The Sport of Queens Read online

  DICK FRANCIS

  The Sport of Queens

  An Autobiography

  THE DICK FRANCIS LIBRARY

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  ONE Colt on a Donkey

  TWO Rings and Wings

  THREE Under Starter’s Orders

  FOUR Black, Gold Sleeves, Red Cap

  FIVE It’s an Up and Down Life

  SIX Riders and Routine

  SEVEN Horses

  EIGHT Courses

  NINE Chase Me a Steeple

  TEN The Good Years

  ELEVEN America

  TWELVE Devon Loch, 1956

  THIRTEEN Afterwards, 1957–1981

  Illustrations

  The author, aged thirteen

  Twenty years later

  Roimond in the 1950 Grand National

  The National Hunt Steeplechase, 1948

  Possible winning at Aintree

  Fighting Line and author falling at Sandown Park

  Finnure at Liverpool, 1950

  Silver Fame winning the Golden Miller Chase, 1950

  H.M. the Queen Mother’s M’as-Tu-Vu

  Mass depression at the first fence, Aintree 1951

  Parading Miss Dorothy Paget’s Mont Tremblant (© Fox Photos)

  In the parade ring before the 1956 Grand National (© Central Press)

  John Hole leads out Devon Loch Becher’s Brook second time round (© Sport & General)

  The Royal party on top of the stands (© Primrose Productions Ltd)

  Devon Loch’s collapse Sandown Park, March 1956 ( © Fox Photos)

  Lochroe jumping the water at Sandown

  Crudwell, after winning the Welsh National, 1956

  Judging hunters in 1980

  In the jockeys’ changing room at Newbury, 1981

  Books by Dick Francis and Felix Francis

  DEAD HEAT

  SILKS

  EVEN MONEY

  CROSSFIRE

  Books by Dick Francis

  THE SPORT OF QUEENS (autobiography)

  DEAD CERT

  NERVE

  FOR KICKS

  ODDS AGAINST

  FLYING FINISH

  BLOOD SPORT

  FORFEIT

  ENQUIRY

  RAT RACE

  BONECRACK

  SMOKESCREEN

  SLAY-RIDE

  KNOCK DOWN

  HIGH STAKES

  IN THE FRAME

  RISK

  TRIAL RUN

  WHIP HAND

  REFLEX

  TWICE SHY

  BANKER

  THE DANGER

  PROOF

  BREAK IN

  LESTER: THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY

  BQLT

  HOT MONEY

  THE EDGE

  STRAIGHT

  LONGSHOT

  COMEBACK

  DRIVING FORCE

  DECIDER

  WILD HORSES

  COME TO GRIEF

  TO THE HILT

  10-lb PENALTY

  FIELD OF 13

  SECOND WIND

  SHATTERED

  UNDER ORDERS

  for

  MERRICK & FELIX

  my sons

  DEVON LOCH rose to the last fence confidently, and landed cleanly. Behind him lay more than four miles and the thirty fences of the Grand National Steeplechase, and in front, only a few hundred yards stretched to the winning post.

  In all my life I have never experienced a greater joy than the knowledge that I was about to win the National.

  As we drew away from E.S.B. the cheers of the crowds greeting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s great horse seemed to echo my own exhilaration. I had no anxieties. Devon Loch was galloping fast, incredibly fresh after the long race, and I had only to keep him going collectedly in the easy rhythm he had established.

  The winning post drew rapidly nearer, the cheers were coming to a buffeting crescendo, and I was rejoicing that I was being a partner in fulfilling the dream of the horse’s Royal owner. There was less than fifty yards of flat green grass to cover, and in about ten more strides we would have been home.

  The calamity which overtook us was sudden, terrible, and completely without warning to either the horse or me. In one stride he was bounding smoothly along, a poem of controlled motion; in the next, his hind legs stiffened and refused to function. He fell flat on his belly, his limbs splayed out sideways and backwards in unnatural angles, and when he stood up he could hardly move.

