Postcards from the World of Horse Racing

Nicholas Godfrey

Description

Postcards from the World of Horse Racing: Days Out on the Global Racing Road is the new book by international-racing expert Nicholas Godfrey. In a series of evocative, informative pieces from around the racing world, Godfrey visits 20 different countries on six continents, from unforgettable high-profile events at major racecourses - such as the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs or the Dubai World Cup at billion-dollar Meydan - to racing venues on the road less travelled - like Morocco, Uruguay and Switzerland, where they race on a frozen lake in St Moritz. Among those he encounters are America's mighty mare Zenyatta, Triple Crown hero American Pharoah and Black Caviar, the 'Wonder from Down Under'. As well as reliving his experiences, Godfrey prefaces each postcard with a how-to guide for those wishing to follow in his footsteps. Illustrated with a range of colour photographs, the book also features a foreword by Brough Scott, one of the most respected sportswriters in the business.

Sujets

• Horse racing

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785312717
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2017
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Nick Godfrey, 2017
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785312700
eBook ISBN 9781785312717
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Contents
Foreword By Brough Scott
Introduction
THE POSTCARDS
Argentina:
San Isidro
Australia:
Moonee Valley
Bendigo
Randwick
Belgium:
Waregem
France:
Longchamp
Dieppe
Germany:
Baden-Baden
Italy:
Pisa
Japan:
Tokyo
Ohi
Malaysia:
Penang Turf Club
Mauritius:
Champ de Mars
Morocco:
Casablanca-Anfa
Poland:
Sluzewiec
Qatar:
Al Rayyan
South Africa:
Kenilworth
Spain:
San Sebastian
Sweden:
Stromsholm
Bro Park
Switzerland:
St Moritz
Turkey:
Veliefendi
United Arab Emirates:
Jebel Ali
Meydan
Uruguay:
Maronas
USA:
Canterbury Park
Arlington Park
Mountaineer
Monmouth Park
Del Mar
Aqueduct
Fair Grounds
Hollywood Park (defunct)
Churchill Downs
Hialeah
Keeneland
Santa Anita
Gulfstream Park
Appendices
Acknowledgements
Sources
Books
Photographs
For Jane, Belle and George
San Francisco s calling us, the Giants and Mets will play
Stuart Murdoch
St Kilda, Coolangatta, Bondi Beach and Coogee Bay - I like the sound of their names
Elizabeth Morris
A note on the text
The majority of the pieces originally appeared in the Racing Post in truncated form and are reproduced by permission. Most of them have been extensively revised and updated until early 2017. Sincere thanks to Alan Byrne, the Racing Post s chief executive and editor-in-chief, for allowing use of the original material. All statistics have been provided by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities ( horseracingintfed.com ) and are reproduced by permission.
Foreword By Brough Scott
T HIS book reads like the ultimate racefan s globetrotting dream. Somehow Nick Godfrey has made it into a brilliantly written and wonderfully entertaining, atmospheric, encyclopaedic, highly educational reality.
You will meet Linda Thrash near Lake Superior, you will discover that 88 per cent of Moroccans want to own a horse, you will squirm with embarrassment when your bluff is called in Montevideo and you will find it hard not to wince when Christophe Soumillon blanks you after being disqualified in the Japan Cup.
This book quite literally puts Puck s girdle round the earth . It delights in small details in fractured English in Poland and harsh Ozzy in Australia, strange food stalls in Tokyo and esoteric boutiques in Los Angeles. There is a splendidly surreal moment when a Rolls-Royce appears across the frozen lake racetrack in St Moritz and out jumps Frankie Dettori, and a doomed message from the American Midwest: Bob Dylan was born in Minnesota but he got out as fast as his guitar could carry him. Perhaps I should have considered that before I entered a high stakes handicapping competition at homely Canterbury Park.
But it can also climb to majestic heights as you watch glory days with the likes of Zenyatta, Black Caviar and Rachel Alexandra, while every racegoer surely knows the big-race which one is he? confusion as American Pharoah readies for his victorious 2015 Breeders Cup swansong in Kentucky: And so to the Classic, for which they are ten deep around the pre-parade ring, every neck craned for a glimpse of American Pharoah. A flash of yellow from his saddlecloth provokes a cheer, though frankly the scene is reminiscent of when a safari spotter points out a distant leopard. Just nod and agree you can see it.
Often to the reader s disadvantage, many racing writers tend to major on their own special interest. There will be reams of drama without a context, a reliance on quotes at the expense of description, a study of the audience at the cost of the action. You don t get this with Nick Godfrey: you get the whole meal made highly palatable by his quirky mix of intelligence and enthusiasm, seasoned by a well-developed and highly necessary sense of the absurd.
