I have just finished reading Doped
(Jamie Reid, Racing Post Books, 2013), winner of the 2013 William Hill Sports
Book of the Year.
A very enjoyable but head-shaking
read. Some of the exploits were so brazen I had to remind myself it was a true
story and not the fantastical plot of a Dick Francis novel.
The book would have benefited from
more references and notes. Some of the details would only have been known to
the participants but there is not an extensive bibliography or appendix giving
the source of certain details.
In summary, for a period in the 1960s
a gang of dopers wandered into racing stables across the country and doped
horses at will and profited from the horses' subsequent poor runs (as did
selected bookmakers and criminals).
It was a very risky business with
high stakes that went beyond the financial. The dopers started on Flat horses,
including several runners in Classics and high profile races, but also expanded
into National Hunt runners too.
In jumps races, the risk of a doped
horse falling and killing its jockey was higher than in Flat races. If the
dopers were caught they could be charged with murder, which in 1960s UK could
still carry the death penalty. But it didn't seem to act as a deterrent.
The dopers were not always
successful. Sometimes they over-doped the horse which caused it to be withdrawn
from the race. Other times they were out-foxed.
Trainer Fred Rimell became suspicious
after some of the gang paid a visit to the yard under the pretext of wanting to
have horses in training with him.
He suspected they were interested in
getting at his Grand National hope Nicolaus Silver so he switched the grey and
placed another grey horse in his stable. The dopers did indeed return and
unwittingly doped the wrong horse.
Nicolaus Silver went on to win the
1961 Grand National and was returned at 28/1 because of rumours he had been
doped and could not win!
Quite early on in the book the author
really gets to the heart of the matter as to why what happened was able to
happen:
"There was no whining about
'transparency' or 'accountability' as there would be today. Geoffrey Hamlyn [SP
compiler for the Sporting Life] took the view that in matters of sin on the
racecourse it was about a 50-50 split between the bookmakers on the one side
and trainers and jockeys on the other."
Charlie Maskey of Victor Chandler
recalled "We all knew they [trainers and jockeys] were at it and they all
knew we knew."
It is easy to take a romantic view of
past crimes with colourful characters, such as are recalled in Doped. But the
gang's actions ruined horse's lives, deprived jockeys and trainers of victories
with their leading horses and defrauded the betting public who placed wagers on
runners that could not possibly win.
Given that these scandalous events
occurred in the early days of legalised off-course betting, it's amazing that
betting on horseracing has survived at all.
The end of the book felt a bit disappointing because of
the lack of known details about what exactly happened to the main protagonists
in later decades. But, overall, it was a well compiled account of an
extraordinary period in the Turf's history.
