Peter Ross: Horsing around at the track

Published on Saturday 13 March 2010 19:32

RACING'S in the blood for punters at Ayr and a flutter with the bookies is essential to savour the magic of the sport of kings

AYR racecourse, two hours before the day's first race, feels like a theatre with the curtain down. There doesn't seem to be much going on. Backstage, though, there's plenty. In the weighing room, where the jockeys get changed, valets are laying out boots and breeches, saddles and silks. Everything is placed on benches and pegs in strict order, starting with the most experienced jockey nearest the door and descending through the ranks to the amateur riders. The air smells of leather and ambition. A man called Fatty polishes a saddle so fast that the tattoos on his arms blur.

"This is the engine room of the day's racing," says Steve Charlton, a valet in a green apron. "You've got to get them out on time and keep the day running smoothly. Left to their own devices it would be chaos."

Though the air is thick with swearing of the roughest kind, the atmosphere is more dressing room than locker room, more Royal Ballet than Royal Ascot. The jockeys have a concise muscularity as they pull up the nylon tights they wear under their breeches. The bright silks are like stage costumes; once on, the transformation from nondescript wee guy in jeans to star performer is complete.

Before a jockey goes out to his horse comes the ritual of being weighed on the old-fashioned scales. What can't be measured by the scales, of course, is the jockey's courage and will to win. The right stuff does not come in pounds and ounces.

Graham Lee, the 34-year-old Irish jockey who won the Grand National in 2004, fastens his pink and black colours, concealing the silver cross pinned to the vest beneath. "That's to keep us safe," he says. "For the man up above to look after us. We need all the help we can get." Two years ago he was knocked unconscious and broke his jaw in a fall. He'll fall again today, in the third race, but dust himself down and ride again in the fourth. Jockeys are tough.

Out in the paddock, the horses are paraded under the critical eye of punters with blunt pencils and sharp tongues. "That wan looks like it's jist pulled a dray," says a man in a tartan bunnet.

"It's a guid horse," says his pal, all beard and tweed, "but I dinnae think it wants tae win."

"Disnae want tae win?" says tartan bunnet, incredulous. "It disnae want tae live."

You get all sorts. Professionals paid to help the bookies determine their odds assess the animals with cold, covetous eyes, as if calculating exactly which girl to ask to dance.

Then there are the amateurs. Jim Gilmour from Kilbirnie is 70, "but my brain's at 18", and when the horses are led out, he puts away his pipe and takes out a small digital camera. "I backed my first Derby winner when I was nine years old," he says. "Nimbus won the 1949 Derby. I put on half a crown."

Retired accountant Bill Carr, 62, comes to every race at Ayr. "It's inbred, it's tribal," he says when asked to explain the magic of horse racing. "I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child, and when I was in for a hip operation my dad gave me a copy of the Sporting Chronicle to pass the time."

Carr started studying form and trying to pick winners. Horse racing has been important in his life. "I've always had a bad leg, and when I was growing up, I couldn't play football or sports like that, but I could follow the horses. It's something I can participate in. I feel I'm an equal with everyone here."

Gambling , he says, is an essential part of the whole experience, but you must stick to the amount you told yourself you would spend. "Look, I'll show you something," he says, unrolling his Racing Post. "Every day I write this down." There, in the top right corner of the paper, is one word: discipline. "Always with three exclamation marks, always in red, and always underlined."

Nearby, Alastair, a 67-year-old from Crieff, is "paddock picking" – betting on horses going by their appearance in the parade ring. This complex judgment is based on multiple variables, personal preferences and hunches. A horse may be rejected if its coat looks dull, or if it tosses its head, or if its ears seem too small, or 1,000 other things.

Alastair has a woolly hat pulled low over his eyes, and a pair of binoculars slung round his neck. He appears every inch the traditional punter. But this is deceptive. He makes wagers using a mobile phone connected to the internet site Betfair with which he has an account. "I've made a few bob," he says. "It's like a puzzle you're trying to solve. And when you do, you're quite pleased with yourself. You think you'll never be poor again."

Online betting is huge, and bookmakers here have been swept along by the digital tide. While each trackside bookie has a frontman barking odds, there is also a second man working on a laptop, beneath a waterproof shelter, connected to the Betdaq exchange. This allows the bookie to offer odds on other races around the country, and to adjust their odds depending on what the other bookies are doing.

It's more like the stock exchange than what you might expect from a day at the races. It won't be long, everyone says, before the old fractional odds are replaced by decimalisation.

Billy Morton, who works the computer for his father, 72-year-old Tommy Morton, does not entirely approve of this technology. "It's taking the skill out of bookmaking," he says. "Traditionally, you couldn't be a bookmaker if you couldn't count. Now there's software that will do that for you."

Tommy Morton is wearing a dark pinstripe suit and a black leather cap. He started as a bookie in 1957, and seems entirely at ease on his stand, removing his hands from his pockets only to transfer great wads of cash between different parts of his jacket.

"It's unbelievable what people ask you for," he says. "I had an old woman come up to me in Perth once. I was impatient with her – 'Whit ur ye wantin'?' When she put on a thousand pound, I almost drapped. She was putting that on for somebody else, and then she put on a tenner for herself. Well, the thousand-pound bet lost, but the tenner came in." Morton laughs. For a bookie, this is an especially good story.

In the last minutes before each race, there's a flurry of betting. "Twenty pound on number two," one man asks. "Oh, Jesus Christ almighty!" laughs a bookie, doubting the horses chances. "Naw," says the man, handing over his note, "he's nuthin' tae dae wi' it."

The minimum bet is two quid, and there are plenty of punters whose stake comes in coins rather than paper. Plenty, too, though, who'll drop hundreds or even thousands at a time. These are known as "big layers" but they look much the same as the punters with the jangling stake. Maybe their shoes are a little less scuffed, but that's about all.

To a newcomer like myself, the horse racing itself is anti-climactic, less colourful than the people who follow it. The best thing is to join the photographers at the side of the fences to watch the horses come over. The ground shakes as they pass.

Up in the stand, everyone's having a great time, their appreciation oiled by Friday afternoon drinks. It's mostly men, but there are a few young women, fake tans doing nothing to keep out the Ayrshire cold. One whoops when her horse comes in. "Yeah! We won!" She hugs her friend. "We won four pounds!"

Ahead of the last race I join trainer Jim Goldie as he saddles up his horse, a nine-year-old bay mare which he bred himself. "It's badly named," he laughs. "Destiny Hill. The trouble is it's slow in getting up the hill." He leans in close to the animal. "But today's going to be the day, isn't it hen?"

Goldie, a big man of 54, is arguably Scotland's best flat race trainer, with around 400 victories to his credit. His ultimate ambition, he says, would be to win a Grand National. "But then I'd want to win two."

He's an eternal optimist, sure that his horse will win today. "They say a man will never commit suicide if he's bred a foal," he says. "Because he'll always think, 'I wonder if that's going to be the next champion?'"

The three-mile race begins and Destiny Hill starts well. "Go on, Destiny!" Goldie yells. "Go on, girl!" But it's not to be; she comes in fourth. "Not a disaster," he smiles, somewhat grimly, walking back to the paddock.

It's the end of the day, the sun beginning to set. The bookies are packing up, jockeys showering the mud and bruises, punters swallowing the dregs of lager or champagne. There's a twilight glow over the course, giving an unexpected beauty to the ripped slips and dog-ends.

Tommy Morton takes a last look around, adjusts his leather cap with a swallow-tattooed hand and makes the eternal promise of the trackside bookie: "Back tomorrow."

In a place where no outcome is guaranteed, that much at least is a dead cert.