Vale King Freddie

Today started with the very sad news of the death of Freddie Williams, who in recent years has been the King of the Ring in Britain, particularly at Cheltenham. He always came across as a very decent man, and it is very sad news that he has passed away at the age of only 65. Although Freddie bet most famously at Cheltenham, he bet most frequently in his native Scotland, and I can never think of Freddie without thinking of our late friend Joe McCarthy. Joe and Freddie always seemed to get on very well together, and would always pass the time of day when they came across each other on the course, most often at Musselburgh. I wouldn't say that Joe bet invariably with Freddie - I wouldn't have thought that anybody would ever have bet invariably with Freddie, because Freddie's style of bookmaking was such that, if he fancied the horse you wanted to back, you'd get much better odds elsewhere; but if he didn't think your selection would win, you'd definitely get the best price with him - but Joe used to have his bets with Freddie whenever feasible, and they used to enjoy some good banter. Freddie would often send Joe away with a cheery, "I'm not expecting to see you after this race" - and would always greet him with a smile when Joe proved him wrong. You'd often find them studying the horses in the pre-parade ring together: Freddie was an extremely good judge of a horse's condition, and would always nip away from his stand well before the betting for each race started to catch a glimpse of the runners before they were saddled, and would base a lot of his decisions about which to lay and which to avoid on how they looked.

Joe told me a lovely story which illustrates what a good judge Freddie was. One time at a jumps meeting at Musselburgh in the middle of winter a few years ago there was a hot favourite in a novice hurdle, representing one of the country's leading stables and ridden by the stable's then jockey, one of the best that there is. The horse had easily the best form in the race, and Joe thought he really should win. When he saw that Freddie was offering what seemed unrealistically long odds against the horse, he placed a bet with him. Freddie took the bet, gave Joe his ticket, and then added, "You shouldn't have backed that horse: he's lame". So Joe took his place in the stand, watched the horse seemingly being inspected by the vet at the start, being given the all-clear to race - and then being pulled up after maybe three or four hurdles. I haven't given the identities of the people involved in this story lest the trainer suffer the attentions of the 'investigative journalists' who I read were pestering Fergal Lynch and Michael Dodds at the races at the weekend, but I'm confident that there was no monkey-business going on. It was merely that Freddie had seen something that the trainer presumably hadn't noticed; the jockey felt the horse wasn't right going to post and reported his view to the vet at the start (if there had been a scam going down, there was no way that the jockey would have alerted the vet, because the last thing the perpetrators would have wanted would be for the horse to be scratched) but the horse would have warmed up by this time and it would have been impossible for the vet to diagnose a problem at this stage. And, while Freddie obviously had his losing days, this would have been one of his many winning ones, because if a bookie has the courage to go, say, even money about a 1/2 shot, then he's going to make a big profit on the race if the horse doesn't win. And the really nice thing was that he had the friendliness to tell Joe of his conviction, so that if he'd wanted to hedge on something else he would have been able to do so.

That's how I'll remember Freddie: an honest man, a bold man, a sportsman, and a bloody good judge of horses.

Don't, by the way, think that there is anything strange about Freddie noticing the horse's lameness before the trainer. You don't have to be a genius to walk around at the races and pick out things wrong with many of the horses running. Of course a lot of them are minor problems of which the trainer is aware and about which he has made an educated guess and calculated gamble that they aren't going to affect the horse's performance, as very often minor problems don't. But that's a hard one to get right - and then again there will be the problems that the trainer hasn't picked up. Do you find it hard to believe that detectable problems could go undetected? Well, bearing in mind that there have been numerous cases in this country over the years of the wrong horse being taken to the races, and in some cases run, don't be at all surprised that a trainer and his staff between them can fail to pick up on a horse's unsoundness, if they can't even pick up on his identity! It's mind-blowing that a wrong horse can be taken to the races, because it is not merely the case of the lads who take him there not noticing, plus the trainer when he sees him there, but also the fact that not one of the people left behind notice that a horse who is meant to have left for the track is still at home, and that a horse who is meant still to be at home is nowhere to be seen. Absolutely mind-blowing - so the next time you see a horse walking around the parade ring and you think, "Gosh, he doesn't look right", don't be too surprised. He may well go and win the race. Just think extra carefully before placing your bet.

One person who evidently doesn't need to think too hard before selecting winners is Aisling, because she romped home in our tipping competition, selecting nine of the thirty winners at Royal Ascot, and showing the best level-stake profit (in fact, that should be smallest level-stake loss). She did so well that she very nearly broke even, which is a great effort when you have to make a selection for every race, and when you have to do so without seeing the horses. As my memories of Freddie Williams make clear, off-course punters are at a colossal disadvantage against their on-course counterparts, because being able to factor how the horse looks - especially if you have seen him previously and can assess his physical progress or regress - into the equation is a huge plus.

To close on a positive note, the sadness of this morning's news was in contrast to the thrill of watching the Empire's good mare Joolzy (Spaceage Juliet - see horse biographies section of the site, although I don't know why I'm directing you there because her bio will now be even more out-of-date than it was 24 hours ago) winning the seventh race of her career at Albury. Having raced in town on her last start, she obviously enjoyed a big drop in class here, but it was still TAB racing and she carried top weight. One of her rivals, ridden by the intriguingly-named Rodney Sue-San, gave her a real race, but she was just too good and too determined, and she forced her way to the front in the closing stages to win by about a neck. We are so lucky to have At The Races giving us the action from two Australian tracks every morning between 2am and 6am, and it's definitely worth the effort to watch it once in a while. Watching the less obvious meetings - today we had Bathurst and Albury, and you'd hardly get any less obvious than that - is very rewarding, because in addition to seeing a completely different style of racing, the rural backdrops to some of the tracks (not to mention the tracks themselves) can be intriguing. The added bonus today was that following the race after Joolzy's - in which her half-brother Westy (Stoneage Romeo) ran unplaced - we caught a glimpse of the Empire's senior strategist Joff doing an Aidan O'Brien with his mobile phone. We've got Joff coming to the UK shortly for his first visit for several years. We'll take him to the races a few times when he's here, and it's just a pity that he won't have the opportunity to pit his wits against those of Freddie Williams; I think they'd have found each other worthy adversaries.