Racing Reflections

In his brilliant book 'Men & Horses I Have Known', George Lambton opens his first chapter with the words 'I think the details of anyone's childhood are always tedious, so I shall pass over my early days as briefly as possible...'

I couldn't agree more, so will not burden you with the details of mine: however, from the emails I receive from literally all over the world (I got one from Azerbaijan last month), I know that, with some of my readers, there is a certain curiosity as regards the creation of Jockeypedia and, indeed, its creator. Or creators.

One reader wanted to know how many people actually worked on Jockeypedia, stating that it couldn't possibly by the work of one person.

But it is..and that's me, George Wheeler, and I live on the south coast of England in a town called Wimborne. 

That's Wimborne Minster on the left. 

My age? I'm crowding 73, as you've asked, the age when a person wonders whether or not he should leave some tangible evidence - proof, if you like - that he actually existed. 

And I have a choice.

I can either write a book which no one will read or make a video that no one will watch.

Then again, I could just scribble a few notes here, as and when the urge compels me....

(fade up dreamy, yawn-inducing music)

As I write, it's early February, 2015. A glance out of the window reveals a light covering of snow as if a suspicious God's dusted the earth for fingerprints.

With Cheltenham still weeks away, and nothing better to do, I recall my first bet.

It was threepence win on a desperately slow jumper called Witty, which ran in the 1953 Grand National.

The joke was on me; Witty unseated his rider.

I got into horseracing through a friend of the family who could read but, because of his poor eyesight, struggled to write, so he asked me to write his bets out for him.

I was about seven.

Soon I was scanning the racing pages, consuming anything and everything to do with racing.

At school aged ten, I struggled with my twelve times table - but could recite every winner of the Grand National since Lottery, its first.

How someone placed a bet in those days may bear the telling.

Obviously there were no bookmakers as such, nor, of course, betting shops. 

Instead, we had Flo.

Flo lived in a small cottage, the front door of which was always unlocked. It was to Flo and her cottage you went to place a bet. 

You wrote your bet out on a piece of paper (say, one shilling win on Royal Tan), added your name to the bottom, wrapped the 'betting slip' around your shilling and give it to Flo.

She, in turn, would give it to the local 'bookmakers', a couple of likely lads with an eye to the main chance.

If your horse won, you would go back to Flo's. On her kitchen table would be a dozen or so amounts of money wrapped in their 'betting slips' with the lucky winner's name written on its outside.

I once had a tanner (sixpence) win treble up at Sandown.

I rushed round to Flo's the next morning and there, centre table, was a small, wrapped parcel with the name George on it.

Unwrapping it outside, I counted my winnings. Seventeen shillings and four pence!

Aged nine at the time, I'd had no trouble putting on a bet nor collecting the winnings.

And in those days, seventeen and six was an absolute fortune!

I felt like a millionaire......

What could you spend threepence on these days? I can't think of anything, but, in 1956, it got me a day at Royal Ascot. The date: Wednesday June 20, 1956.

I was born in Guildford, but raised in Chertsey, Surrey, just eight and a half miles away from Ascot racecourse - no distance at all for a racing-mad 14-year-old schoolboy with a bicycle.

Taking the day off school, I jumped on my bike and headed towards Berkshire. I hadn't a clue how to get to Ascot, but I knew it was only a mile or so from Virginia Water and I'd been to Virginia Waters before, trying to get Enid Blyton's autograph. 

Some lad at school had told me that she lived there in a house called Green Hedges. He was right about the name of the house but just a bit out on its location (she lived in Beaconsfield).

Arriving at Ascot, a problem struck me.

What on earth was I going to do with my bike? 

I couldn't take it into the racecourse, nor could I leave it outside.

I needed to think 'outside the box' as they call it these days.

The solution came some ten minutes later.

I was outside a house which possessed an enormous front garden. Plenty of room there to store a bike, I thought.

I knocked on the front door.

An elderly lady answered.

I introduced myself and related my problem.

'Could I possibly leave my bike with you until after the meeting. I'll give you threepence,' I added, hopefully.

As a schoolboy living on the outskirts of his economy, I couldn't offer more.

The elderly lady had a smile of sunshine.

'Why, certainly.' she said. 'I'll put it in the shed, just to make sure.'

Problem solved, I entered the racecourse.

It seems unbelievable now, but admission to certain parts of the course then was free.

Inside, I encountered my second problem. A large notice said 'Strictly no photography allowed on any part of the course.'

My heart sank - stuffed inside my trouser pocket was my Kodak Brownie 127 (a thirty shilling Christmas present from my brother).

The racing was brilliant: the Queen won the Royal Hunt Cup with Alexander and the crowd went mad, and the sixpence I'd left with Flo (placed on Manny Mercer's mount, Pitter Patter) was lost.