SPECTATOR SPORT
God was on his side
Simon Barnes
JUST THINK of it, if I had bet £1, just a single, measly quid. Yes, Frankie's going well, so why not? Had I done so, I would now be jangling not £1 but £25,095 in my pocket. A heady thought, but then gam- bling is all about heady thoughts.
Frankie Dettori famously went through the card at Ascot on Saturday, riding seven successive winners. A £1 accumulator on Dettori's seven rides throughout that heady afternoon would have reaped the afore- mentioned sum in profit. 'Sometimes,' Det- tori said, 'He is on your side.' God is a big character in racing.
Driving, as it happened, through the rain- spattered streets of Dublin the following day, the eternal taxi-driver told me how he had looked at the papers and decided that the time was ripe for a wager on the jockey of the moment. He had put money to the thought, with the trifling difference that he selected the mounts of Pat Eddery rather than Dettori. He had, however, risen above this misfortune: 'I'll not back that f—er again.'
Moments like this cannot fail to awake the punter that lurks within us all. Who could fail to respond to the glorious notion of £25,095 purchased with a single, golden coin? To buy not only money but a strike for the righteous against a wicked world, to become for £1, omnipotent.
It is hard to feel omnipotent when you work for the Balham and Tooting News, but I did, occasionally, manage it. For the office stood hard by the far from ineptly named Mecca bookmakers. I would intersperse the writing of reports on Tooting and Mitcham FC and the laying out of the parks' football league tables with perusal of the Sporting Life and, later in the day, with living it.
Turn towards Mecca with 77p to play with — yes, the 10p win patent, plus tax into the world of fag butts and those special half-length ball-point pens that book-mak- ers so lavishly provide. You need never be at a loss for the means to write out a bet- ting slip. And the wonderful, matter-of-fact voice of the Extel blower in the wall: 'Rain- ing Lingfield . . . Plumpton they go down.' And then he would read a result, knowing, but not letting on, that there was heaven and hell in every line.
It has been suggested that people who imagine that racing is not about gambling must also imagine that dancing is not about sex. But gambling is also about sex, or so a psychotherapist friend assures me. 'It is about the fantasy of controlling the universe,' he said, 'as in, I am the special chosen one of God. But as soon as you talk about control, you are asking questions about the relation- ship with the parent of the opposite sex.'
`But gambling is mainly about losing,' I said. 'Precisely. The constant failure to win provides a container for your depression. It externalises it. It's like supporting a bad football team, or buying a lottery ticket every Saturday. It provides weekly but man- ageable proof that God doesn't love me. And the point of that is that losing is in fact a safer option than winning. Ask Oedipus.'
Ah, but the joy of it. I remember my pelt- ing heart as I stood in Mecca, face turned towards the blower, awaiting the results of a photo-finish. They had said the name of my horse first — was that a good omen? Or, on the contrary, a very bad omen? And then the announcement, almost too won- derful to credit: Swing Alone — stupid name, and one I shall never forget — first, and Barnes was master of the universe, was monarch of all he surveyed, including that bastard of an editor.
But I no longer bet. I have found a far more efficient means of losing money on horses. I recall my last moment of equine omnipotence: the backing of a 42 to 1 shot which, in racing's aromatic jargon, pissed up. I invested my considerable winnings. I acquired my first horse, to ride, not to race, an addiction more terrible and far more expensive. These days I no longer bet, I pay farrier's bills. My mare goes through shoes like Imelda Marcos.
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