Racing can’t survive without crowds

We all have weeks when every win bet finishes second and every each-way comes home in fourth. You begin to feel as though the Fates have something against you personally, as with the American punter who had lost his job, his wife and his home. Call him Fred Jones. On a seaside racecourse he invests his last ten dollars on a Tote jackpot. All six horses come in, but as he approaches the pay window, joyfully brandishing his win ticket, a gust of wind whips it from his hand and blows it out to sea. Despairingly, he sinks to his knees and implores aloud: ‘Just what have I done to deserve this?’ At which point the thunder clouds part for a moment and a voice from above declares: ‘I really don’t know, Jones. It’s just that there’s something about you which pisses me off.’

I have just had a Fred Jones-ish week. An alarming message on Mrs Oakley’s laptop declared that it had been invaded by hackers and I let a honey-tongued bunch of swindlers scam me out of $900 by playing on the fear we non-technical folk have of having our bank accounts stripped via the internet. A visit from BT left our chaotic wifi worse than ever, the mower packed up halfway through the lawn and the dog ate my specs. Then came the coup de grâce: on the Sunday I failed to check the French racecards and see that James Fanshawe’s Audarya, one of this column’s Twelve to Follow, was contesting the Darley Prix Jean Romanet at Deauville. The Fanshawe filly stormed to victory in the hands of Ioritz Mendizabal at 33-1, with French punters getting 47-1 on the pari-mutuel, and I didn’t have a penny on her. That was the bit that really hurt.