‘The last owner who tried to ride his own horse got tanked,’ said the trainer, looking up at me as I perched on Darcy, knees nearly up to my chest like a pixie in the racing saddle.
‘After three circuits he threw himself off into the muck heap.’
‘I get the picture,’ I said, running my gloved hand against Darcy’s neck. ‘Please, look after your mother,’ I whispered to her. She was perfectly calm beneath me. Because I raised her, I have always felt like I can trust this horse with my life. I was about to find out exactly what that meant.
It is all very well trusting a horse you have raised from a yearling while cantering her around the woods. It is quite another when that thoroughbred has grown into a gleaming racehorse.
Suddenly, at that point, a thought comes into your head that you believe you have invented and that no owner before you has ever had: ‘I know! I am going to ride my own racehorse! I am going to be like Elizabeth Taylor galloping The Pie to victory!’
I told the trainer of my plans. The trainer is a veteran jockey who has seen people like me come and go. It turns out I am not the first person since Velvet Brown to think of riding her own racehorse. He has seen lots of women like me take leave of their senses, and the odd City boy too.
His response was far more accommodating than I had expected. No doubt he has discovered that the best way to disavow an owner of the notion that they can become the next Frankie Dettori is to let them climb aboard.
He agreed I should join them at 10 a.m.,
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