UPON RETIREMENT ....

​Horse racing must be one of the best recorded of all sports, with biographies and accounts going back to very nearly the time when the sport first had rules imposed upon it. Of course, what is one man’s account of an incident may not tally with another man’s account and this is especially true when it comes to controversial finishes to races. Yet it is good to have opposing views otherwise the first account would go into history as the true account. Horse racing is not war, where history is always penned by the victor. This is why I would encourage a jockey or trainer on retirement to pen their autobiography or memoir as their account of their career, and it matters little how successful they were, adds to the historical record of the sport. Truth, though, must be central to the stories told, with no story left in the shadows for the reader to interpret.
In what is an otherwise highly readable and enlightening book, ‘If Horses Could Talk’, the remarkable Gary Witheford writes about a northern trainer ‘someone regarded as a good trainer’ who during a compulsory stalls test for one of his horses, and witnessed by Gary and four stalls handlers, beat a young horse both during the loading process and when it was in the stall. This incident had witnesses; it was not simply a case of Gary’s word against this unnamed northern trainer. We need to rid the sport of such people. Indeed, if I were Gary, or one of the stalls handlers, I would be disappointed with myself if I did not report the trainer’s cruelty to an appropriate authority. By naming him in his book, Gary could have brought some kind of retribution upon this reprehensible individual. This is not personal criticism of Gary Witheford as it is possible he was advised by his publisher not to the name the man, though in the naïve way I see the world, truth should always come before either caution or reputation.
Some of the favourite biographies I have in my small racing library were written before I was born, or at least during my childhood, as they spark both interest and the imagination as I have little knowledge of the people, horses and in some cases racecourses, they highlight. ‘Men and Horses I Have Known’ by the Hon. George Lambton recounts the days of the early steeplechase meetings when he was a jockey, a time so far back Britain seems a completely different country. Yet George Lambton is known for being one of the great Newmarket flat trainers. Being a gentleman, a country gentleman with Lords and Ladies as family, I have no doubt Lambton refrained from scandalising anyone who he was associated with socially. But that does not infer he lied to save anyone’s reputation. He was a gentleman; he simply did not discuss in his book any subject he would not discuss outside of friends and family.
These days the World Wide Web allows any old nobody to achieve publication. I am a published author myself, which clearly demonstrates how easy it can be. All the writer has to do is to sit behind the laptop day after day until he has written to a point where no more can be written. Then it is a case of edit, rewrite and edit again. Do not, though, ask a friend or loved-one to read your manuscript. That will only complicate matters as they will be either overly complimentary or overly critical. If you are happy, you have reached the point when a professional is required.
Never publish, even if you have a masters degree in English, without having the manuscript ‘professionally’ edited, and by ‘professionally edited’ I mean by someone who earns their living by doing just that, and preferably by someone who for a good few years was employed by a publishing company as an editor. It is too easy when reading your own material to read what you meant to write and to miss the typographical error you might expect spellcheck or Grammerly or some such programme to highlight on your behalf. Don’t, though, get hung up on small errors, or whether the commas before and after ‘though’ are necessary.
It may cost upwards of £400 to employ the services of an editor but they are worth every penny. To publish as an e-book will perhaps run to another £300 and if you want to see your name down the spine of a paperback it will be perhaps £300 to £500. There are many companies out-there set-up to assist the independent author into print. It is always advisable to seek quotes from three or four before signing on the dotted line. Then there will be the cost of promoting and marketing your book, though as you are a ‘name’, with access to friends and colleagues who work in the media, they perhaps will pay you to talk about your career and your book.
Do not believe you do not have a story to tell. You do. Every jockey and trainer has lived a life worth recording, if only for cross-referencing with the tales told by the better-known, those fortunate to be better blessed. The journeyman jockey has lived a different life to the classic winning jockey, even if their paths criss-crossed a thousand times, and the trainer who struggled on with third-rate home-breds can tell about a life in racing far removed from the trainer who only knew thoroughbreds with the best of pedigrees.
These people, the dispensable ones, perhaps, are where the life-blood of the sport can be found. It is within the realms of their hopes and disappointments, their hard-fought victories and dedication to the everyday, where the racing truth must stem, even if we, the naïve enthusiast, find it as unpalatable as some of the chapters in A.P. McCoy’s ‘My Autobiography’.