Racing: An American journeys through the heart of the National Hunt calendar with the amiability of a mug punter
I was well schooled in the superstitions that surround horse racing. If on the way to a race meeting in which they had a runner my parents saw a black cat, the sighting provoked the same horrified reaction as the sight of the Black Death had a few centuries before. None of their horses had ever won a race on a black cat day. Likewise, the presence of our much-loved family nanny at a race meeting was the kiss of death to success - so much so that the then youthful trainer, Edward O'Grady, proposed incentives to keep her at home.
Such superstitions are endemic in national hunt racing, American Bill Barich tells us in an entertaining book that charts one man's six-month voyage of discovery that ended in Cheltenham 12 months ago. "To prevent the fairies stealing a good horse, [Irish farmers] tied a red ribbon or a hazel twig to it, or they spat on it," Barich writes. Apparently Martin Pipe "believes the colour green is so unlucky he once sent an owner home . . . to change her dress". Thankfully, Pipe wears neither red shirt nor red socks, believing red too to be unlucky. Henrietta Knight, Best Mate's trainer, is addicted to repeating lucky habits. "Every . . . movement had to be . . . made . . . identical to Gold Cup days in the past," Barich writes of the 2004 Gold Cup. "She wore the same blue suit as before, the same blouse and hat, and her lucky pearls, of course, while [her husband] Terry Biddlecome retrieved his own lucky hat, a bashed-in old trilby, from the cupboard where it gathered dust between its annual one-off appearance." Putting a hex on the chief danger to Best Mate by backing it and not watching the race live are further essentials to training a Gold Cup winner, or three, so far as Knight is concerned.
The Cheltenham Festival in March each year is the annual climax of a deeply woven and symbiotic relationship between two cultures. When it comes to horses, Ireland, not yet quite as polarised between its rural and urban communities as England, retains an innate sense of understanding that has been largely lost across the water. Ireland has long provided England with good horses and Irish jockeys play the leading role in English racing. At home, the impact on the Irish psyche of a good horse works a kind of national magic. Vincent O'Brien's extraordinary achievements in Cheltenham after the war - four Gold Cups, three Champion Hurdles and 10 Supreme Novices' Hurdles - began the modern era splendidly for the Irish.
And then came Arkle. I still recall the sense of pride in 1964 watching on our new black and white television set as Arkle beat Mill House. Demi O'Byrne, today one of the biggest bloodstock buyers in the world for the Magnier/Tabor partnership, was then a veterinary student in Dublin. O'Byrne, no mean horseman himself, had gone out the country at a race meeting to watch Arkle taking on his ditches. "It was terrifying," he reported the next week to a crowd in Hartigans. "He stood back from his fences a full stride more than the other horses. They never stood a chance." For many, Arkle is synonymous with greatness, and is still spoken of fondly, as is Dawn Run, that great mare who uniquely won both Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup, although little space is given her in this book.
Barich approaches his task with all the amiability of a cheerful mug punter. Drawn by love in middle age to Dublin from California, he finds the Irish love affair with horses and National Hunt racing fascinating and is soon a Saturday afternoon regular in a Dublin pub, sipping his pint, picking horses off the newspaper and rushing around the corner to the local bookies to place a bet. Drawn into racing's mythology and characters, it's not long before he's speeding down the country, notebook in hand, to meet Jessie Harrington and Michael Hourigan and watching at close quarters the preparations of such stars as Moscow Flyer and Beef Or Salmon.
His inaugural trip to an Irish race meeting takes him to Gowran Park, an excellent place to begin a journey that will end in Cheltenham. Gowran, in its extravagantly bucolic setting, embodies all the delightful qualities of an Irish country race meeting. The last time I was there, which was a few years ago, a former minister for agriculture was standing up, making a book. Barich is, appropriately, filled with wonder: "It could have been 1914 . . . The atmosphere was so intimate and informal I felt as if I were . . . not a spectator but a participant. At the parade ring before the first race, I could have reached out and touched the circling horses."
Barich's odyssey through the heart of the National Hunt calendar is not free from wobbles. Anne, Duchess of Westminster, Arkle's owner, may have married a duke, but she was never "royal"; the Thurles sugar beet factory has been closed since the late 1980s and is therefore unlikely to have its "leavings" spread over Thurles racecourse; and Martin Pipe may well relate to horses "as if they're human beings", but he is hardly rewriting the training manual in doing so, as is inferred. In Tom Dreaper's day, as the man who looked after Flyingbolt once told me, grooms were encouraged to snooze in the boxes with the horses in order to create a special bond.
Well supported by colour photographs, Barich's leisurely story makes it seem as if we are hearing it by the gas fire of his Dublin local. The style is warm and chatty, but also perceptive: he sees the Irish passion for racing as "a streak of lightening in the blood", and a steeplechase "like a Hardy novel", unfolding at a "leisurely pace". His journey ends with Best Mate's third successive Gold Cup victory in 2004. It is surely even money that this latest convert to the sport is at this moment packing his bags, on his way to the Cotswolds for another thrilling Cheltenham Festival.
A Fine Place to Daydream by Bill Barich, Collins Willow, 297pp. £15.99
Peter Cunningham's most recent novel, The Taoiseach, is published by Hodder Headline Ireland