  Even then, if he could have got going again he might still have had a chance, because we had been a long way clear of E.S.B.: but the rhythm was shattered, the dream was over, and the race was lost.

  Every steeplechase jockey has two ambitions. One is to ride more winners than anyone else in one season, and become Champion Jockey for that year. The other is to win the Grand National at Aintree. This is the story of how with great good fortune I achieved the first, and came so heartbreakingly close to the second.

  1

  Colt on a Donkey

  I LEARNED to ride when I was five, on a donkey.

  I rode without a saddle, partly because it was a pet theory of my father’s that riding bareback was the best way to learn balance, but mostly because there was, anyway, no saddle to fit her high bony back.

  As soon as he saw me urging this long-suffering animal with more enthusiasm than style over a very small rail fence, my elder brother offered me the princely sum of sixpence, if I could jump the fence sitting backwards. At that time I was saving all my pocket money to buy a toy farm, so this offer could not be ignored. I turned round awkwardly with my knees pressed hard into her flanks, pointed the donkey’s head at the fence, and kicked.

  The donkey started off, and I went head first over her tail.

  When my brother could control his mirth at this event he collected the moke, who was fortunately too lazy to run away, and returned me to her back. We went through this programme twice more, and it became obvious that my brother’s laughter was beginning to cause him considerable pain.

  However, after a pause, during which I rubbed the parts of me which had hit the ground, and my brother rubbed his stomach, gasped for breath, and wiped the tears from his cheeks, we tried again.

  He thought his sixpence was quite safe, but I wanted my farm very much.

  This time I stayed on until the donkey jumped, but we landed on opposite sides of the fence.

  Finally, with my nine-year-old brother shouting and chasing us with a waving stick, the donkey and I jumped the fence together, landed together, and came precariously to a halt.

  The sixpence was solemnly handed over, and in this way I earned my first riding fee. In my heart, from that moment, I became a professional horseman.

  The donkey was our constant holiday companion. She lived a peaceful existence for nine months of the year on my grandfather’s farm in Pembrokeshire, but during every Easter and summer school holidays, and occasionally at Christmas too, she was stirred to reluctant activity by two pitiless small boys. Often, when we had managed to borrow a neighbouring donkey as well, we went on long and roundabout journeys, meeting hair-raising and imaginary adventures on the way.

  The fields of Coedcanlas, my grandfather’s farm, sloped down to the Cleddeau estuary, and rose and fell over the surrounding hills, so that we had a large and exciting terrain for our explorations, and could get comfortably beyond the range of even the loudest grown-up voice calling us in at bedtime.

  On other days we harnessed the donkeys into donkey-carts, and staged spectacular chariot races of several laps around a small rough field. With fearsome yells and much carrot-dangling we managed to make the donkeys break into a slow trot
, but by the end of each half-mile event they were hardly out of breath, while we were quite spent from our exertions.

  We loved the farm. It was our mother’s home, and I was born there.

  The farmhouse was large, creeper-grown, and whitewashed, with solid buttressy walls six feet thick. I used to lie full length on my stomach on the window seats in the deep embrasures, looking out of the window, with my feet to the middle of the room. The house was sunk into the ground, so that one had to go down into the hall, and there was a short outside staircase which led directly, through a trellised archway covered with wistaria, to the bedrooms on the first floor. Mercifully much older than the hideous architecture which has been disfiguring the Welsh landscape for the last hundred and fifty years, it folded gently into its surroundings, instead of glaring from them aggressively in orange brick.

  Willie Thomas was a great man in the Victorian tradition. He ruled his children with a firm hand, even after they had grown up and married, and his idea of a good upbringing for his grandchildren was that they should be ‘seen and not heard’. Nevertheless he was a kind man, and he often took my brother and me with him while he drove round his farm in his float.

  I remember him as being a tall man, but this is probably because I was a child looking up at him, for he died when I was ten. Certainly he was a very popular man, and as his house was open in welcome to anyone who cared to call there, it was always full of people.

