Fitzdares Times | issue 9

T H E W O R L D ’ S F I N E S T B O O K M A K E R : TA K I N G B E T S S I N C E 1 8 8 2

• Nº9, CHRISTMAS 2018 • NO UNDER 21s

SPIKED PUNCH Boxing’s troubling drug habit

MYSTIC MACCA Liverpool legend’s Premier picks

BY STEVE BUNCE

INTERVIEW

TECH

DREAMS Christmas wishes & the best gambling app BY JONATHAN MARGOLIS

Billions have been made out of Brexit betting, but the fun is not over yet, says Harry Cole HE POUND WILL GO WHERE it will over the short term,” Boris Johnson told me a couple of days before Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. The warning lights were there: every poll that showed his Brexit campaign edging ahead of Remain saw sterling nudge further south. “It is becoming extremely worrying for the financial markets, and we expect more losses if polls continue to indicate a Brexit lead,” brokers FXTM said that day. For some people, however, these were not warning lights but proof their plan would work. The story goes, as alleged by a Bloomberg report, some of those with pound signs in their eyes were Leave supporters. At the time sterling was trading at $1.44. A few weeks later, on the day after the historic vote, it was down to $1.33. It was the pound’s biggest crash since 2008, leaving it at its lowest price against the dollar since 1985. That doom was forecast throughout the referendum campaign – not least by the Treasury – but what took everyone by surprise was that sterling’s first reaction to

‘T

the polls closing was to rise. Did it go “where it will over the short term” in those first few hours, or was it pushed? A couple of hours after polling stations shut across the country at 10pm on 23 June 2016, the pound was bouncing around $1.50. Why? Farage was not far away from cameras for most of the campaign, so it was no surprise to see the pin-striped wonder on TV screens in the minutes after the polls closed. But what he said sent shockwaves around Westminster: “It’s been an extraordinary referendum campaign, turnout looks to be exceptionally high, and it looks like Remain will edge it.” That was odd, given he had allegedly been kept abreast of private polling that showed Leave ahead – and those same polls had been shared with some of the richest (and bravest) gamblers in the country. I know at least one junior Ukip aide who made £10,000 that evening “messing around on Forex”. What came out of Farage’s mouth that evening surprised even his closest aides, and he has subsequently denied speaking to

pollsters before he said it. Unsurprisingly, a Remain win would be good news for the pound – which duly started soaring. It is worth noting that Farage’s denial only came after Bloomberg, smelling a rat, pointed out that it would technically be illegal for pollsters to share results with the “wider public” outside the firm while polls were still open. Before then, Farage and

Guessing which way the pound would ultimately go was a golden ticket for hedge funds and other speculators. those around him had been much more open about what had happened behind the scenes that night. In his Brexit bible All Out War, author Tim Shipman interviews a Ukip insider who was with Farage that night. They had “received very good information suggesting that Leave were going to win”. The aide told Shipman: “Someone I know was doing some

quite serious exit polls. They said, ‘Yeah, Leave are gonna win.’ I told Nigel. He was like, ‘Really?’ I was like, ‘Yes, we’re going to win.’” According to the insider, the work was done for “ten different financial institutions and hedge funds that wanted the best information money could buy in order to construct their trading positions”. Farage’s story is weakened by a statement to a gaggle of reporters at a Leave victory party. An hour after polls shut, he repeated his claim that Leave had lost, citing “what we have seen out and about, and what I know from some of my friends in the financial markets who have done some big polling”. Guessing which way the pound would ultimately go was a golden ticket for hedge funds and other speculators. Knowing it was also going to go up that evening would give you two bites of the cherry. Asked directly if he did it to move the markets, Farage always sticks to his denials. He told Shipman: “No, no, no, no. I wasn’t shorting it – I should have done!” And he insists the only money he made on the →

02 → night was more in line with your average punter – with a £1,000 bet at the start of June that he laid grinning for the cameras and netted him £2,500. While Farage has stuck to his story, others were positively delighted to talk about that night. “I think I may be the winner,” hedgie Crispin Odey told Reuters the next morning. Of the £24.1 million in donations and loans given to the Leave campaigns ahead of the big vote, £14.9 million came from just five men. Odey was one of them. Not only did he get his Leave result that morning, he has also not denied that he made 15 per cent on his £1.5 billion fund by calling it the right way. His firm, Odey Asset Management, had bet $10.2 billion of its assets on a Brexit market meltdown, including shorting the pound and betting on gold. Odey is open about the fact he was using private polling to get the result right. The next morning, he was reported to have made £220 million from the fall-out. AST FORWARD TWO AND a half years and the pound is still “going where it will”. Given that nobody really knows what is going on, the coverage gets frothier and the market movements get more and more ridiculous, with every tiny development enriching somebody, somehow, somewhere, presumably. The pound had a particular love for the now departed Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab. When Mr Raab walked through the black door of 10 Downing Street one Tuesday morning for a weekly Cabinet meeting, the pound was at $1.3021. A few moments after he walked out two hours later, it was trading at $1.3081. Nothing of note had happened at the meeting. Nothing. But the BBC’s tweethappy political editor Laura Kuenssberg had noted he had given a “thumbs-up” on the way out. No one apart from her had seen it – the cameras were not rolling and not even a photographer caught the

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SPECULATE TO ACCUMULATE Back short-priced favourites or aim for a big return with our winter accumulators

Crispin Odey struck gold on Brexit night

moment – but it was enough to give the struggling currency its best day in ages. Kerching. “Isn’t it wonderful to be working in a market where a simple thumbs-up moves a currency by 40 pips?” a Nomura analyst quipped. When Raab resigned nine days later, the pound fell 1.9 per cent against the dollar to

TOP 10 BETS – JUNE TO NOVEMBER SATURDAY 7 JULY INVESTED £100 TRIXIE SELECTION Paddy A @ 9/2

TUESDAY 10 JULY INVESTED £400 TRIXIE SELECTION Monumental Man @ 9/2 17:40 Brixton Eric The Third @ 7/4 18:00 Uttoxeter Ifandbutwhynot @ 9/2 18:30 Uttoxeter

RETURNED £57,475 THURSDAY 12 JULY INVESTED £5 PATENT SELECTION Wells Farhh Go @ 15/2 13:50 Newmarket Foxtrot Lady @ 15/2 15:00 Newmarket Best Solution @ 9/1 13:50 Newmarket

Ireland to win the Six Nations

RETURNED £4,958.75 WEDNESDAY 1 AUGUST INVESTED £50 E/W SELECTION Feel Glorious @ 125/1 16:10 Goodwood

Altior to win the Champion Chase

13:50 Goodwood Regal Reality @ 10/1 14:25 Goodwood Seniority @ 9/2 15:00 Goodwood Battaash @ 4/5 15:35 Goodwood

RETURNED £3,712.98 SATURDAY 8 SEPTEMBER INVESTED £30,000 SELECTION Naomi Osaka @ 5/2 US Open Women’s Tennis Final

RETURNED £105,000 WEDNESDAY 3 OCTOBER SOLD £45,000 TREBLE SELECTION Atletico Madrid @ 3/10 Atletico Madrid v Club Brugge Borussia Dortmund @ 4/11 Borussia Dortmund v Monaco FC Porto @ 8/15 FC Porto v Galatasaray

RETURNED £122,318.18 TUESDAY 9 OCTOBER INVESTED £300 E/W DOUBLE SELECTION Morning Skye @ 6/1 16:45 Catterick Consequences @ 14/1 19:15 Newcastle

RETURNED £7,600

RETURNED £34,875

SUNDAY 12 AUGUST INVESTED £45,000 SELECTION Brooks Koepka @ 11/8

SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER INVESTED £5 E/W DOUBLE SELECTION Glen Roe @ 66/1 13:40 Hexham Sophie Olivia @ 50/1 14:15 Hexham

PGA Golf Championship 2018

RETURNED £106,875

RETURNED £17,866

Tiger Woods to win the Masters England to win the 2019 Cricket World Cup

TUESDAY 21 AUGUST INVESTED £5 YANKEE SELECTION Mirage Dancer @ 13/8

RETURNED £17,950

Novak Djokovic to win the Australian Open

LA Rams to win Super Bowl LIII

Harry Cole is a political journalist

based in Westminster.

