Felix Francis - Triple Crown

One was a handwritten letter, supposedly from my old Irish mother back in County Cork but actually penned by Harriet Andretti, telling me how much she missed me and expressing hope that I might come home very soon. The second was a letter on IRS-headed notepaper, addressed to me at the Santa Anita racetrack, advising me that I was being charged a penalty for late filing of my income tax return the previous April.

Neither was true or particularly important. I had only added them to my kit to augment my story of having previously been an Irish groom working at Santa Anita. And one never knew when an official-looking letter from a government agency might come in useful as a form of ID, even if it had been created on my laptop and run off on Tony’s desktop printer.

I climbed up onto my bed and, presently, Rafael returned. He was clearly one of the boys that went out to a bar or indulged in some illicit drinking on the backside. He reeked of alcohol and was so inebriated he could hardly find his bed in a room that was only eight feet long by six wide.

He said nothing to me, as if he hadn’t noticed I was there, and eventually he tripped over the wooden chair in the corner, crawled onto his bunk, still half-clothed, and went to sleep.

I had travelled to America in an attempt to learn the identity of a mole in the FACSA racing section. I wondered how the hell I had come to the point where I was lying in the dark trying to ignore a drunken Mexican, farting beneath me?

Other than making calls and sending texts, my non-smart phone had one other function that was useful — it had an alarm, and it went off under my pillow at four o’clock in the morning.

The sky was still pitch-black but there was plenty of illumination coming into the room from the electric security lights that constantly lit up the whole barn area. The wafer-thin curtains didn’t stretch across the full width of the window and were obviously there more for decoration than to provide greater privacy or darkness.

I swung myself down to the floor from my top bunk.

The occupant of the lower was still out for the count and snoring gently. I was tempted to leave him sleeping — if he was late and got fired, I’d not have to put up with the flatulence. However, my good nature prevailed and I tried to rouse him by shaking his shoulder, but to little effect.

In the end I rolled him off the mattress onto the floor and forced him to sit up but, even then, I wasn’t quite sure if he was conscious in the normal sense of the word. I left him there and went down the corridor to the bathroom.

I was, therefore, quite surprised to find Rafael not only upright but dressed and ready for work when I returned, even if his eyes were rather bloodshot.

‘ Lo siento, ’ he said. ‘ Bebido demasiado. ’

I smiled at him. I knew siento meant sorry and that was enough. I didn’t expect him to be able to speak English with a hangover.

‘No late,’ I said, tapping my watch.

‘OK.’ He smiled back with his mostly toothless grin.

We went out together to the barn.

Charlie Hern was there ahead of us and he was barking out orders to the other grooms.

‘Paddy,’ he shouted at me.

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.

‘All four of yours go out today in stall order. Paddleboat first at five-thirty. Have him ready.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said again. ‘Sure will.’

I turned and calmly walked away, but I was far from composed inside. I thought I’d done my homework about what being a groom involved but, quite suddenly, I felt I was in the deep end, and wearing lead boots.

I went in search of Maria and found her in the tack room.

‘Where are the saddles?’ I asked, looking around at walls draped only with bridles on numbered hooks. There were a few metal saddle racks but all but one were empty.

‘Exercise riders bring their own, stupid,’ Maria said. ‘Where you been?’

Stupid was the right word. I had really only spent any time at racing stables in England and, even then, only as a visitor or as an integrity inspector. The stable lads there not only looked after the horses’ needs in terms of bedding, feed and water, they generally rode them out to the gallops each morning as well. Hence the stable tack room had racks full of saddles, one for each of the lads plus a few spares.

But it was getting increasingly difficult to find good stable lads who could not only ride well, but were of the right size and weight. It wasn’t only jockeys like Jimmy Robinson for whom maintaining riding weight was a problem.

I knew that exercise riders were becoming more popular in the big English racing centres like Newmarket and Lambourn but in the United States, where the training barns were grouped together in clusters at the racetracks, the exercise riders had completely cornered the market. Here a groom could spend his whole life with racehorses and never once sit on one’s back.

Maria showed me which of the bridles I needed.

Each horse had his own bridle with the specific style of bit that the trainer had chosen as the most suitable. Most were simple snaffle bits, but a few were special with extended side pieces for controlling excess sideways motion of the head, or with added rings and straps that prevented the animal rearing.

I selected the correct bridle for Paddleboat and turned to leave.

‘Why you desert me last night?’ Maria asked in an aggrieved tone.

‘You seemed to be enjoying yourself with the others,’ I replied.

She laughed and batted her long eyelashes at me. ‘I only trying to make you jealous.’

Surprisingly, I now realised that she had.

More by luck than judgement, and on the dot of five-thirty, Paddleboat was ready for Victor Gomez, a 44-year-old semi-retired Venezuelan jockey who was employed as Raworth’s exercise rider. He had pitched up ten minutes earlier with his saddle over his arm. By then, I had given the horse his breakfast, brushed him down, removed his overnight bandages and picked out any muck from his feet.

Maria helped me with the saddle, fetching me the right pad to put underneath, and assisting with girth adjustments so that everything fitted perfectly.

‘No tendon boots,’ she suddenly shouted when I thought that all was finished.

‘Tendon boots?’ I’d never heard of them.

Maria rushed off and returned with two black padded tubes about nine inches long that she strapped to the horse’s forelegs.

‘Gives tendon support,’ she said. ‘Horses always wear them for exercise and racing. How come you are groom and not know of tendon boots?’

‘We never used them at Santa Anita,’ I said.

I’m not sure she believed me but I didn’t wait to find out. Instead, I led Paddleboat out of his stall and round towards the office.

Charlie Hern was there, giving Victor instructions on what work he wanted the horse to do. He broke off to inspect my handiwork. Satisfied, he gave Victor a leg-up into the saddle.

‘OK, Paddy,’ he said. ‘I’ll take him along to the training track. You carry on with getting the next one ready.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

I did as I was told and that was how the morning progressed, with only a short break for a hurried breakfast in the track kitchen at seven.

Each of the horses went out to the track for a workout lasting about twenty to twenty-five minutes. Not that they ran fast for all that time. I leaned on the rail and watched the last of mine at exercise. Victor Gomez took him through a combination of walking and trotting, interspersed with a few fast gallops over no more than half a mile at a time.

Meanwhile, George Raworth and Charlie Hern stood on a raised platform at the edge of the training track, Charlie with a stopwatch in his hand, recording everything in a notebook. Occasionally Victor would go over to George for further instructions before setting off again.