 pounds.
Dream Filler’s race had been over one mile on the all-weather surface. For such a race, the official handicapper considers that one-horse-length difference in performance is equivalent to 2.1 pounds in weight. So, even if Dream Filler had been carrying two pounds more over the whole race distance, it would have made less than a single horse-length difference to his finishing position. But he had passed the winning post three lengths ahead of his nearest rival.
He would have won anyway.
No wonder that Owen Reynolds and the punters were furious.
But rules are rules, and no one sticks to them as rigidly as the stewards in horseracing. So Dream Filler, clearly the best horse in the race on the day, was considered to have finished last, and all bets on him lost, even though the handicapper would still rate him next Tuesday as if he had finished first but only by two lengths instead of three, making it more difficult for him to win next time out.
It certainly didn’t seem fair.
To my surprise, the syndicate members were quite laid back about the disqualification when I went to see them in the Owners and Trainers’ Bar.
“We still had our moment of excitement,” one of them said with a laugh. “And it isn’t as if the prize money was very big anyway, especially not when you’ve divided it amongst the twenty of us.” He laughed again.
“It’s Owen Reynolds and the jockey who I feel sorry for,” said another. “It doesn’t seem fair on them to lose money.”
Personally, I didn’t know how to feel. Outwardly, I shared Owen’s frustration at the stewards’ decision, but deep inside I was absolutely delighted.
“Dream Filler will lose.”
And ultimately, he had lost. In fact, he had been officially placed last.
I watched the second race on the TV in the bar and then decided that, as I had no further Victrix runners and also no intention of remaining to listen to the band, it was time to go home.
As I made my way out to the car park, there was still a steady stream of people arriving. With five more races on the card still to be run, plus the band playing afterwards, there was plenty more to enjoy, even if they had missed the most dramatic moment of the evening.
I tossed my blue-checked sports coat into the boot of the car.
As I did so, two flat grey pieces of metal slid out of its pockets—the two one-pound lead weights that I had removed from Dream Filler’s weight cloth as Owen had been fetching the parade-ring vet.
I sat in my Jaguar for quite some time, hating myself.
Was I totally crazy?
Yes was the right answer.
It had taken me twenty-four years to establish Victrix Racing as the preeminent syndicate ownership company in British racing, and I could well have destroyed all of that by one grossly stupid act.
I went hot and cold at the thought that I could have so easily been exposed. No one had questioned the weight cloth. Tim Westlake hadn’t shouted that he remembered having added x number of pounds to it before the race only to find x minus two pounds in it afterwards.
Perhaps he didn’t know exactly how many lead pieces had been required to bring the weight of him plus his equipment up to the necessary nine stone and seven pounds. He was one of the lighter jockeys, so there would have been quite a few.
That would all have been done using the lead weights supplied by the racecourse and the pre-scales made available in the jockeys’ changing room. Tim would then have presented himself to the Clerk of the Scales to be officially weighed out. But did he get the weight cloth ready by himself or had it been done by somebody else, such as a jockey’s’ valet?
I didn’t like to think that investigations might be still ongoing.
I started my Jaguar and drove out of the car park, concerned that I had better leave before someone came looking for the missing lead.
I didn’t recall much of the journey back to South Oxfordshire, but I did take a slight detour into Goring-on-Thames and parked on the High Street. I climbed out of the car and opened the boot.
The two lead weights had “1 lb” and “Lingfield” stamped into their surface. I picked them up and walked back onto the bridge over the river.
I walked to the centre, over the deepest part, and looked down into the abyss, both physical and metaphorical. I considered putting the two weights into my trouser pockets and throwing myself into the muddy water below, to sink to the bottom and drown.
It would be the honourable thing to do.
Instead, having checked no one was about, I dropped the weights alone into the depths and then walked back to the car.
I felt wretched.
Honesty and integrity were the bedrock on which all horseracing was built. Without it, the public could have no confidence in the purity of the results and wouldn’t be prepared to wager their hard-earned cash. Sure, everyone has heard stories of how so-and-so fixed this or fixed that and made a killing off the bookies. But, nowadays that’s all they were—stories.
I told all my prospective syndicate members that modern racing was straight, and they should have no concerns that they were getting into something dubious, dishonest, or corrupt. Yet here I was, the evil villain, who had torn up the racing rule book. What I had done was against everything I had ever stood for.
So, of course I felt wretched.
But the question I was now asking myself was What are you going to do about it?
When I opened the front door, there were four of them standing outside—Owen Reynolds, Tim Westlake, and Detective Sergeant Christine Royle, together with her sidekick DC Abbot, who he was shaking a pair of handcuffs at me.
Strangely, Tim Westlake was still wearing the Victrix silks, and Owen Reynolds was holding a long pole with a large dripping net at the end, within which I could just make out the two Lingfield one-pound weights.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You,” they all replied in unison.
“Go away,” I shouted, but they advanced towards me through the door. Then I saw lots more people behind them—syndicate members.
“Did you back him?” Derek Berkeley shouted.
Bill Parkinson was there in his morning-dress striped trousers, and Nick Spencer, the property lawyer in his top hat, and there were many others I recognised as they all pressed forward through my front door.
“Go away,” I shouted, but they took no notice, forcing me down onto the floor and lying on top of me so I couldn’t breathe.
“No. No! No!” I shouted.
I woke up with a start. Someone was shaking me hard by the shoulder.
“You’re shouting in your sleep,” Georgina said.
“I was having a nightmare,” I mumbled back to her.
“And a bad one by the sound of it.”
Georgina rolled over onto her side of the bed, and I lay on my back, in the dark, sweating and breathing heavily, thankful that the ordeal was over.
It had indeed been a bad nightmare, but it had seemed so real.
Was that because my whole life, asleep or awake, was currently a nightmare?
Winning the Derby felt like it had been months ago, not just one solitary week.
Perhaps that had been a dream too.