COMPETITION WINNERS 2018

19:10 Nottingham Oi The Clubb Oi’s @ 4/1 20:10 Nottingham Paddy The Chef @ 3/1 20:40 Nottingham

MVG to win the PDC World Championship

HIGH BALL 500/1

At the moment it is looking increasingly unlikely that May will get the deal through the Commons – at her first attempt at least – so there’s a decent bet to be made there. And if she doesn’t, what happens? A wise Westminster hand told me not long ago: “This is a country that called 999 over a KFC shortage. It will not cope well with a lack of foods and meds.” That makes crashing out of the EU without a deal political Novichok. There is currently no majority in the Commons for no deal, so don’t waste your money saying otherwise. Oh and you could have got 100/1 against shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer being the next PM before this newspaper hit your doormat. Worth a tenner at that price in this mess. Meanwhile, it’s probably safe to say the pound is not going up during all this… n

O U R T R I B U T E TO T H E B E S T B E T S A N D C O M P E T I T I O N W I N N E R S

LOW BALL 25/1

Boston Celtics to win the NBA’s Eastern Conference

$1.2745, its worst performance since Brexit night. That one probably caught the titans of Mayfair off guard, but the Brexit punting is not over yet. As the past two years have proved, there is money in madness. And it’s not just for hedgies to make a buck out of the ups and downs. It may have been going on for what seems like centuries, but things are about to get very interesting. Theresa May has wrestled a crap deal from Brussels, and the first big bet is whether she will get it through Parliament. And there is plenty room for what happens after that. If she does, good for her – Brexit is a thankless task and the questions about her future will not go away. Will she still be PM next Christmas? I’m not so sure. If she gets this fudge over the line and Britain leaves the EU next March, the odds will start to tighten on outsider candidates for next Tory leader. Names like Tugendhat, Javid, Rudd and Hunt are better-priced right now than they will be early next year.

Congratulations on some fantastic picks in 2018, you all know who you are. © FITZDARES

2018

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04 SPEAKER’S CORNER Steve Bunce

SPIKING THE PUNCH HEN NEWS ARRIVED IN THE SUMMER that Mia St John had admitted to using steroids on 20 or more occasions during her career, it was clear that the dirty old game had a bad problem with drugs. St John was never much of a scrapper, but in more than 70 fights, some of which were way off the grid in Mexico, she slugged her way through 13 title fights in four weight categories. She appeared on the front cover of Playboy, fought at the Mansion, and then came clean about her cynical use of drugs. She knew protocol, had catheters of clean urine and masking agents in her make-up bag: she was a cynical cheat, and in her last legitimate fight she stopped a woman having her first fight. St John will not say if she was clean or dirty in that fight, which is understandable. What she did say is alarming: “Everybody in boxing is doing it.” Boxing, you see, is a sport where pumped-up drug cheats have the ability, through a cocktail of illegal drugs and their skills, to kill opponents legally. “Boxing is the only sport in which steroids can kill someone other than the person using them,” John Ruiz, a former world heavyweight champion, told me in 2003. A few days later, Ruiz lost his WBA title to Roy Jones Jnr in Las Vegas. Jones had failed a test after a fight in 2000. A few years later, Ruiz, having regained the title, lost it to James Toney – and then Toney was stripped for using anabolic steroids. The early years of this century form an ugly start date for abuse, with many boxers suddenly getting caught with testosterone, nandrolone, clenbuterol and other carefully constructed and concealed drugs in their systems. The list of convicted, fined and banned big-name boxers is longer than you think, with Tommy Morrison, Fernando Vargas, Shane Mosley, Antonio Tarver, Andre Berto, Lamont Peterson, Érik Morales and Orlando Salido all exploiting the inept testing procedures during the past 20 years. In addition, the list of the dubious is both too long, too shocking and packed with champions. “Doping is expensive and boxing is the sport of the poor,” Mauricio Sulaimán, the president of the WBC, perhaps the sport’s leading sanctioning body, said in October. “I don’t think it [abuse] is a great big issue; we have seen from our programme that the failed tests are because of naïve actions, ignorance and contaminated products – meat or supplements.” Mexican boxing idol Saúl Canelo Álvarez tested positive for clenbuterol twice this year, claimed it was contaminated Mexican beef, then made $60 million fighting Gennady Golovkin and signed a TV deal worth $365 million over five years. The president of the WBA, another of the sanctioning bodies, actually claimed that Álvarez fighting after two failed tests added “spice” to the fight. Leniency and the search for excuses has to end – gross stupidity from the people

in charge also has to end. In 2015 Sulaimán and the WBC introduced their own drug-free scheme, the Clean Boxing Programme (CBP), and every boxer in their top 15 rankings must register and be available for testing. So far in 2018, more than 300 boxers have been tested as part of the CBP, but it is costly. “I guess each test costs about £2,000,” said Sulaimán. His testing programme alone could cost more than $1 million a year – but, providing it shares results with the existing testing agencies, it is a refreshing addition in the war. There needs to be dialogue between the testing agencies, sanctioning organisations and governing bodies to clarify the very different procedures involved in the testing of boxers and the crucial interpretation of findings. The British Boxing Board of Control uses UK Anti-Doping (UKAD), and recognises the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). There is another respected testing business, the Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency (VADA) – and, you guessed it, there are differences between what is acceptable under WADA and under VADA. It is this ridiculous discrepancy that cost Billy Joe Saunders his WBO middleweight title.

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N LATE AUGUST, SAUNDERS FAILED a test under VADA rules when he tested positive for oxilofrine. Had he been tested by UKAD (and therefore recognised by WADA), he would not have failed the test and would have been able to defend his title against Demetrius Andrade in October. However, Saunders was forced to relinquish his title when the athletic commission in Massachusetts, where the fight was scheduled to take place, upheld the VADA ruling and denied him a licence. Saunders is now seeking considerable damages and will pursue his claim in the US legal system. If VADA and WADA had the same rulings, Saunders would have fought and made his money, which was reputed to be close to $2 million. The ugly impasse persuaded Robert Smith, general secretary of the BBBofC, to take action and look for a solution. In late October, Smith held a private meeting between members of UKAD and VADA in search of consistency of policy and an end to situations like the Saunders fiasco. It was constructive, both sides listened and Smith, a former professional fighter, is determined to bring all the testing protocols together. He might just be the man to make it happen, but without a unified front the war on drugs in boxing will be lost and the cheats will win, in a sport where death is both a threat and a method of victory. n

I Boxing is the only sport in which steroids can kill someone other than the person using them.

Steve Bunce is a boxing pundit and presenter on BBC Five Live and BoxNation

and writes about the sport for The Independent.

Saúl Canelo Álvarez (in gold/blue) has twice tested positive for clenbuterol

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06

Ivor Heller recalls the day his Wimbledon betting shop went to the dogs

CUT DOWN BY A SILVER BIRCH I T ALL STARTED AT THE BOOKMAKERS by Wimbledon Park. I’d been using that place for well over 20 years and there’s a real community of people in there. It was originally a William Hill but was sold to an independent, who then passed it on straight away. The next guys held on to it for a couple of years but then decided they couldn’t make ends meet either. I didn’t want to see the shop close – not just because I used it, but for the people I saw day in, day out. I just didn’t think it was right that it should shut like that. In February 2007, I took it over – at the worst possible time. There had been a split between SIS and RUK and all the licence fees went up for the machines. For independent bookmakers, this became very prohibitive, making it almost impossible to make money. Looking back, without a website business it was a doomed project from the start. I’d done it at the wrong time but for the right reasons: community reasons. I had a manager in the shop who was pretty adequate and we were working it together. You couldn’t say we were doing well, but we weren’t doing as badly as we could be. We weren’t making any money on a weekly basis, but we had a few things to look forward to: Cheltenham and the Grand National. My thinking was, we’ll ride the storm and then make a few quid at Cheltenham. By the end of the week, we’d probably made a tenner. Every time we got a favourite beaten, we’d flick through our field book and see we’d laid the winner at double-figure prices. We needed oxygen, and I couldn’t see where it was going to come from. People kept on reassuring me that we had the Grand National to look forward to. We could take a breath there. “The flat season comes thick and fast, especially with the night racing. You don’t see many poor bookmakers,” they all told me. I’d been a director of AFC Wimbledon since 2002, and on the day of the Grand National I was going to a game. I relied on my manager to look after the shop – to put a few signs up explaining how to write a bet slip, as there would be lots of people coming in on Grand National day not having a clue what to do. If we had any big, single liability on a horse, he should call me – all the one and two-quid bets didn’t matter. Take as many of those as possible, I was thinking. The great thing about the Grand National is that you always get a book. With 40 runners, all the punters have got their various reasons for backing different horses. I got a call, literally halfway through the race, from the lad in the shop. The game wasn’t on at the time and I had managed to find a TV to watch the race. “Look, Ivor, do you know, um… I don’t know how to tell you this but…” Bear in mind this is practically the only race where you’ve got time to take a breath and count all the bet slips without the race having finished. He continued: “I’m only halfway through the pile of all the small bets and, well, nearly every single one is on Silver Birch.”

“What, the same Silver Birch that’s in the lead? He won’t stay there, will he? No horse ever stays at the front all the way through the Grand National – that just doesn’t happen,” I reassured both him and myself. “What’s the biggest bet we’ve had on Silver Birch, then?” “The biggest bet is a fiver each way, Ivor.” “We’re not going to worry about that, are we?” “Well… the problem is,” he went on, “we’ve got an absolute avalanche of them! You wouldn’t believe it. What on earth are they all doing backing Silver Birch?” Silver Birch went on to win at 33/1. To answer his question, there are two reasons. Firstly, there’s a big family in the area called Birch. On top of that, every single member of the family who has ever died has been cremated at the local crematorium. In fact, everyone who’s died in the area and been cremated has had their ashes sprinkled under the silver birch tree. It was like an omen. They had all backed Silver Birch. We lost a lot of money on it. I’m talking in the thousands, which is an awful lot for a small, independent bookmaker. That was meant to be our biggest pay day of the year – it was the most bets we’d taken by a country mile – and to be honest, I was crestfallen.

