clever coups or clever skullduggery?

​I am no fan of racing fiction based on skullduggery as it gives the reader, most of whom have no real interest in horse racing, the idea that the sport is inherently corrupt, which it is not. For those looking for racing fiction that celebrates rather than denigrates the sport, I do have on offer a collection of horse racing short stories, ‘Going To The Last’, all written a long-time ago and which you can purchase, if you glance to your right and up a bit, for a favourable price. I am not recommending you buy a copy and I am certainly not going to regale you with a sales pitch that might suggest your life will greatly improved by simply having the title on your bookshelf. All I am pointing out is that it is available. And in buying a copy you will have a rare book to add to all your populist titles. I will add that I am old; I could yet become homeless and destitute. The writers of the books you already have in your library are rich, while I am not. Is that fair? They are almost to a man or woman talented. Is that fair?
Chris Cook – he is talented - this week in his mid-week column in the Racing Post made much of Cartmel marketing the 50th anniversary, or was it the 40th? It is hard to believe it would be 50-years ago. Surely not? – Good God, I have just looked it up and it is the 50th anniversary, August 26th, 1974!
Anyway, horse racing writer of the year, Chris Cook was metaphorically shaking his finger at the good people of Cartmel for promoting their fixture on August 26th as a celebration of the Gay Future coup 50-years to the day. I began to read his piece slightly shaking my head at Chris Cook, not because I have a liking for successful skullduggery but because I have a soft spot for Cartmel, the most beautiful setting for a race meeting in the whole of the Union. If not the world. Knocks Happy Valley, Melbourne, Sha Tin, Longchamp and Saratoga into a cocked hat, whatever a cocked hat might be.
Yet, Chris Cook was right in his condemnation of successful and unsuccessful betting coups. They are a stain on the reputation of the sport and should not be celebrated as a win for the little man over corporate business. It is a fraudulent activity and wastes a lot of time for a lot of people. I did send an e-mail to the Racing Post reminding them the Cartmel coup should be given as the only example of fraud in the history of the sport and though that particular coup went astray, Barney Curley should not be lionised for the successful coups he masterminded. Fraud is fraud, even if the only misdemeanour carried out by Curley was taking the only phone-box at Bellewstown racecourse hostage to prevent bookmakers cutting their substantial losses if, as he did, Yellow Sam won the amateur riders’ race. In Curley’s case, at least in this instance, it was an honest gamble conducted in rather an ungentlemanly manner. Curley had no liking for bookmakers and choose to publicise his view of them in the only way that would hurt them most, through their pockets.
If anyone wants to know the a-to-z of the Bellowstown coup, there is no better way than through Nick Townsend’s book ‘The Sure Thing’, as good a book as you will ever read.
That is the thing about coups and gambles, they make fascinating stories, whether they succeed or fail. The Gay Future coup failed and yet I would suggest it is the most famous coup of them all. In my possession I have at least four books that deal exclusively with the people who set out to make a fortune by bending the rules a tiny bit. The aforementioned Nick Townsend book; ‘Great Racing Gambles & Frauds’ by Richard Onslow, though he only acted as editor and wrote the introduction, some of the contributors being Reg Green, George Ennor, John Tyrrel and Geoffrey Hamlyn. ‘Ringers and Rascals’ by one of my all-time favourite writers, David Ashforth, Paul Mathieu’s wonderful book ‘The Druid’s Lodge Confederacy’, perhaps the greatest example of clever fraudulence in the whole history of British racing.
There will be a gamble on a particular horse today, and when I say today, I do not suggest on this day the 7th of July 2024 a coup will be landed, but any today when someone happen to stumble across this ‘blog’. An owner will be told by his or her trainer that their horse has come on a bundle for its first race and they will back it accordingly, perhaps getting 20/1 and driving the price down to 8/1, with punters then witnessing the tumbling odds and availing themselves of the lesser prices before the horse goes off the 5/2 favourite. ‘Gamble landed,’ the headline will read. But not one that will stay long in the memory. Gambles are good for the sport, at least the honest ones.
I would like to believe the sport is so tightly observed these days by stewards, by bookmakers and the integrity units of the B.H.A. that skullduggery is a thing of the past - especially as Barney Curley is now long gone.