Thinking big

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Watching the woman in front of me in the Ascot Tote queue backing five horses in the same race on Saturday reminded me of Lloyd Bentsen, one of the best US politicians never to become president, who died last week. Asked once if it wasn’t rather unfair running simultaneously for vice-president and for a Senate seat, he said he had modelled his political career on a vet and a taxidermist in his home town. The pair had set up shop next to each other in the main square, erecting a board which ran across the top of both premises, proclaiming: ‘Either way you get your dog back.’

I don’t know if Bentsen, a rich Texan famous for his classic ‘I knew Jack Kennedy’ put-down of presidential aspirant Dan Quayle, was a racehorse owner but he would have done well in the Coolmore or Godolphin set-ups. He once declared of the soaring budgets under Ronald Reagan,  ‘A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.’

One man who seemed to be thriving at Ascot, despite spending a cool £200 million on rebuilding the stands and relaying the track, was the affable chief executive Douglas Erskine-Crum. The elements were not kind. It rained all day. A royal victory was denied when the Queen’s Marching Song was second in the Victoria Cup, and it took until the last race for Frankie Dettori, the Ascot mascot, to win a race and delight the crowd with his trademark ‘flying dismount’. There were snags: queues for the ladies loos, complaints about course visibility at lower levels, potential bottlenecks. Those booking seats in the sixth-floor panoramic restaurant will have to be precise with their table requests if they are to glimpse any panorama.