LTHOUGH WE CONTINUED FOR A FEW DAYS MORE, it was heartbreaking. I thought about trying to hang on and get to Ascot, but I knew it was always going to be difficult. The expenses of keeping the shop open were getting greater and greater and there was more online stuff coming. There’s a reason independent shops were closing down left, right and centre. Everywhere the big boys were opening up and putting those dastardly machines in. That was everything I didn’t want to be. I wanted it to be a hub for those who genuinely loved racing. I wanted it to be a place where people who liked to bet could always go and mix with like-minded people, as opposed to those who wanted to play on the fruit or poker machines. I’d never regret trying to do something that I think is for the overall good of man. In a world that is increasingly losing its sense of community, I felt that doing something for the community was a good thing. For a short period, I really thought we’d be able to make a bit of a difference. More than anything, I miss that atmosphere – on any given day I would enjoy myself. It wasn’t a question of winning or losing money; I knew there would be people in the shop that I liked to see, and there would be real characters in there, legendary characters. That doesn’t exist any more. n

A

Ivor Heller is the commercial director of AFC Wimbledon.

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08

DIARY Waking up on a big race-day anywhere in the world is exciting. There’s a nervous energy, an understanding that something momentous may follow. It’s even better when you can wake up and catch a glimpse of one of the world’s iconic racecourses as you wipe the sleep from your eyes. The buzz is electric. So it is for me as I awake, in my apartment overlooking Happy Valley racecourse. Famous for its urban backdrop, it is the heart and soul of racing in Hong Kong – effectively, a temple for the biggest religion in town. Introduced to the sport of kings by the British in 1844, only two years after Hong Kong Island entered British possession, racing has become the primary social and sporting event, placed prominently among Hong Kong culture. Twice weekly, as they have done for 174 years, punters flock to one of Hong Kong’s two racecourses: historic Happy Valley, the home of racing in the former colony, and the larger, 40-year-old Sha Tin, based in the New Territories, between the island and the border with mainland China. This diary documents one of Hong Kong’s biggest race-days, the newly named Champions Day, which aims to follow in the footsteps of similar concepts in Britain, Ireland and Australia by bringing a number of end-of-season features on to one day at Sha Tin. Champions Day provides an opportunity for the best local gallopers to tackle a smattering of visitors across three Group 1 contests: the Queen Elizabeth II Cup (2000m, about 1m 2f), Champions Mile (1600m) and Chairman’s Sprint Prize (1200m, about 6f). To get the full tourist experience, it’s worth catching the train to Sha Tin. With a dedicated station operating solely on race-days, it’s an opportunity to see all the weird and wonderful characters that populate Hong Kong’s racetracks. Expect to see seminaked, pot-bellied men and glamorous young women side by side. An hour before the first race, the crowds have already flocked trackside. On most big days the crowd is given a special souvenir – usually a hat – which creates the most amazing spectacle as the spectators as one don their new headgear. However, this year there is no hat, leading to a few choice Cantonese words from punters. Still, the buzz of a big race-day is in the air. The crowd holler as the Champions Mile gets under way. It may not be the Cheltenham roar, but it’s still a tremendous noise. The Champions Mile goes to the John Moore-trained Beauty Generation, who stamps his Horse of the Year credentials by winning a third Group 1 for the season. He joins top-class gallopers Good Ba Ba and Able Friend as the only horses to win the Hong Kong Mile, Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup and Champions Mile treble. For Zac Purton, on target to win his second Hong Kong jockeys’ championship, it’s another big-race success. The Chairman’s Sprint Prize goes to Ivictory, trained by John Size, who also prepared runner-up Mr Stunning and third-placed Beat

by Andrew Hawkins

It’s not a race-day in Hong Kong without the after-party, especially at those two times in the year when the racing world descends on Sha Tin.

The Clock. It’s another triumph for Purton. The UK’s sole representative, Godolphin’s Blue Point, finishes last. However, jockey William Buick makes the most of a late booking aboard Pakistan Star to give both horse and jockey a first Hong Kong Group 1 win. Pakistan Star became a viral sensation thanks to footage of his extraordinary last-to-first maiden win, but he has not fulfilled his promise at the highest level – until now, as he storms clear by three lengths.

For the uninitiated, it’s worth spending 10 minutes leading up to a race watching the enormous tote board by the track, particularly for the later races. It’s a dazzling array of lights, each indicating a different thing: a price highlighted in red marks the favourite; green suggests the odds have firmed at least 20 per cent since that race’s market adorned the board half an hour earlier; brown is like an air-raid siren to the crowd, announcing that a price has been slashed in half. Given the amount of money invested in the Jockey Club’s pools on each race, it takes several sizeable bets to influence the market to that extent. On the final race of Champions Day, for example, about £22.5 million is invested on the contest, with £4.4 million in the win pool alone. It’s not a race-day in Hong Kong without the after-party, especially at those two times in the year when the racing world descends on Sha Tin. Back on the island, we scale the climb from Central towards Lan Kwai Fong, one of Hong Kong’s most famous haunts. An L-shaped street that is more outdoor piazza than bustling road, it is difficult to miss racing people during the December internationals or the April features. We end up at Al’s Diner, a small, dingy bar blasting the best 70s and 80s tunes where revellers (usually jockeys) dance atop tables. (However, since that night it has shut down, so the party will continue elsewhere in years to come.) The party then kicks on to Wan Chai, another party district. While notoriously seedier, Wan Chai is not all squalid bars and sordid nightlife, and a visit to Hong Kong is not the same without experiencing the iconic Joe Bananas. My night ends in my 19th-floor apartment overlooking Happy Valley racecourse, and I have to pinch myself as I consider how lucky I am. Hotels like the Dorsett Wanchai and Crowne Plaza Causeway Bay offer similar views. However, if it’s a special trip it’s worth paying for the ultimate Far East experience. The Peninsula Hotel remains the bastion of British colonialism in Hong Kong, a glimpse into another era. For decades it has been at the heart of Hong Kong culture, and with a view unlike any other – across Victoria Harbour towards the bright lights of the island – it’s something to behold. n Andrew Hawkins is a racing journalist and presenter (with Sky Racing) based in

Sydney, having just moved from Hong Kong.

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SLY

Dr Tom Davies could never have guessed how inspired a decision it would be to join forces Owning a racehorse was the pinnacle of my racing dream. As a teenager I followed Cheltenham every year, but I knew I’d have to wait a bit until I could afford a horse. It never crossed my mind that it would in fact be flat racing I’d eventually find a way into. It all began rather modestly. I had a small share in a syndicate with a horse that Pam Sly was training and we got on rather well. So much so, in fact, that we tried to buy one together in the Newmarket July sales with another syndicate. He was called Dhehdaah, and the primary goal was to win the 2005 Fred Winter at Cheltenham. Sadly, that aspiration fell at the first hurdle when he failed to make the weights by an agonising two or three pounds. Pam, eager not to miss an opportunity and seeing he was fit, promptly entered him into a

flat race at Yarmouth on Easter Monday. Moments before, she suggested that we go three ways on a horse at the Doncaster Breeze Up with her son Michael. I said I’d only go ahead on one condition – that Dhehdaah won. Lo and behold, that was my first ever flat winner. A week later we put in exactly £10,000 each and bought a filly. We named her Speciosa. Roger Marley, who used to ride for Pam, had spoken very highly of Speciosa, and Pam, who has a keen eye for fillies, was particularly taken by her.

Into training she went, and it took her four attempts to break her duck. She’d been showing far more on the gallops than on the track until this point, and we felt it was a long overdue victory. She had developed this

11

INVESTING

with trainer Pam Sly and buy a little-known filly. A year later they were toasting 1,000 Guineas glory bad habit of drifting to the left during races. Although she was obviously talented, she was also quirky and very, very feisty. It was a while before she won her maiden, but we took solace from the fact that she had only lost to good horses before. On that fourth attempt, at Beverley, she once again drifted across the track yet still managed to cling on. Horses just don’t drift like that and win at Beverley. “I think we’ve got a proper one here. We should try a black type race,” said jockey Micky Fenton immediately after the race. So we did. Up in grade she went, eventually finding her way into the Group 2 Rockfel Stakes. With the rail to straighten her, she bolted up. This was really a moment when we thought perhaps we’ve got not just a “proper one” but actually a Guineas horse on our hands. And we weren’t the only ones. An interested party (who will remain unnamed) came to us with an offer of well over £1 million after that win. At the time, although it seems like a huge sum, we weighed it up and saw this as potentially a horse, and a moment, that money couldn’t buy. We shook our heads politely and on we went. At around Christmas time, I had begun to open up a few bookmakers’ accounts. Without giving away too much, I had a few nice bets here and there at around 50/1 on Speciosa for the 1,000 Guineas. I also thought it would be a nice touch to give all my family members antepost bet slips. Not your typical Christmas presents. After the winter, Speciosa went on to the Nell Gwyn and it was there that those dreams of mine started to resemble something close to reality. Having run right across the course – yet again – she still managed to win. John Francome made the point of saying this performance was miles better than the bare form, given how much she had come across the track. People were now starting to sit up and take notice. Off we went for our date with destiny.