  My grandmother, who usually had one or more of her five children living with her, with their husbands or wives, presided over her large and constantly changing household with astonishing calm, and everything ran with the ease of a friendly hotel. A great deal of hard work, however, was needed to give this effect, for there was no electricity, and there were no local shops.

  Nearly all our food came from the farm itself. Butter and cheese were made in the dairy, and twice a week the great kitchen would be filled with the unique warm winy smell of bread baking. Here too the hams were smoked, the fruit and vegetables were preserved, and large barrels of good beer were brewed every month for the thirsty farm workers who sat at the long scrubbed tables every day for their dinner.

  Although the smells and warmth and friendliness of the kitchen were enticing, I spent very little time there. More exciting things, I felt, were going on outside, in the absorbing world of men.

  The stables, of course, drew me most. My grandfather rode to hounds regularly two or three days a week, and he was justly proud of his hunters, which he used to breed with great care and success. I spent hours with the foals, fondling and talking to them, and very gradually being able to distinguish which of them was likely to develop well in conformation.

  I did not often see the hunters in action, because although we usually went down to Coedcanlas for Christmas, Father could not stay more than a few days. Douglas, my brother, was for years as a child liable to get tubercular lesions in his lungs if he stayed long near a town, so he lived at the farm, and slept in a summer chalet in the garden. How I envied him his ill health, as I was taken home, hearing plans for hunts I would not see, and with the last of the Christmas turkeys not yet picked clean.

  In the Easter and summer holidays, my mother and father often sent me alone on the train to Pembrokeshire, under the friendly eye of the guard. I felt immensely important and independent, and I deeply resented the mothering instincts of ladies in railway carriages, though I usually accepted their chocolate. Elderly gentlemen, who either took no notice of me at all, or gravely offered me The Times crossword puzzle as a suitable way for a boy of seven to pass a tedious journey, were the companions I approved of.

  One winter, however, Father stayed down to enjoy a few weeks’ hunting in his native country, and I, theoretically, was to be a companion to my grandmother, who happened at that moment to be living comparatively alone. I neglected her shamefully, for although I was much too small to be mounted, I begged and cajoled every day until someone took me to the meet in a trap or by car.

  On rare days the meet was on the other side of the estuary, about six miles from Coedcanlas in a straight line, but almost thirty miles by road and the bridge up the river at Haverfordwest. To avoid the long hack by the land route, it was my grandfather’s custom, on reasonably calm days, to take his horses across by boat. He had a large flat-bottomed boat like a ferry, with plenty of room, not only for all his friends and their mounts, but for the pack of hounds as well.

  The embarkation was a hilarious affair, owing to the steps which had earlier been taken to keep out the cold, but after everyone was safely aboard, the boat moved sedately off, and we crossed the mile of water in good style.

  In the summer Father sometimes took horses across the estuary to shows, but instead of using the ferry he went over in a rowing boat, and swam the horses across beside him. I went so seldom on these water journeys that they were a great adventure for me, but Father had been doing it all his life, for he, like Mother, was Pembrokeshire born and bred.

  They left Wales after the 1914–18 war, when Father returned from France with three pips on his shoulder and no job, and settled down in the Whaddon Chase country, so that Father’s abilities in the hunting field and the show ring could be put to good use. He first went to Bishop’s, the fashionable hunting stables which was patronised by the Duke of Windsor, then Prince of Wales, and many of his friends, but the yard was burnt down a few years later.

  During most of my childhood Father was the manager of W. J. Smith’s Hunting Stables at Holyport, near Maidenhead, for after the fire Horace Smith at once asked Father if he would come and work for him.

  Horace Smith’s Riding School in Cadogan Place, London, was already very well known, and many of the Royal Family were among his pupils and patrons. Smith was also an authority on harness horses, but these having been largely pensioned off by the internal combustion engine, he had decided to open a new stables in the country to deal chiefly in hunters, and he was badly needing someone with expert knowledge to run it for him.

