the final furlong run.

​The Moores, Taaffes, Walshes, Baldings, Carberrys etc are regularly cited when journalists trot out the names of famous racing dynasties; the Tinklers less so, which is an oversight in need of rectification.
I am also guilty of overlooking the contribution to racing provided by the Tinklers during the last forty or so years. Of course, as a family there is an absence of big gold trophies on the mantlepiece, no Grand National success, no Derby or Ascot Gold Cup. Yet as a family collective they are a success story born out of virtually nothing but grit and determination. Colin senior, Marie, Colin junior, Nigel, Kim, Andrew and a few lesser known Tinklers that perhaps I have overlooked.
I have always admired Nigel Tinkler as a trainer and I am of the opinion his success rate should be rewarded by one of the major owners sending him a decently-bred horse or two. Nigel also gives opportunities to female riders, more so than many of his training colleagues. But this article is not about Nigel but his father Colin as I have just finished reading his autobiography ‘A Furlong To Go’.
This book is an entertaining read, as Colin Tinkler wanted it to be. He never set out for the book to win awards, I’m sure. The book has its faults, especially during the chapter ‘The Foal Business’ where someone skimped on the proofreading – an arduous task for a writer who by the time of the final proofing is heartily sick of looking at ‘this child that he has risen from the very depths of his soul’. I know, I’ve been there. – where pages, 369, 370, 371 and 372 are in the wrong order, rendering the narrative a bit of a puzzle.
And those numbers demonstrate the main fault of the book as at 479 pages - including the full record of the Full Circle syndicate winners – it is too long, in desperate need, as I am on occasion, of a good editor. Two of the chapters run to 66 pages, another to 50. An editor would have mentioned this over-run and the book would have benefited.
It is, though, I stress, far from the worst book in my racing library. Colin Tinkler was born in 1926, which is a date that to his grandkids must seem like a million-years-ago. He began the introduction of the book ‘I’m Colin Howson Tinkler, the senior member of the Tinkler Racing Clan’, and though the narrative meanders through his life, what comes through to the reader is his pride in his family and the dynasty that he started with his ex-wife Marie, the first really seriously-talented female flat jockey.
I thought for a while, not really knowing anything about the Tinklers, that the book would be actually come across as a love-song to Marie, the love of his life, and I was genuinely surprised when he announced that the marriage eventually failed and they separated and finally divorced. He said it was amicable, which I am sure it was, though I suspect Marie would have given a different account of the whys and wherefores than the one Colin provided. It is a pity, given her importance to the development of the female jockeys movement, if I can call it a movement, that Marie did not also pen an autobiography. Not to dish whatever dirt there was to dish on her former husband but on being a woman in what was at the time she was riding a very male dominated sport.
When I write my opinions on the books of others, I try not to give away too much of the ‘story-line’. I rarely read the introduction to any book and never what is written on the inside cover. I want the story to unfold from chapter to chapter and as I knew very little about the Tinklers before reading Colin’s autobiography there was always an element of ‘what comes next’ and I would like anyone who tracks down a copy of the book to follow the same path. On the final page, before the appendices noting the history of winners for Full Circle, his innovative and successful syndicate, he begins the final paragraph with ‘Sadly, all good things come to an end, nothing lasts forever. One day there will be no tomorrows for me …’ He died aged 87 or 89 according to which obituary you read and whether his ashes were scattered to the winds, as he suggested in that final paragraph, I do not know. I suspect his last wish at his last breath was the hope that in death he would be reunited with Marie, though whether she would have wanted that or not only her family might know.
I am unable to conclude from the book if I would have approved of him in life, or at least that side of him that was a gambler, though, proving he really did not know when to stop writing, in a conclusion following the final paragraph he wrote ‘I thank you for taking the time and having the patience to read what I have written, I hope you have found it of interest and amusing. Glory to be, a writer who thanked his readers. A breath of fresh literary air. And yes, Colin, ‘A Furlong To Go’ was of interest and in part it was amusing.