On the day of the Guineas we were drawn in stall three, which was a huge stroke of luck as it meant she had the rail to stop her. It was also raining. We didn’t know at the time, but soft ground was a big factor in her performances. We all turned up with our fan club from the Fens, in a coach adorned with Speciosa’s racing colours . Along the way, we’d picked up quite a following. No doubt all the other owners were going to be flying in from across the globe in their helicopters, I thought.

Speciosa was 10/1 on the day with the bookies, which seemed rather generous, but I’d already had most of my bets in the weeks and months before. That said, I may have had another small bet if memory serves me. Before the race started, I just turned to Pam and said: “Well, this is it.” “As long as we don’t come last,” came her reply. It was a reassuring comment. We’d already won, simply by just being there with a runner in the Guineas. We were just a small group from National Hunt racing. Mainly, though, we just didn’t want to get embarrassed. When the race began, as they burst out of the stalls, you could see all the TV cameras tracking the runners in the centre. It was the stands rail, where Speciosa was, that should have been the real focus of attention. Micky, her jockey, knew the horse inside out and always said she didn’t like to get passed, so he made sure Speciosa got to the front early on. She was, as I’ve said before, a very stubborn filly. Watching from the

LONG SHOTS NIKE’S POST-CURRY PAIN In 2013, Stephen Curry’s endorsement contract with Nike had ended – it was time to sit down and negotiate a new deal for the exceptional shooting talent. Things didn’t get off to the best of starts for Nike during the negotiations: its representative mispronounced the NBA star’s name as “Steph-on” instead of “Steph-en”. As if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, Curry then sat through a Powerpoint presentation that was written for another player, Kevin Durant!

The slides had been used for Durant, and Nike forgot to change the name on the slides. This was the final nail in the coffin: Curry, his agent, and his father stopped listening. He had been offered $2.5m to re-sign with Nike but felt this wasn’t enough, especially after the humiliating sales pitch he had to endure. Curry declined the offer and instead signed for unknown sports brand Under Armour for $4 million a year.

When Curry signed for Under Armour in 2013, its share price jumped dramatically. After a little over two years, he had raised the value of Under Armour from $6 billion to $23 billion. Curry is now laughing all the way to the bank. As well as winning the NBA Championship three times in the past four years and being named league MVP twice, he is now a part owner at Under Armour and is worth an estimated $90 million.

stands, there was just this combination of euphoria and utter disbelief as she motored all the way to the line.

She hadn’t just avoided embarrassment. She hadn’t come last, as we’d feared. She had won the 1,000 Guineas. We had won the 1,000 Guineas. Rather poignantly, my father had put £20 each way at 33/1 antepost but passed away three months before the Guineas. As Speciosa crossed the finish line, my mother had his bet slip in her hand. After the race, there was a great three cheers in the parade ring, which is rarely, if ever, done. It was for Pam and Speciosa. A truly memorable day. A year later, after her four-year-old campaign, we retired her, and she’s been breeding ever since. Three of her progeny have won for us, and we have a Nathaniel colt to look forward to, so the dream continues. Looking back, it was a beautiful moment that I’ll never forget. All credit to Pam Sly, an amazing trainer! n

12

IT’S GAGA LAND Joe Hodgson wonders if the Oscars voters will validate Netflix and go gaga for Lady Gaga example, will be delighted that Lady Gaga will bring heaps of publicity to a broadcast that has seen its viewing figures dwindle. And following the last two events – where the ceremony became uneasily entangled in politics – there’s a chance people might simply think: can’t we just give all the awards to the film that made loads of money and audiences really enjoyed? Ultimately, though, I can’t quite shake the feeling that, as much as Hollywood really likes remakes, the award for Best Picture isn’t going to go to a film that is, in essence, a remake of a remake of a remake.

ICTURE THE SCENE. Los Angeles. Oscars night. The stars are out – both in the sky and on the ground. Cameras are flashing, corks are popping, red carpets are being walked upon. George Clooney is looking smug. Mel Gibson is looking drunk. Judi Dench is looking at the football scores on her phone. Suddenly, from high above, a noise. Everyone stares skyward as an enormous spaceship hovers into view. A 20-foot-tall cyborg jumps from said craft, lands on the red carpet, and squashes Gibson like a bug. Silence. The cyborg’s visor slides back. Gasps. It’s Lady Gaga! A thumping dance beat kicks in and super-sized Cyborg-Gaga struts her way towards the Dolby Theatre, knocking Clooney and Dench into the gutter like a pair of faded old rag-dolls. End scene.

P

Now, this may not be exactly how events unfold on 24 February 2019 (if it is, I’d like £30 for giving you the idea please, Gaga) but one way or another the ceremony is going to be all about Mother Monster. So deal with it, Dench! And get those paws up, Clooney! Hollywood’s top talents are training with Lance Armstrong-like intensity – injecting themselves with syringes full of good, honest hard work – in preparation for a potential, careerboosting Academy Award nomination. Being an Oscar nominee is extremely hard work, you see. Why? Well, in order to secure a winning number of votes, you have to be nice to people. A lot. And you need to smile at people. A lot. In fact, you need to have a cartoonish gargoyle grin plastered on your face 24 hours a day. Yes, I know Jürgen Klopp can pull that off, but what about real people whose faces aren’t made of rubber? Fortunately for them, Hollywood actors aren’t real people, and their faces turned into rubber the moment their agent landed them that tiny part in The Avengers 8: A Series of Weary, Nonsensical Feuds and Derivative IQReducing Explosions. So don’t cry for them, because they won’t cry for you. (Or can’t, due to all the Botox.) But what about the people behind the Botox? Or, to ask a completely different question, who is going to be among this season’s Academy Award nominees? And which films are going to be in contention for the big gongs? These days, as well as telling me to go to the toilet more often during the night, my ‘Spidey Sense’ is suggesting that 2019’s Best Picture battle could be an intriguing duel between the

I can see Bradley Cooper finally

OSCARSODDS Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born) may steal the show at the Oscars

Just think of the headlines if Lady Gaga won and collected her statue dressed as a 20-foottall cyborg.

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money-hoovering A Star Is Born and the acclaim-hoovering Roma. The latter, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, is a lush, black and white Mexican drama that has had festival critics drooling all over themselves like Cristiano Ronaldo standing naked in front of a mirror. It will arrive at the Oscars the best-reviewed film, Cuarón is a former Best Director winner, and its themes are universal. So, what’s the problem? Can’t we just give it the big prize now and skip the whole damn ceremony? Oh, if only we could! No, because the problem with Roma is it’s being released by those pesky young upstarts over at Netflix. And this makes the old, cigar-chomping studio bosses very angry indeed. “How dare they release a film on their own terms!” they’ll all be shouting. Obviously lots of voters work for those same studio bosses, voters who may be ‘persuaded’ to vote for something other than Roma. But they’ll just be delaying the inevitable. Streaming is here to stay, and with Roma winning Best Picture they’ll be giving the old studio system another much-needed kick up the bum. A Star Is Born obviously has a lot going for it too. TV producers, for

A Star Is Born 6/4 Roma 4/1 Green Book 8/1 First Man 8/1 BlacKkKlansman 12/1 The Favourite 16/1 Black Panther 20/1 BEST DIRECTOR Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) 8/13 Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) 4/1 Damien Chazelle (First Man) 5/1 Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) 8/1 Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk) 12/1 BEST ACTOR Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) 4/7 Christian Bale (Vice) 7/2 Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) 6/1 Viggo Mortensen (Green Book) 8/1 Ryan Gosling (First Man) 10/1 BEST ACTRESS Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born) 5/4 Glenn Close (The Wife) 2/1 Olivia Colman (The Favourite) 4/1 Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) 5/1 Viola Davis (Widows) 8/1

getting an Oscar for his performance in A Star Is Born, though. The Best Actor category doesn’t appear very hot, and Cooper has been nominated three times before, so he’s probably due. Competition will likely come in the enlarged shape of Christian Bale, who bulked up to play Dick Cheney in Vice, and two-time nominee Viggo Mortensen, who has been peppered with plaudits for his turn in the similarly acclaimed Green Book. Far more interesting is the award for Best Actress, where we could be heading for a deadly joust between sixtime-nominated acting aristocrat Glenn Close (The Wife) and, yes, her again, Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born). Close is certainly due, but just think of the coverage and headlines if Gaga won and collected her statue dressed as a 20-foot-tall cyborg?! Alas, it could well be another case of close, but no cigar for poor Glenn. In the increasingly nebulous Best Supporting categories, Mahershala Ali (Green Book) looks poised to win his second Oscar, and stalwart Regina King is favourite to reign supreme on the back of her showing in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. So there we go. Would it be too simplistic to conclude that the Oscars are shaping up to be an epic battle between fading, ancient forces (Hollywood studios, Glenn Close) and brash, hungry, young peacocks (Netflix, Lady Gaga)? No! Of course not! Hollywood loves simple stories! That’s why it’s so disappointing that I have received no interest in my screenplay about the 20-foot-tall cyborg that squashes Mel Gibson, punches George Clooney in the face, and sends Judi Dench cartwheeling violently into a hot-dog stand. Hmm. Perhaps cyborgs will be in next year? Or, perhaps I need to somehow turn it into a remake? n Joe Hodgson is a writer and movie nerd.