  A small yard of about fifteen boxes had been bought, and Father and Horace Smith set off together on a series of journeys all over the country, and to Ireland, to buy suitable horses. Among his other talents Father had a flair for hunters. He knew which to buy, and which to leave alone, and soon Horace Smith relied entirely on Father’s judgement, and gave him a free hand with them. Mr Smith was well rewarded. In two years the business had outgrown the small yard to such an extent that the large stables at Holyport was acquired, with its sixty boxes, large paddocks, and its famous indoor riding school.

  Here we moved when I was seven, and for the next ten years we lived in the big bungalow beside the yard, where Horace Smith himself lived later. In those days he spent most of his time in London, running his riding school there, and he only came down to Holyport once or twice a week to discuss the business with Father, and to arrange exchanges of horses between the two establishments. Hacks and ponies were at first sent down from London if anyone wanted to hire or buy one in the country, but after the move to Holyport a second riding school was started there, with a good choice of hacks and ponies always on hand. A riding master, Jack Grayston, was appointed, and he was kept very busy.

  Although Father dealt with the hacks and ponies as well, his chief interest was always in the hunters, and as he bought young horses, trained, and resold them, he soon built up a reputation for the Stables of having for sale some of the best hunters in England.

  I was extremely fortunate in the circumstances of my father’s job, and few boys can ever have had more opportunity than I had of learning to ride every possible sort of pony. Father had about eight or nine nagsmen training the hunters under his direction, but they were too big and heavy for young and small ponies, so that Douglas and I had a clear field.

  All little boys, I suppose, like to play at doing their father’s job, and at first we felt very important when we were allowed to ride the ponies in the yard. As we learned more though, the make-believe faded away, and riding beca
me for us both a passionate and all-absorbing interest.

  Until his health improved when he was about fourteen, Douglas only lived with us at Holyport for short periods, and it was his turn to envy me, as .he left me riding the ponies, and went back to his clear sea air.

  For me, it was school that was the intolerable interruption of the serious business of life. I considered the long hours of arithmetic and history a thorough waste of time, and begged every day to be allowed to stay at home. Father did not care whether I went or not, so it was entirely due to Mother’s firmness that I attended school at all. Employing some determination and a lot of guile, however, I managed to average only three days a week.

  Neither Douglas nor I ever had an official riding lesson. We learned by trial and error, and the errors were liable to be corrected by Father roaring at us from a distance.

  ‘Dick, keep your elbows in,’ or ‘Sit up boy, sit up.’

  Mostly we listened to the riding master when he was teaching other children, and silently followed his advice.

  Owing to the number and variety of animals we rode, Douglas and I very soon became fair judges of good and bad ponies. After a while it seemed natural to us to try to correct the faults of the particular pony we were concentrating on, and by the time I was seven or eight I was teaching the bad ponies what the good ponies had already taught me.

  Tentatively at first, but with increasing confidence, we would teach a coltish young pony to walk collectedly, or calm a nervous one with quiet talking and fondling, or ride a wicked one hard until it was too tired to play tricks. Gradually, when new ponies came into the yard, Father would say:

  ‘Douglas, hop on this one and see if she is any good.’ And sometimes, ‘Dick, what sort of a mouth has this old thing got?’

  As we progressed also, the riding master used to ask us to give his pupils a lead, when they were not doing too well, or to show them how to get their ponies to jump.

  I suppose the only thing which saved us from being horribly swollen-headed little boys, was the knowledge, drummed into us by Father, the nagsmen, and the ponies themselves, that however much we learned, there would always be more to learn. We were never allowed to be satisfied with what we had achieved, never encouraged to think we were any good, always exhorted to greater efforts. I now know that these admonitions, instilled into me at such an early age, were very sensible. Year by year I still find that there is always more to learn, and that it is dangerous to begin to be complacent about one’s skill; an unexpected and painful fall is a rough disillusionment.