Bloodline

‘The opposition may have made him look better than he really is,’ I replied. But I did agree with Derek. Perhaps I’d make a small investment in the ante-post market. The 2000 Guineas was not until May and a lot could happen in the next eight months.

Indeed, much would happen in the next eight hours.

Lingfield was my local course and I was home by half past six, even though the last race didn’t start until five twenty-five. And I had remembered to collect the DVD from Derek with the two recordings on it.

I sat on my sofa and played them back over and over.

The difference between a moderate jockey and a great one is all about weight management, and timing. All jockeys stand in their stirrup irons and lean forward, placing their weight over the horse’s shoulders, and all jockeys move their weight back and forth slightly with the horse’s action, but the greats are those who use this movement to bring the most out of their mounts. They dictate to, rather than just follow, the horse beneath them.

Riding a finish with ‘hands and heels’ has far more to do with the positioning of weight than anything actually done to the horse with the hands or the heels. Most jockeys, especially those on the flat, ride far too short to be able to give the animal a decent kick with their heels anyway, and the hands on the reins move back and forth with the horse’s head.

I watched again the recording of Clare riding Scusami to win that afternoon’s fourth race. As Superjumbo came to challenge one furlong out, Clare gave her mount a single smack with her whip down its flank, then she rode out a classical finish, lowering her back and pushing her hands back and forth along the horse’s neck and moving her weight rhythmically to encourage it to lengthen its stride, which it duly did to win easily.

I compared that with her riding of Bangkok Flyer in the first when she was beaten a neck by Sudoku.

In the final furlong she appeared to give the horse three heavy backhander smacks with the whip but the head-on camera showed that these strikes were, in fact, ‘air-shots’, or superficial hits at best, with her hand slowing dramatically before the whip made any contact with the flesh. As on Scusami, she had lowered her back and there had also been plenty of elbow motion, but little of this had actually transmitted to her hands, the elbows going up and down rather than back and forth.

But the most telling thing was what had caused me to question her riding in the first place. Clare’s body movement had been all wrong. Instead of encouraging the horse to lengthen its stride as she had done on Scusami, her actions had had the opposite effect. It was like in a car engine, if the combustion in the cylinder occurred when the piston was moving up not down, the effect would be to slow the engine rather than to speed it up.

So it had been with Clare’s riding, and hence Bangkok Flyer had been easily caught and passed by Sudoku.

But she had been very clever. It was a real art to make it appear that she was riding out a finish for all she was worth while actually doing the opposite.

Indeed, the only reason I had been suspicious was because of a game we had loved to play when riding our ponies as kids.

The ‘Race Fixing Game’ we had called it — pulling up our ponies to a halt while looking like we were riding a tight finish. We had practised for days and days so that even our aged great-uncle couldn’t tell what we were doing, and he’d been a regular steward for decades at racecourses all over the country.

There had been no enquiry, so the Lingfield stewards obviously hadn’t spotted it, and the racing press clearly hadn’t noticed anything either, as there had been no difficult questions asked of me by the journalists in the press room when I’d visited there after the fifth race.

But I could see only too clearly that Clare had definitely been playing the Race Fixing Game on Bangkok Flyer.

2

I was at Haxted Mill on time at eight and I chose a quiet corner table inside the restaurant, although they were still serving dinner on the terrace alongside the River Eden. The day may have been unseasonably warm for September but the temperature was dropping fast with the setting sun.

Clare arrived at ten past in faded blue denim jeans and a pink polo shirt.

‘Sorry I’m late, Marky,’ she said, sitting down opposite me.

‘No problem. What would you like to drink?’

‘Fizzy water.’

‘You can have a bed for the night if you want to drink.’

‘No, thanks,’ she replied. ‘I have to get back. I’m riding work in the morning, then racing.’

‘Newmarket?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘I’ve got three rides including one in the Cesarewitch Trial.’

‘I’ll be at Newbury so I’ll watch you on the television.’

A waitress arrived with the menus and I ordered a large bottle of sparkling mineral water.

‘Don’t let me stop you having something stronger,’ Clare said.

‘You won’t. I’ll have some wine with my dinner.’

We perused the menus in silence for a while.

‘How are Mum and Dad?’ I asked.

‘Oh, God awful, as always. They’re getting so old.’