Very smart bet.

In 1882, we were the first bookie to send results by carrier pigeon. Today, we are the last to launch an app. Soz 4 the w8 You can finally download the Fitzdares App.

14

MYSTIC MACCA With the Premier League season approaching halfway, we decided to test the fortune-telling powers of Steve McManaman, who bravely predicts how everything will pan out they accumulated as many points as they ever have. To make up the points they were behind City last season will take some doing, though. Their bench was quite weak last season – they’ve strengthened a bit, but I think they’ll need to do more business in January, perhaps getting in a midfielder or a wide player. They’ve caught up a bit on City from last year, but whether they can overtake them is another question!

MACCA’S QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS On how Manchester City have built on last season... certainly think they have improved – the team has strengthened over the summer with the purchase of Riyad Mahrez, who has beefed up the squad and given them more options in attack. However, it is the return of Benjamin Mendy, who had such a bad injury last season, that has really improved the team immeasurably. He’s had another injury already this season, but if they can keep him fit they are a stronger team. In terms of the Champions League, they’re always going to feel as though something is missing if they don’t win it. Last season they arguably had the strongest team in Europe, and I firmly believe if they hadn’t come up against an English team, they would’ve won it. Matches in the Champions League between English sides are a different prospect and they came up against an inspired Liverpool side on the night who had an incredible atmosphere.

I

On how Liverpool can bridge the gap to City... I think their defence is very strong now, and after 12 games

Quickest player? Michael Owen over 10 yards was very quick. Slowest player? Neil Ruddock, at his heaviest! Biggest hardman? Wow. Stuart Pearce, Dennis Irwin too. Actually, Paolo Maldini was very hard – not in your typical sense, but he was a brilliant player. Most skilful player? Luís Figo or Zinedine Zidane. They could keep the ball like nobody else.

On Arsenal’s progress under Unai Emery... Defensively and organisationally they have improved, but fundamentally the team isn’t good enough. If you look at their bench against Liverpool in November, it wasn’t good enough. Certainly, they won’t go anywhere near winning the title – the best they’ll manage is a fight for a top four spot with Spurs and possibly United. As the season develops, I feel those three teams will struggle for consistency. On how well Mauricio Pochettino is doing to keep Spurs near the top... He’s doing incredibly. He’s a manager that’s universally liked because of his style. He doesn’t

On whether José Mourinho’s job might be under threat... I don’t think Manchester United will change manager mid-season unless something drastic happens, something way more drastic than what’s going on at the minute. I think they’ll wait and decide at the end of the season.

they’re just not playing well enough. Is it Mourinho buying the players? Is it the people upstairs doing it? I just don’t know. I was watching the game against Newcastle, which they won very late on. Bailly came off injured and they had Lindelof, Sánchez and Fred on the bench – all players they’ve bought recently. Fred cost $60 million and he doesn’t play. Sánchez has the highest wages in the league and he doesn’t play either. The players they’ve got and the style of play are nowhere near good enough if you are Manchester United. If it’s Mourinho buying the players, it’s his fault. If it’s the board, then they’ve got a serious problem as that relationship between the board and the manager isn’t good enough. We know Jürgen Klopp has help with people upstairs, but in the end it’s his decision. He’s the one who vetoes the players and that’s the way it should be.

On how Manchester United can change things... They have to buy better players, to be quite honest. I don’t know who’s buying the players there, but they’ve bought Alexis Sánchez, Victor Lindelof, Eric Bailly and Romelu Lukaku and

On Chelsea’s reliance on Eden Hazard... They’ve brought in Jorginho, who looks a good addition, and Maurizio Sarri has brought David Luiz back into the fold, but they are very reliant on Hazard. Neither Álvaro Morata nor Olivier

complain, gets on with the job, and is bringing young players through the whole time. Arsenal went through a similar stage with Arsène Wenger when they couldn’t buy anyone as they were building a stadium. They’re not going to have the spending power of other teams, so they will probably just fall short again this season. The fact his net spend over four years is something like £29 million is astonishing. United, and I also know Real Madrid, would love to hire Pochettino, but it’s not going to happen mid-season.

Hardest shot? Roberto Carlos. Worst dress sense? The Brazilians. If you look at Dani Alves and Roberto Firmino, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Best friend in football? Robbie Fowler – I was with him five minutes ago. Biggest joker? Robbie again. Or Paul Gascoigne – he was absolutely bananas. Probably Gazza – he eclipsed most people. Most vain? That would’ve been at Real Madrid, Guti or even Michel Salgado. Guti is now assistant manager at Besiktas. He was very vain – never out of the mirror! Favourite goal? Probably the Celtic goal that I scored when I ran the length of the pitch. The Champions League final goal was the most important one, but the Celtic one is my favourite. Definitely the best visually.

Eden Hazard is Chelsea’s talisman

15 MACCA’S PREDICTIONS PREMIER LEAGUE TOP SCORER Harry Kane 3/1 MOST ASSISTS Raheem Sterling 7/2 RELEGATION Huddersfield 4/9 Cardiff 4/9 Fulham 4/7 TOP FOUR 1. Man City 2. Liverpool 3. Chelsea 4. Tottenham To finish in this order 6/1 PFA PLAYER OF THE YEAR Eden Hazard 9/4 UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE OUTRIGHT WINNER An English club 5/2 (Prices correct as of 21 November 2018) Benjamin Mendy has given Pep Guardiola another option

Giroud look as if they’re going to get the 30 goals a season you need to challenge for the title. Pedro and Willian will both chip in, but really it’s Hazard who has been phenomenal for them this season. The style of play has improved but, like Arsenal, as the season goes on they’ll struggle for consistency. If Hazard gets an injury, others will have to step up and carry the workload. You can’t expect him to be brilliant every game. I like Sarri and what he’s done, but Chelsea will be a little bit inconsistent because of their lack of depth. They won’t have enough goals in that final third. I don’t want to be too down on Morata, but if you look at his record he’s never really been first choice and he’s never gone a whole season scoring the amount of goals you need your main centre forward scoring. On whether outsiders can challenge for the top six... Er, Wolves, Bournemouth, Everton... Nah, I don’t think so. Definitely not. On who will go down... Looking at Huddersfield and Fulham, I speak about goalscorers and you need goals to stay up. I don’t know whether they can score enough to stay in the league. Fulham have got Aleksandar Mitrovic and although

he started quite well I just don’t think he’s mobile enough for this league. Whether Claudio Ranieri can work a bit of magic in January and find someone who can do it remains to be seen. Huddersfield

“I know United, and also Real Madrid, would love to hire Pochettino, but it’s not going to happen mid-season”.

have Steve Mounie, Laurent Depoitre and Aaron Mooy, but I don’t know whether they’ve got enough goals to stay up. They may score a few goals at home, but they’ll struggle for consistency. The goals that Fulham conceded against Liverpool in November were, quite frankly, amateur. On who has underperformed... A lot of the Manchester United players have underperformed. Fred, who was a big signing, has done, but I sort of forgive him as he’s new to the league. Sanchez, who we know can perform in the Premier League – we know how great he has been – has been a massive disappointment too. ...And overperformed... Right after the World Cup, after a long season, Hazard has been exceptional, but he’s easy to highlight. For Manchester City, David Silva has been outstanding for the past 10 years. He doesn’t get the credit he deserves because of the team he’s been playing in. He’s not interested in the fame or plaudits – I just think he’s an incredible footballer. He has added goals to his CV this year, too. With the family problems he’s had – his newborn child and the stress of all that – what he’s achieved is quite amazing. At Liverpool, Joe Gomez has been

a revelation this year. I think the Gomez/Van Dijk partnership could be really, really special. They’re going to have to win some trophies to be considered up there with the very best. but the fact the whole back four are very young and could play together for a long time means it could be the start of something very strong for Liverpool in the future.

Man City, but you wouldn’t need to do much to their teams. Aside from trying to turn Fulham’s fortunes around, I think the most interesting challenge would be to take the Manchester United job. It’s such a big team with a large history and they should be playing entertaining, fast-flowing and attacking football. That, in itself, is a massive challenge. n

On which manager’s job would offer him the most interesting challenge... It’d be easy to say Liverpool or

Steve McManaman won the

Champions League twice with Real Madrid as a player and is now a BT Sport pundit.

Macca’s favourite goal, in 1997 at Celtic Park

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18 Bradley Weisbord USA Weisbord is the founder of BSW Bloodstock and ELiTE Sales, whose clients include owners such as Sol Kumin, Winstar Farm, Zayat Stables, China Horse Club, and Coolmore. In 2014, aged 28, he became the youngest ever Breeders Cup member.