I have known Nick for almost 30 years since he came to work for me at the Racing Post straight from Oxford. He hasn t been anywhere else since. Anywhere that is, except around the world in 40 racecourses and counting.
Introduction
P EOPLE sometimes ask why I have spent chunks of my life visiting racecourses around the world. In the Polish section of this book, international racing pioneer Barry Irwin offers an answer. Before I was a racing fan I was an athletics fan, track and field, explains the Team Valor principal, who has had runners on six continents. I always liked the foreign stuff better - it s always more mysterious and interesting, so when I started to get involved in horse racing it was the same thing. I was following Sea-Bird, even though I was living in California.
So there it is. It isn t necessarily better by any means, but it is differ ent, and therein lies the attraction. Or, to put it more simply, I like horse racing and I like travelling, and I ve been in the lucky position to have been able to combine the two. Call me an anorak, if you like. I couldn t really argue.
The world is full of horse racing, from Mongolia to Mexico, Baghdad to Budapest and most points in between. Admittedly, that does not always mean it is of the thoroughbred variety that dominates in major racing arenas like Europe, America and Australia, but the sport nevertheless exists in one form or another across six continents, fulfilling what seems to be some atavistic need in all four corners of the globe.
Since ancient times, human beings have felt the need to test their equine beasts of burden against each other, long before the modern-day thoroughbred was created in the late 17th and early 18th centuries when three stallions - the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Barb - were imported from the Middle East and north Africa and mated with British mares to produce a racehorse noted for its speed and endurance. This man-made construct heralded what is known as the Sport of Kings , an unfortunate epithet given that racing is the pastime of both princes and paupers, as anyone who has ever visited a racecourse or a betting shop must be well aware. There is an old saying which suggests that nobody who owns a yearling commits suicide; the same might be said of anyone who has 20 quid on something in the 3.30 at Plumpton.
If horse racing was exported alongside Britain s imperial ambitions around the world, its true origins were elsewhere. Chariot racing and bareback mounted races were both popular public entertainments for the Greeks and the Romans; horsemanship was highly developed in ancient civilisations such as Persia and Arabia. Their legacy is an established sport in more than 100 countries, give or take a few where it has fallen by the wayside (Israel, Portugal) or where there are rumours of new-builds (St Lucia, Portugal again) or revivals (Freudenau in Vienna).
Frankly, I have barely scratched the surface within these pages, which feature a series of one-off visits since my previous book On The Racing Road was published in 2007, detailing a nine-month round-the-world trip in 2005. After that journey, I wrote: I don t know if I will ever step out on the racing road again, though I suspect the odd flying visit will always be somewhere on the agenda. Once you step out of your everyday environment, it can be hard to sit still, even when circumstances dictate that you must.
Those flying visits , weekends away, provide the content for the postcards contained within these pages: I still like horse racing and I still like travelling, though family and work circumstances (plus lack of available funds) have long since precluded another extended trip.
Without wishing to sound overly self-righteous, generally speaking I have paid my own way, apart from welcome contributions in terms of expenses on occasion from the Racing Post or subsidies from various racing authorities. I was also keen to ensure some of the world s foremost racecourses and racedays were included - not to mention equine greats like Zenyatta, Black Caviar and American Pharoah, each of whom I was lucky enough to see in the flesh in their homelands.
As such, I have not ventured too far off the beaten track or taken the racing road less travelled, yet the multiplicity of horse racing around the world never ceases to amaze. There are racecourses almost everywhere: on several islands of the Caribbean, for instance, and a plethora of African nations such as Chad, Ghana and Namibia. Betting may be outlawed in most Islamic countries, but Dubai and Qatar are among the most influential horse racing nations on the planet. Although Hong Kong and Macau are gambling hotbeds of long standing, betting is also illegal in China - but that hasn t stopped a succession of entrepreneurs building racetracks in the hope it will one day be legalised. Despite a tiny population, they even have racing of a sort on the Falkland Islands with a once-a-year Boxing Day meeting. Despite decades of strife, racing has continued at Baghdad s Al-Amiriya racetrack, although it was said to have been taken over by the local mafia for a spell and become a target for fundamentalists opposed to gambling.
Then there is Mongolia. When the five-year-old gelding Mongolian Satu