HORSE RACING IS NOT ABOUT HORSE RACING

Norton Howells

Description

The author attempts to become a professional gambler during the English flat racing seasons of 2012 and 2013. It describes his relationship with horse racing, the psychological aspects of winning and losing, and the effect of this obsession on day to day life. Likely to appeal to anyone who bets on horses and enjoys reading.

Sujets

• Horse racing

Informations

• Publié par: eBookPartnership.com
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783014071
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

HORSE RACING IS NOT ABOUT HORSE RACING
ANATOMY OF A SMALL TIME GAMBLER
2014 Norton Howells
Norton Howells has asserted his rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by eBookPartnership.com
First published in eBook format in 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78301-407-1
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
Contents
PART ONE: BEGINNINGS
PART TWO: 2000-2011
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
PART THREE: THE 2012 FLAT SEASON
PART FOUR: ENDINGS
BOOK 2 BEGINNING OVER AGAIN
SPRING
SUMMER
AUTUMN
AFTER THE END
PART ONE: BEGINNINGS
April 1 st , 2012
I wake on weekday mornings resenting the dictatorial alarm. It speaks to me - it pierces me: until you ve earned the right to rise at a time of your own choosing, I control you. Time to get up. Now.
I rise to face my impolite reflection, my well rehearsed routines.
Richard Hills, a jockey for thirty years, retired yesterday (the opening day of the flat season). Never a stylish horseman, he seldom earned unqualified praise but won his share of important races and made a lot of money. I envy neither his fame nor fortune but his life of glorious dawns.
He leapt from bed on weekday mornings and whistled his way to the Newmarket gallops, full of the joys of whatever season welcomed him. That s happiness.
Half-way through my working life, I ve had enough of early morning hatred - must it always be this way? The answer is almost certainly yes, but those who bet ambitiously on horses have a chance of breaking free.
Making a million pounds is not a realistic dream but that s ok. I don t want a mansion, a Merc, a modern artefact - I m single, unable to drive, allergic to dust.
I want to wake when my eyes are ready to open and make the biggest of all decisions - to rise or not to rise. Given the option of going back to sleep, I d probably rise. I would gently jog through delicate mists, breakfast with variations of Bach, and shave, shower and shit with aristocratic langour.
Forty grand is the annual price of a teacher s futile toil, so that s how much I need to make this season in order to call myself professional - an optimistic target for a small time gambler. Like William Tell, I m aiming high, albeit with a less penetrative arrow.
Growing up, I thought professional gambler held associations of plush hotels in Monte Carlo, roulette wheels, tuxedos, with glamorous women forming a queue as you strolled from the gaping croupier - a James Bond existence, without the stress of guns and physical exertion.
The name is Howells, Norton Howells, but nobody needs to know. I ll walk the streets of Newmarket, anonymous, in plain, chain-store clothing.
There are hundreds of thousands of teachers in this country. I want to belong to a vastly smaller group - to better myself by betting my way to a more fulfilling future.
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For many years, on crowded trains and empty double-deckers, after largely unsuccessful racecourse ventures, I ve thought about this book and scribbled flatulently in notepads but there s never been a single, coherent text. I was waiting to become a winner in order to acquire gravitas but my lack of success kept me chained to a full-time job.
There are those who aspire to be teachers, and those who drift into teaching because there is fuck all else to do. The second group is better off - less scope for disappointment. We once correctly dreamed of better lives which never unfolded, so by the time we returned to school, we had long been disabused. Teaching is the last resort, the default mode for middle-class inadequates.
We ve all asked the ultimate question and there s only one reply: to propagate the species. I exist so that somebody else can exist. Teaching imitates this conceit. Some of my former students are back in the classroom, facing the other way. Perhaps this should console me: I am a metaphorical progenitor.
Nevertheless, I ve had enough of teaching. I support the rights of the average couple to live and procreate, to pursue whatever pleasure they desire, and to receive free medical and educational support. I just don t want to teach their kids any more.
I want to be a professional gambler - the greatest job in the world. You form opinions on subjects you know and love, and back them with cash. If you re right sufficiently often you win, and vice versa (as in my case). Gambling is a profession rooted in self-sustainability. No pension schemes, no sick pay, no support. Survival of the fittest, with success easily measurable and failure soon defined.