Amanda Prior UK The client services & development manager at Great British Racing International holds a key role in ensuring the growth of international investment into British racing.

Britney Eurton USA This influential US racing analyst and TV presenter enjoyed a superb Breeders’ Cup lighting up TVG Network as on-air host & reporter.

Andrew Hawkins Australia The Hong Kong-based racing journalist has a sphere of influence that spans Asian and Australian racing. Also wrote the Diary in this issue (on page 8)!

Alex Soros USA SF Bloodstock and SF Racing Group, which started in 2008, entered into a three-year partnership with WinStar Farm and China Horse Club in 2015 and hit it big on 9 June with Justify’s Triple Crown success. On 14 September, it was announced Justify would stand at Ashford Stud.

THE THINK TANK Nick Luck Broadcaster and writer Amber Byrne Development manager, Horseracing Ireland Minty Farquhar Communications executive, Great British Racing Balthazar Fabricius Founder & chairman, Fitzdares

As temperatures soared in August during Glorious Goodwood, we hosted dinner at Cowdray House to bring together amazing talent from the racing community. The inaugural Racing Futures list that followed, celebrates 35 people under 35 to keep an eye on, some already well-known, others less so. This was never going to be an exhaustive list, and we are already looking forward to next year’s! Here’s what our current crop have been up to. Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum UAE The heir to one of British racing’s biggest constituents, oversaw Charlie Appleby’s delivery of a first British Melbourne Cup and Godolphin’s first Epsom Derby.

Cathal Beale Rep of Ireland Beale, an Irish National Stud Management Programme graduate, was recently appointed as the operation’s chief executive, after stints at Paddy Power, Racing Post and Tinnakill Bloodstock. He is also a Darley Flying Start graduate.

Caroline Rupert S Africa Daughter of Johann & Gaynor Rupert, whose racing interests are substantial, particularly in South Africa. Their L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate at Kenilworth in January is talked of being one of the most fun days you can have on a racecourse.

Charlie Johnston UK Poet’s Society’s 20/1 victory at York on 23 August saw team Johnston saddle their 4,194th winner, a British racing record which garnered positive headlines across the world.

Electra Niarchos Greece Electra is emerging as the natural heir to the Niarchos family’s racing and breeding operation, Flaxman Stables Ireland. She is often seen alongside her aunt Maria in winners’ enclosures around Europe.

Ed Harper UK Not resting on Showcasing’s laurels (whose fee has risen from £35k to £55k), Ed has added Havana Grey, the fastest horse from the Galileo line, to Whitsbury Manor’s roster. Also, watch out for his Mainline Racing syndicate.

Duke of Sussex UK The Duke is continuing a crucial rapport with the sport of kings, introducing the new Duchess to Royal Ascot in June.

Hannah Wall UK A vital cog in the Tweenhills machine. Doubtless her Redwall Bloodstock pinhooking syndicate is already gearing up for the next Magic Millions sale.

Francesca Cumani UK ITV Racing’s prized star, who has captivated audiences in both Australia and the UK with her expert knowledge and commanding screen presence.

Harry Charlton UK Beckhampton Stables suffered a blow when Withhold broke blood vessels in the Geelong Cup but doubtless this bright assistant trainer is in for a strong 2019.

19 Jack Sisterson USA The Durham-born former assistant to Doug O’Neill, who helped to train 2016 Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist, banged in his first winner on 12 August when Calumet Farm homebred Next Dance won on debut at Belterra Park.

Henri-Francois Devin France This season has seen the former assistant to André Fabre be the recipient of a number of yearlings from Sheikh Mohammed Obaid. In October Stephen Hillen went to €250,000 for a Sea The Stars colt.

James Harron UK Harron founded his eponymous international bloodstock agency, JHB, based in Sydney, in 2011. Purchases have included the 2013 Melbourne Cup winner Fiorente.

Josephine Gordon UK The 2016 champion apprentice jockey rides for Hugo Palmer, and it would be no surprise if she were to be crowned the first ever female champion jockey.

Joseph O’Brien Republic of Ireland The two-time Epsom Derby-winning jockey, 25, now has his own training operation. Major wins so far as a trainer include Rekindling in the 2017 Melbourne Cup and Latrobe in the 2018 Irish Derby.

Katie Kershaw UK Slaughter and May associate and a key member of the committee at Epsom Downs Racecourse.

Justin Zayat USA Zayat is vice president of Zayat Stables, which owns the 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharaoh, and manages more than 200 horses.

Mimi Wadham & Violet Hesketh UK The former Darley Flying Start graduates and founders of WH Bloodstock went into their first Book 1 yearling sale with a draft of one. The hammer went down at £650k to Phoenix Thoroughbreds.

Madeline Burns Republic of Ireland Burns is the respected manager of Rathasker Stud, which stands five stallions, including the exciting Bungle Inthejungle, whose fee has risen to €12,000 for 2019.

The Honourable William Gordon-Lennox & Lord March UK As the heirs to the Goodwood Estate, they hold the keys to quintessential British summer racing on the Sussex Downs.

Oli Bell UK The Racing UK and ITV presenter is one of the faces of racing coverage for the next generation. Goes into the winter sitting pretty with a small share in Two For Gold who ran well in Cheltenham’s recent Supreme trial.

MV Magnier Rep of Ireland The Coolmore bloodstock manager flexed his muscles at Tattersalls Book 1, breaking the record for a price paid at auction, going to £3.4m for a Galileo colt out of Shastye.

Vicky Leonard Australia The former marketing manager at Arrowfield Stud has launched her own company, Kick Collective, as well as TDN Australia-New Zealand. She is tipped to be a big player in shaping southern hemisphere racing for years to come.

Thady Gosden UK Assistant trainer at Clarehaven, who galloped to a third trainers’ championship title, their most dominant yet. Enable, Roaring Lion, Too Darn Hot. A lot is going right. Loyally represented by Sebastian on the night we might add!

Jethro Goldsmith France We’d be cautious of quoting a big price on Tsega Racing, ownerbreeder of Montjeu, making a similar mark again.

Jake Warren UK Enjoyed great success with breezeup purchase Queen of Bermuda and has recently been appointed Head of Racing for Dr Johnny Hon’s new and exciting venture, Global Group Lifestyle and Sport Club.

Sheikh Fahad bin Abdullah Al-Thani Qatar The autumn was kind to the co-owner of Qatar Racing and Qatar Bloodstock. Roaring Lion came of age in the Juddmonte, Irish Champion and QIPCO’s QEII became Cartier’s Horse of the Year.

William Buick Norway

If his first Derby wasn’t enough, Buick has turned globetrotter, adding a Churchill Downs Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf and the Grade 1 Mile Championship in Kyoto to his CV in 2018.

Walker Hancock USA Hancock, the managing director of Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, is the fourth generation of the family to take on the role. The farm stands numerous stallions, including War Front.

Yuga Kawada Japan Already winner of a host of Japanese Classics, Kawada had the good grace to ride his first UK winner on the day our list was published. Whilst all eyes were on Glorious Goodwood, Kawada was getting the job done at Redcar.

20 Money talks in sport – but the dark tradition of bending and breaking the rules dates back to the days when everything seemed more innocent. Tim Wright explores the edge of acceptability Harlequins’ bloody shame

EW INDUSTRY SECTORS ARE AS DYNAMIC as sport: over the past 15 years, the size of the worldwide sports market is estimated to have doubled to $90 billion. It is suggested that standards of sportsmanship have plummeted because of all this money sloshing around, and that this reflects a fall in standards more generally; a moral decay for which we are all, somehow, culpable. Sport, like art, mirroring life. Through the Nineties I worked at IMG, the sports management company founded by the great Mark McCormack. At a seminar at the company’s HQ, he asked us all to imagine being ranked by position in the world at the end of each month. He wanted us to think clearly about the unrelenting intensity of life as a professional athlete. It is this pressure to perform, even when injured, that leads to temptation. As in life, there is a line between gamesmanship and cheating: one is acceptable, the other clearly not. But the line can be blurred. It can also move with time, so that what was considered acceptable in one decade looks absurd in another. In cricket, sledging has for years

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been seen by the hardened professional as part of the game – a test of mental mettle that is part of the battle of wills. It is clear, however, that when Steve Waugh described the practice as an attempt to achieve “mental disintegration” he was reflecting an attitude that was acceptable in the Nineties but we are now beginning to question. When David Warner compared an Ashes series to war, he just sounded rather silly. Football coaches make tactical substitutions to run down the clock; a player – often at the furthest point from the dugouts – sees his number, and his time, is up and trudges off as though each step is the greatest physical effort imaginable. That is pushing up against, but not over the line. But when rugby team Harlequins used a blood capsule to achieve a tactical substitution, they had clearly strayed so far across the line that there seemed no way back for those involved.

