By the time I got off the train and walked the shortish distance from Paddington to Hampstead, nine o’clock had come and gone. The significance of this was that The Morning Line had started. TML was Channel Four’s Saturday Morning Racing digest, watched by hundreds of thousand of punters. I was desperate to get to a bookies before they mentioned Katy Nowaitee’s chances in the Cambridgeshire, possibly slashing the price about her into the process. Too late. They’d already featured the race when I trotted into Ladbroke’s, resulting in our brave little heroine shortening already from 18 to 16/1. I had another fifty on her to win, doubling my investment at a stroke. Although I’m not one for counting my winnings before a race has been run, I allowed myself a little calculation, just to be on the safe side if I needed to get in and out of the bookies in a hurry later. Six weeks at a fiver a week at 50/1? Fifteen hundred and thirty pounds. Another couple at thirty threes? Eighty six quid. And finally 50 sovs at 16/1? Another eight hundred and fifty sheets. Oh yes – if the little girl rode a good race, the best part of two and a half grand would be making my pockets bulge on the way home after work.
Much like its Australian counterpart, the English racing public loves a battler. Katy fitted the bill perfectly; she was little, she was brave and she had the heart of a Lion, and as I spent the day absent mindedly settling bets and paying out on races I had no interest in, I saw our heroine’s price contract hourly. With two minutes to go to the off it seemed like the whole of the nation had taken the plunge on Katy, and as she took her place in the starting stalls she was ready to go off as third favourite at the shockingly short price of 6/1.
The Cambridgeshire had the biggest field of any race run in England that year – 35 runners- and the Kate-ster was drawn in stall 35, miles away from the pace, and, perhaps more worryingly, a long way away from the two joint favourites: Nooshman and Bound for Pleasure. Many experts thought Katy would have to track across to join the pack – remember she’d made a name for battling through traffic to win her races- but jockey John Reid was confident that if he did that he’d give the favs a five length start, a start Katy wouldn’t be able to reel in.
They were off.
About halfway through Katy was one of only four or five racing on her side of the track. On the other side, Bound for Pleasure was already in trouble, but Nooshman hit the front at about the same time as Katy took up the pace on the far side. By now I was out from behind my desk, cheering the little filly to the line, bemused punters in the shop staring at me as I became almost apoplectic as she strained to reach the line first. The angle of the cameras at the finishing line made it almost impossible to tell who had won. We had to wait…
Of course she won. She won by one and a half lengths. Marlow erupted and headed down to collect its winnings. So many people had backed her in the town that the bookmakers had to close down for the day at four in the afternoon because there wasn’t enough money to pay out all the lucky punters brandishing their winning tickets. Now that’s a result…
