Well saddled with solitary opinion formed in solitude

CELEBRITY FANS:ANTHONY CRONIN horse racing

When did you become interested in horse racing?

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t into it. As soon as I could read I read the newspaper and I was reading the racing page, or reading it after a fashion – the names of the horses and that sort of thing.

Do you come from a horsey background?

No, except that everybody I seemed to know had some interest in horse racing.

Did you ever get up on a horse?

Like everybody else in this country, I have been on horses, but I wouldn’t call it riding.

Do you remember going to your first race meeting?

I do. It was at the old Baldoyle racecourse, which is gone now. It was a Whit Bank Holiday weekend in the early 1940s. I remember the day very well. I went with a couple of mates from school. I backed winners, too.

You were at boarding school in Blackrock College. How did you bet on horses from there?

I used to send bets out at school. I wasn’t alone in that. You’d get a day boy to do the job for you.

How have you fared over the years as a punter?

You only remember, in the long run, winners. You remember bad aftermaths, maybe, and being broke, but you don’t remember names of losers unless there’s something interesting about the circumstances.

What winners come to mind?

I remember very much being into Tulyar. I was in London at the time and it seemed to strike me before it struck other people he was doing everything right. He beat a very fast horse over seven furlongs at Hurst Park. Then he went to Lingfield and won the Derby Trial in 1952 over the full derby distance. I backed him two or three times at fairly long odds. I didn’t have much money unfortunately, but I did the best I could.

The night before the Epsom Derby there used to be this bookmakers’ dinner, and Charlie Smirke, who rode him, made a speech telling the nation to back him. The nation seemingly did. I think he started at 11 to 2 but I backed him at 100 to 6 and 100 to 7.

Tulyar was bought by the Irish government afterwards to stand at the National Stud for what was then an enormous sum and there was controversy about it. I remember the jockey Michael Beary sent a telegram to the government congratulating them and saying they had bought the best horse in the world from five furlongs to five miles. Of course he never ran over five furlongs or five miles. He didn’t strive in stud. Something went physically wrong with him.

How is racing different to other sports?

It’s different in that everybody is a participant. Whenever you have a bet you’re competing. You could nearly say that when you form an opinion, you’re participating. If you go to a football game, you’re shouting enthusiastically at the same moment as 30,000 or 40,000 other people are shouting enthusiastically, but that I don’t care for as much as for the solitary opinion formed in solitude.

Do you have romantic attachments to horses?

Not really. You’re looking for the winner. It’s not like the attachment to Bolton Wanderers or, I suppose on a somewhat higher plane, Manchester United. Horses come and go.

What’s the best advice you got about horse racing?

The best advice I’ve ever given myself is not to pay much attention to information unless, perhaps, it’s from particular people at particular times. As to what are normally called “tips” and people running around giving you stuff that’s second-hand, don’t pay any attention whatsoever to it. Stick to the formbook – it’s the best guide.

Does horse racing not lend itself to insider trading?

What a trainer can tell you is that the horse is fit and well and that he’s trying – but that’s less of a factor these days than it used to be – and he can also hazard a more informed opinion than you might be able to about a horse’s staying potential if he was trying new distances, but he can’t tell you much otherwise that isn’t there for you to see.

As to owners’ tips, they’re useless, generally speaking, highly misleading, because so often they’re being told lies themselves.

And jockeys’ tips are notorious. I remember as a child, a man who was delivering milk was pointed out to me and I was told how many acres he once used to own, but his sister married Johnny Dines, who was a famous Newmarket lightweight in those days; and what a misfortune that was, and that he no longer had all that acreage. The story may be apocryphal. I never checked out whether a McMahon’s sister married Johnny Dines, but that’s what was said to me.

Anthony Cronin’s most recent collection of poems, The Fall, is published by New Island.

In conversation with Richard Fitzpatrick