Is any of this new? Have standards declined? Victorian cricket, formed around betting, and with players performing randomly for different patrons, was often fixed. The sport of kings is hardly immune. My favourite racing story, apocryphal of

aimed at the body, which spoiled the balance between bat and ball and detracted from the game’s aesthetic appeal. But four decades later, the West Indies bowlers of the Seventies and Eighties were still able to operate at the edge of what was deemed acceptable and to dominate the game.

There was less doubt about where that edge was in 1976, at the Olympic Games in Montreal. Boris Onischenko, a Soviet modern pentathlete, was so determined to win that, during the fencing competition, he used a switch wired into his epée which could record a hit even when he missed. He was banned for life. If you want to see the most blatant dive of all time, meanwhile, forget Latin American footballers. Look instead at the then amateur game of rugby union. Search YouTube for Wales versus the All Blacks in 1978. Andy Haden’s dive out of a line-out is flabbergasting. Also in 1978, Michel Pollentier won the yellow jersey on the fabled Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour de France. But his idea of providing a urine sample took advantage of the indefinite article. Instead of providing

PUSHING THE course, goes like this: the Duke of Norfolk, in Australia to watch his horse run in the Melbourne Cup, visited the stables and saw a groom surreptitiously slip something into the mouth of his horse. “I say! What was that?” asked the duke. “Oh, nothing your grace, just a lump of sugar. Here, have one yourself.” When the trainer then gave the jockey his pre-race briefing he told him: “Stay in the middle of the pack until the two-furlong marker. Then you go. And if anything comes past you, it’ll be the Duke of Norfolk.”

his own urine, from that day, he gave testers a sample from a rubber bulb hidden under his armpit, pumping it into their test tube as though he were playing the bagpipes. Speaking of extracting the urine, the Pakistan bowler Mohammad Amir was arrested and given a five-year ban from cricket in 2010 for bowling deliberate (and very obvious) no-balls during a Test match against England. He was seeking no performance advantage, but was co-operating with those who sought to corrupt the game for financial gain.

At the St Louis Olympics of 1904,

Athletics and cycling live in the long shadow cast by doping scandals.

the marathon, held in sweltering heat, was won by Fred Lorz, an American, who was garlanded and fêted by the partisan crowd – until it became clear he had covered 11 miles of the hilly course in a car. Next year will be the centenary of the fixing of the 1919 World Series, probably the most famous of all sport’s betting scandals. But there have been plenty since. Tennis is currently under the microscope, and Italians say of the English that we assume football cannot be fixed, while they start from the exact opposite viewpoint.

In 1932/33, the world of cricket was so appalled by England’s

Foiled fencer Boris Onischenko

Bodyline bowling that questions were asked in the House of Commons and diplomatic relations between the UK and Australia hit an all-time low. This was pushing the line so hard that the laws of cricket were changed to better protect batsmen from bowling

In 1988, Ben Johnson’s use of stanozolol, an anabolic steroid, discovered after he had won gold in the 100m in a world record time of 9.79 seconds, defined the Seoul Olympics. Similar stories are legion. Lance Armstrong’s systemic blood doping during all his seven wins at the Tour de France defies belief – the documentary Stop at Nothing is a chilling watch. These are just some of the best-known examples of pushing the boundaries way beyond their limits. In some strange way (Armstrong and Johnson aside) it is hard not to be drawn to the sheer chutzpah of those involved. The imagination of it all and the sheer obsession with winning is extraordinary. But what these and other examples demonstrate above all else is that nothing is new when it comes to man’s inability to know when to stop trying to gain an advantage. Keep in mind that these

21 Cameron ‘Sandpaper’ Bancroft

BOUNDARIES are only the known examples. Some of the unknown examples will involve subtlety and nuance. The perpetrators will be relying, perhaps, on accepted conventions. As with corruption in some countries, in some sports a certain taking of advantage is both accepted and expected. Ball tampering in cricket is a case in point. All professional teams look to manage the condition of the ball, and dry-handed fielders are given the specific duty to do so. Is it sharp practice, is it gamesmanship, or is it cheating? The International Cricket Council sets the bar on punishment for altering the condition of the ball (as distinct from maintaining its condition) so low that the sanction is only a fine and a one-match ban. In that context, while it is clearly cheating, it is also clear that the authorities consider it less egregious than today’s society, media and fans do.

All this leads to Newlands, Cape Town, and to day three of the second Test in an already acrimonious series between South Africa and Australia back in March. TV cameramen – alerted by former South Africa player Fanie de Villiers – used zoom lenses on high-definition cameras to follow the ball extremely closely as it passed from the Australia wicketkeeper through the hands of various fielders en route back to the bowler. And boy, were they rewarded! The big screen on the ground, and TV screens around the world, showed Cameron Bancroft of Australia “panic”, as he would describe it at a media conference, when he saw his own image – an image about which

As with corruption in some countries, in some sports a certain taking of advantage is both accepted and expected. he must have recurring nightmares – rubbing the ball with something suspicious. In his panic he took the next available opportunity to shove whatever it was down his trousers before being called over to the umpires. With a “Who, me, sir? No sir” look on his face, he then turned out his now empty pockets and professed innocence. But the game was up. At a media conference that evening, the Australia team’s leadership group set out to apologise. But instead of giving a full and frank confession, Bancroft told the world the yellow object had been “sticky tape”. Sitting alongside him was the Australia captain Steven Smith, a batsman statistically closer to Bradman than anyone before or since the Boy from Bowral. With the cricket world at his feet, Smith, who must have known the object was sandpaper, made a second major error of judgement in a catastrophic day: he underestimated his problem and told journalists this would not happen again under his leadership.

Watching Sandpapergate unfold, Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s prime minister at the time, made a pivotal intervention. He was shocked. Appalled. Outraged. There had been “cheating”. These

“role models” were “undermining the reputation of Australia”. He demanded decisive action from Cricket Australia. The next day, James Sutherland, CEO of Cricket Australia (in the middle of a billion-dollar media rights negotiation), arrived in South Africa looking very stern indeed. And Smith’s prophecy that this sort of thing would not happen again under his leadership was proved correct: his leadership was terminated. Cricket Australia saw that the standard ICC ban would have caused outrage and instead handed Smith and vice-captain Warner bans from playing cricket for, and in, Australia for a year. Bancroft was banned for nine months. Smith was also barred from any leadership role in the Australia team for two years; Warner for ever. All three players were also obliged to deliver 100 hours of community coaching.

would have done much to help restore his good name while demonstrating the pure love of the game to which he was first attracted. In his initial reaction he looked more sorry for himself than for his actions. In any event, it will blow over. Sadly, we are most likely to be distracted from this hue and cry by the next cheating scandal. But don’t let anyone tell you it’s all about a decline in standards generally, or that it’s all because of the money. There was no money in rugby union in 1978; less still in marathon running in 1904. n Tim Wright has worked in the sports business for nearly 30 years. At IMG he represented Formula One drivers and helped set up the IPL.

It is to be hoped good will come of the scandal, that cricket will draw back from the overt aggression that has dogged the game in recent years. But for the protagonists to return to former glories they need to do more, far more, than sob on television. Those advising Smith, Warner and Bancroft should have suggested they immediately renounce any legal review of the grounds on which an appeal against the ban might be fought. They should have volunteered to give more than the 100 hours of community coaching imposed. If Smith had pledged to deliver a triple century of hours, not necessarily all in Australia, he

Urine extractor Michel Pollentier

22

We hosted the inaugural Fitzdares Racing Futures dinner after the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood. The evening was a celebration of burgeoning talent in the world of racing as we published our list of the 35 UNDER 35 in front of an eclectic crowd at Cowdray House. Guests took on a bucking bronco before dinner, with young jockey Jake Greenall managing to pip Savile Row tailor Patrick Grant to first prize by just over half a minute.

Annabel’s hosted LUNCH WITH FRANKIE, a Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe preview with just a few lucky guests. Three days later Dettori triumphed on Enable.

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In the well plush surroundings of the Arts Club in Mayfair, we hosted the world’s first ever luxury darts evening, DARTS AT THE ARTS. Michael van Gerwen and Rachel Riley were there to spice things up, as a blend of professionals and amateurs did battle through the evening in aid of National Numeracy. It was an extraordinary evening of darts and drinks – a winning, if not lethal, combination!

A brilliant three-day festival in south London, the WORLD CYCLING REVIVAL took place in June at the newly reopened Herne Hill Velodrome. The 1940s-styled fancy-dress event promised plenty of excitement and, most notably, keirin races to bet on! Our brokers were on hand in vintage attire to take all the bets.

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How could technology help us – or indeed harm us – in the coming years? Jonathan Margolis compiles a wish list of inventions he’d like to see ECHNOLOGY HAS BROUGHT US many unexpected and wonderful things in the past 50 years – gadgets often unforeseen even by the most optimistic of science fiction writers. In the original 1982 Blade Runner movie, for example, which is set in 2019 – imagine – the flying cars stop to make video calls from phone booths. If you had suggested in 1982 that by 2019 most people in the world would have pocket devices that could make video calls to almost anyone else on the planet, I suspect it would have been seen as implausibly futuristic. To have said the same device would be good as a universal language translator, a still and video camera, a torch, a tape recorder, a navigation aid, a film viewer, a music player, a notebook, a letter sender, a chess machine and, oh yes, an instant portal to all the information ever produced, you would have been laughed out of town. Yet, with all the astonishing technology we do have, as a consumer tech columnist for the Financial Times I am also struck by what they haven’t invented yet, but probably could. So here’s my guide to the technology I am still waiting to see – along with a few things they could make, but thankfully haven’t – yet.