In the first year of the millennium I started to bet on horses. I was thirty. The symmetry felt propitious. On August 2, I had no interest in horse racing. On August 3, I had an interest in horse racing. One mundane summer morning my life was changed. In the second week of the holidays, back in Wales with my parents, I was bored. Mam and dad were outside, digging weeds. Finishing breakfast, I watched them through the window, uninspired. A welcome slap from the porch conveyed the newspaper at last.
The only prose I happily read in my formative years - apart from Wisden and Wodehouse - was The Times: the football reports as a child, the arts as a teenager. I certainly wouldn t have spent that time on novels. Rupert Murdoch saved me, you might say.
That morning I read about cricket, the arts, the recently dead and the weather. My natural interest was sated, but time remained implacable. I read the actual news for once, and followed it up with some foreign affairs and the crossword (incomplete). I put the paper down. The clock had surely stopped, my parents still bent double on the lawn, my hoe still propped against the shed.
The distance to the shed is briefly hypnotic. I picked the paper up again.
Eventually I found myself reading the horse racing page. This may not have been an epiphany. I wasn t up a mountain, under a tree, or on a lake. Let s call it an epiphanette instead. Trained to appreciate Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, I knew this wasn t poetry, but its message held elliptical appeal: Omaha City, 3.50, Goodwood.
The prose of a racing tipster pierced my brain. Rob Wright had produced a sustained and compelling case and I was persuaded: Omaha City would beat his nineteen rivals that afternoon. This column struck me as an academic essay with a galvanising twist: his conclusion would be tested on the Sussex Downs at 25-1. Two hundred miles away, closing The Times and rising from my chair, I was converted.
My long-forgotten peaks had come in school and university exams where I wrote meritorious essays based on detailed textual analysis. It was generally believed that I would prosper in the adult world but academic aptitude was sadly undervalued by employers and attractive females. I retreated to the classroom, helping beta males to structure essays.
Now Rob Wright was teaching me a lesson: horse racing is not about horse racing. It s an academic study using evidence and argument. The A grade students make a lot of money. I sensed an opportunity to be free, a better class of person, a back-door alpha male.
After strolling down the hill to Aberdare, and venturing for the first time into a betting shop, I found a new and welcoming entitlement: come without a penny in your pocket; relish the entertainment free of charge all afternoon; study the form of any horse in mesmerising detail on the pages from the Racing Post - pinned around the walls. The written record of every race was a richly detailed text, every horse s performance scrupulously described. This was an unimagined universe, the wealth of information astonishing.
An unaccomplished man could walk for the first time into a betting shop, with a fiver in his wallet and hunger in his heart. He could study the form with a newly motivated brain and watch each race with suddenly focused eyes. A man could build an empire in a betting shop. It would take a certain temperament, and a talent for managing money, but nobody voicing a judgement about his accent, upbringing, schooling, style or handsomeness could stop him making millions. Democracy is a betting shop. I wanted to be that mythical, self-made man.
Omaha City ran on late for third. I went to collect my profit of fifteen pounds (each way) with pride. I must have had at least five grand in the bank, but my hands were trembling, pocketing the cash.
What if he d come fifth, costing me a tenner? Would I have gambled again the following day, setting a whole new life in motion? Probably. The anticipation was beautiful. I couldn t wait to test the validity of the argument.
This is the difference between me and most gamblers, or most people with any interest in horses: I doubt they remember the moment it all began. A few years ago, I met friends at Goodwood. They d recently had a son, Sam, who was eagerly drinking his mother s milk. Last season I was standing with Sam and his father, Jon, in the Rowley Mile paddock. Attempting to provoke the four-year-old Sam s curiosity, I wondered why the bell was being rung. He replied without a pause: for the jockeys. Like his father, like most gamblers, like most people with a passionate interest in horses, Sam won t remember the beginning.
FROM NOUGHT TO THIRTY QUICKLY
Football came first for me. Georgie Best was the guest on my second birthday cake. My primary teacher s judgemen