a heartily recommended racing book.

​Do you remember the day George Baker, trained by George Baker was ridden by George Baker? A one-off bit of fun that doubtless will never be repeated.
What will be repeated, sadly, as the sport of horse racing is as dangerous an occupation as bull-fighting is to the bull, is that one jockey or another will suffer a serious injury sooner or later, as happened to George Baker at St.Moritz in Switzerland one quiet Sunday in February 2017.
If anyone wants to get up to speed with his accident, and subsequent recovery, I heartily recommend his autobiography ‘Taking My Time’. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say it is the most readable and interesting biography of a flat jockey of recent times. Look, the biographies of Sir Gordon Richards, Rae Johnstone, Charlie Elliott etc, will always have greater interest simply because their careers were before the time of anyone of pensionable age and because of it these books are as much history books as they are racing books, allowing the reader an insight into the sport and a time long gone. But of all the more recently published biographies of flat jockey ‘Taking My Time’ is, in my estimation, by far the best.
Being largely, accept where animals in general and horses are particular are concerned, quite a cold and dispassionate sort of curmudgeon, I am rarely shocked by anything I read or see on the telly but one paragraph in the final chapter, ‘A Slightly Changed Man’, caught me by surprise. For many months after the accident George was in no fit state to be ‘in charge of anything’ and as neither his own nor his wife’s current accounts amounted to much, his wife, Nicola was having to use George’s credit cards to pay household bills. It seemed reasonable to expect the bank to release some of the money in George’s other accounts to make life easier for her. Not only did she have her husband in hospital but she had a small baby to care for, not that her local bank cared much for her difficulties as they would not even talk to her, let alone help. So, accumulating more expense, she had to acquire a power of attorney. I hope the Bakers changed banks once the tide had turned and they had time to breathe again. Their insurance company was equally unhelpful, apparently. They were also in the process of selling their house and because it was in George’s name, she was not legally entitled to sign any paperwork! There are bastards in this world and then there are the financial institutions.
For obvious reasons half of this book is taken over by the accident and George’s road to recovery. What shines through from the moment it was clear that his injuries were far from ordinary, was the way, and in complete contrast to how his bank and insurance company behaved, his friends and the racing community rallied around to help first his wife and then George himself. For example, within three hours of Nicola receiving the call from George’s agent, Jamie Osborne, the trainer of the horse George was riding at St. Moritz, had organised for her to be on flight to Switzerland and she was at his bedside before the end of the afternoon.
What also comes from this book is honesty. At no point does George, or his co-writer Tom Peacock, ask the reader to pity George. In fact, as insights into serious brain injuries go, this is a very informative book. And as he has made a more than partial recovery, which in the early days seemed, to his many friends, unlikely, it is a book high on hope for anyone who is presently having to cope with loved-ones in a similar desperate situation.
You’ll doubtless find the book on either the Racing Post or Injured Jockeys Fund (from where I bought the book) websites. Not only is it a good read, I’m sure George is in need of the royalties. Well, whether he is need of them or not, he deserves his book to sell well.