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STUFF WE’D LIKE

Hot-air dryer for people. Towelling yourself off post-shower or bath is boring, strenuous, time-consuming and inefficient. I want a walk-in, hot-air (or possibly infrared, but definitely not microwave) person dryer. In wet, out dry, even in the hardest-to-reach parts. Is it asking too much? Seemingly it is.

Robot that shaves you perfectly. Robots can already do keyhole heart surgery. Shaving is a drag, and it’s a Sisyphean task. So come on, a machine to shave your face (not sure about other bits) safely, efficiently and quickly can’t be too hard, surely?

Email, text and tweet scanner. You know the problem. You’re the president of the United States. You get angry about something. You immediately stab out a tweet and release it into the ether – and then all hell breaks loose. Perhaps the President doesn’t regret these things, but normal people do. So what about an AI reader that detects fury, rudeness or general obnoxiousness in written communications and gives you a chance to reconsider sending? Perhaps it could even enforce an hour’s contemplation before letting it go. “You have just called your boss imbecilic. Is this a good idea?”

A better way of sewing on buttons. It’s nearly 2019. And our clothes are still secured the same way as they were 5,000 years ago in the Bronze Age – by friction. It’s not good enough. The zipper (c. 1893) was a partial answer, but still not great – hence the continuing hegemony of the accursed sewn-on button. Something needs to be done.

Dehydrated water. Everything from expeditions to space travel would be easier if water weren’t so heavy. Aeroplanes could fly lighter. Drought-stricken areas could have water brought to them more easily. So surely by now there ought to be a powdered form of water – some kind of crystal to which we would simply add a little bit of water to make a great deal of water. Dehydrated water may sound a bit silly – but it would change the world if somebody could work out how to make it.

TV that mutes advertisements. This one really shouldn’t be too hard, although commercial TV companies and the advertising industry wouldn’t take too kindly to it. An additional feature that would be incredibly popular would be an option to turn down the volume for the shouty, noisy bits of shows like The X Factor. I suppose the advertisers will soon find ways to make commercials that work in vision only, but at least the peace will be preserved.

Car alarms that detect thieves only. The remarkable thing about car alarms is that when we hear one going off, the last thing that occurs to any of us is that a car has actually been broken into. We assume it’s the wind. Or a cat. Or just a faulty alarm. Would it be too much to ask, then, for someone to invent a car alarm that can tell thieves from cats?

Central locking for houses. It can sometimes take ten minutes to go round the house closing and locking every window and door. Forget to do it once for five minutes, or leave a single window open, and you can guarantee our dear burgling community will be queuing up to get in. Imagine the joy of being able to turn the front door key and hear your house sealing itself up like a bank vault, accompanied by the wailing and gnashing of frustrated burglars.

Supermarket partner finder. You go shopping, turn round to ask your significant other if we’re OK for digestive biscuits, quails’ eggs, whatever. And he or she has vanished to some unknown part of the store. It seems over the top to phone him/her, but wouldn’t a locator app be just wonderful, to tell you he/she is in jams, cereals and so on? The device would also work at the races, crowded parties etc.

A betting app that does exactly what I want.

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Logging into a well-known app to place a simple bet on the Manchester derby recently, I was confronted with a UX nightmare. Was I betting in-play, or had the game not even begun? Total yellow cards in the first half? Over and under total swear words aimed at the ref? How about total swear words aimed at the app? All I want is a clean, easy-to-use app that doesn’t drag me to the betting gutter – and in this case my wish has been granted. The new Fitzdares app looks stylish, works flawlessly and focuses on the sports that people care about.

STUFF WE FEAR Life recorder. Would life not be easier and disputes more easily resolved if we all carried 24/7 voice recorders? However, even if you’ve wished occasionally that you could prove indisputably so-and-so said such-and-such, life recorders would in reality be a miserable and complicating addition. The recordings would be continually hacked and tampered with until we were back to square one, where no recollection of any conversation can be relied upon.

Automatic GPS tracking of your car. It must be possible for GPS technology to track your car so you can be fined every time you speed by so much as 1mph, or overstay in a parking bay even a minute. The thought of this would surely make nasty little bureaucrats slobber at the mouth with excitement. It’s odds on that a government wonk somewhere in the world, very likely in a British local authority, will have such a system up and running before long. You have been warned.

The brand-new Fitzdares app looks stylish, works flawlessly and focuses on the sports that people care about.

Lie detector app.

AI bots you really can’t tell from real people.

Lies are the glue of social and business interaction. The world would fall apart if we all knew instantly and reliably when someone was lying because our smartwatch was listening to the conversation, detected the telltale stresses in the liar’s voice and sent a notification. Remarkably, there’s not yet a lie detector app, not even one that’s fake or unreliable. But I have a feeling it won’t be long coming.

At the moment, AI of the kind you encounter on so-called customer service helplines is useless. The problem is, though, AI will inexorably improve, while people working from scripts in the poorest call centres will increasingly sound like the older, rubbish AI bots, partly because they are poorly trained, partly because it’s a horrible job and they are not motivated to be truly helpful. n

26 We’ve teamed up with the crafty folk at Drake’s to produce these elegant betting-themed pocket squares

A stylish pocket square has the power to transform any outfit. In an exclusive collaboration with Drake’s, we have designed a pocket square that is both timeless and elegant. These stylish accessories have been expertly handmade in Italy from a lightweight blend of wool and silk, printed with two animalinspired betting patterns.

Our ‘first past the post’ square and its ‘monkey each-way’ alter-ego allow you to brighten up any suit jacket and bring some whimsy to your daily racing lives. At Fitzdares we believe the devil is in the detail, and we trust you agree too.

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THE FINAL FURLONG

W I N T H E U LT I M AT E C H E LT E N H A M E X P E R I E N C E !

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his is your chance to enjoy an extra-special day at the Cheltenham Festival next March, travelling in luxury by train and dressed impeccably thanks to our friends at Norton & Sons and Budd. All you need to do is win the sports quiz you can't Google. We have asked a panel of 50 chosen sports experts to answer 25 questions, each one with only two potential answers. The questions are very subjective and sometimes controversial! For example: who would win a race over 600m, Usain Bolt or Mo Farah? The entrant who matches the most answers with the majority decisions of our panel will win the ultimate Cheltenham experience. In

the event of a draw, we will ask a tie-break question. There will be two questions published every week, beginning on Wednesday 14 December and ending on Friday 1 March – giving the lucky winner just enough time to get to our tailors Norton & Sons and our shirt-makers Budd, so they can look super-snappy for a memorable day out at the festival.

FIRST PRIZE • A made-to-measure suit from Norton & Sons. • A shirt, pair of braces, silk pocket square, socks and a tie from Budd.

HOW TO ENTER

• Travel for two on the Fitzdares Express (a Pullman train) from London to the festival.

Answer the questions every Wednesday and Friday on Instagram or Twitter from 14 December. Alternatively, all the questions will be available on our website at the end of February. Good luck!

• Two tickets to our private box. • Return on the Fitzdares Express with a four-course dinner.

25 ADDITIONAL PRIZES After each question we will award a £50 free bet, at random, to one entrant who agrees with our panel.

BOXING DAY AT THE RACES

CHINOCCHIO DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS FOR CHINS

GIVING BACK TO BRITISH RACING

Leaving Drinks n. Drinks hosted in a London pub by a chin leaving for Hong Kong, Singapore or New York, starting a job in shipping, insurance or shipping insurance. Convened because otherwise no one will notice they’ve left. Other popular destinations are Afghanistan, the Priory and south of the river. Comes back one week later for Christmas. posh adj. 1. Chins being ironic. 2. Non-chins not being ironic. 3. A Spice Girl. 4. Those wedding portaloos with a Carrara marble backsplash and a flower print above the shitter.

eloocution n. Teaching your child to say loo not toilet, then watching in horror as they correct other adults. going home home n. Really simple way of telling work colleagues that you’re going home as in home where your parents live, where they live in the country not where they live in London, the country as in the countryside in England not the house in the countryside in France, but also not the cottage in the countryside in Cornwall. Find Chinocchio on Instagram @chinocchios.chin.dictionary

Fitzdares are the official sponsors of the famous Boxing Day meeting at Huntingdon. It is their biggest day of the year and we are proud to play a role in this special occasion and to be able to give something back to UK horse racing. With a tongue-in-cheek nod to jump racing, it will be called National Huntingdon Day, and to celebrate we are giving away unlimited tickets. We are also giving you the opportunity to name a race – send us any ideas by 14 December and we'll pick our favourite. To request tickets and offer your name suggestions, please email louisa@fitzdares.com