Dear Nina: York Races are neither Decadent nor Depraved

Dear Nina,

I thought I would write about the races because they make me happy and are beautiful. I once read a piece by dead chap called Hunter S Thompson about the Kentucky Derby in which he claimed that it was decadent and depraved. I hold an Englishman's disdain for American racing. They go around a flat dirt track and drug their horses, and pay the winners far too much money. However, I have never been to the races in America, so I couldn't comment.

But racing in York is the best fun, and one day you will come to York, and I will make you drink a half of Theakston's Old Peculier, and then I will relent and buy you some bubbly. And we will have a great time in the sunshine, on a flat patch of green grass called the Knavesmire where the Saxons pastured their cows and hanged thieves outside the city walls.

The first time I went, I was five years old. We went in the Silver ring in the middle of the track. In Kentucky, this is a space filled with degenerate low lifes, sparked out of their minds on Mint Juleps. In York, the inside track is usually filled with families, older people or people who want a picnic. You can bring your own food and alcohol. Small children run in and out of the bookmakers' stands, holding half eaten sausage rolls whilst their fathers drink cans of Stella and burn a bright lobster pink. Way back in 1999, I was given £5 of my Child Benefit money and a racecard. I solemnly selected Jedi Knight, because I recently had watched Star Wars for the first time and he ran in the red and blue colours of Mr and Mrs Hodgson. Red remains my favourite colour. He proceeded to win by a short head. Sadly, Child Benefit is now means tested, so a smaller proportion of the population has the ability to gamble using the government's money. The day was blazing hot and I was bought an ice cream with the winnings.

I haven't been to the Silver Ring in years, although entry prices remain cheap and small children are still bought ice creams because their parents love them. I now go the County Stand, which is for annual members and those who will shell out £50 for a ticket. The County Stand is a red white and blue Georgian gem, with peeling paint and cracked bannisters inside. From the outside, it retains an old world charm. From its seats, well-to-do gells wearing silly hats try to stop their husbands gambling in a manner unchanged since the old pile was thrown up in 1754. On big days, the steps are rammed and if you leave your seat you lose it.

There are two types of people in the County Stand - those who go for the racing and those who are there for the day out. Those who are there for the day out are conspicuously Yorkshire. Women wear high, high heels, and low cut dresses. Make up is applied with a trowel, with eyebrows drawn on in Sharpie. Orange is the new black, at least where skin is concerned. The blokes usually wear bum freezer jackets and skinny ties. Jackets are not removed, by order of the Committee. Only if the mercury is edging towards 100 will iron propriety be relaxed and the tannoy bark the blessed words 'Gentlemen may remove their jackets.' Men drink beer, women drink rose. It smells of sweat and booze and cigarettes. Everyone is smiling who is there for the day out. Most people are pissed. By nightfall, the men will be leering at women and shouting at policemen and vomiting in the street. Women will fall over and twist their ankles. If they recover, they too will leer and shout and vomit. The first time I was groped was by a woman who had been racing at York. She must have been at least 50, and was wearing a sash which said 'Mother of the Bride'. I couldn't have been more than 17. But for now, no one is angry. Everyone is a happy, happy drunk in the sunshine. There is wine and gambling and they aren't at work and there are what passes for handsome men in Yorkshire and pretty girls hidden somewhere under the makeup. The County Stand is the best. These are people in the fine mould of Sir John Byng. Tasked with policing a major political protest in Manchester in 1819, General Sir John sneaked off to York to watch two of his horses run. In his absence, his troops went mad, cutting down 15 peaceful protesters and injuring 400 more. Like Sir John, racegoers at York know there is more to life than duty. We are off to the races, sod the consequences.

In between the happy crowd wind those who are there for the racing. There is no real segregation in the County Stand. But you can tell who is who if you look. The giveaway is the lack of smiles. Those whose living depends on the horses are tight lipped and speak curtly. They stare at the racecard, and frown if their horse shies in the parade ring. If it wins their smiles are a grimace of relief. Ties are less skinny. You can identify the committee by the sensible brown trilby hat, or Panamas if it gets really hot. Real horse people are split between the owners and trainers box in the Melrose Stand, and the owners viewing area, next to the old Georgian stand. I once stood next to Hughie Morrison on the viewing area, as he watched one of his horses run a bad race during the Ebor meeting. He barely reacted, his face a worried mask from the moment the horse was led into the stalls until it trailed in down the field with its chest heaving. Six months later, one of his horses tested positive for dope. Morrison was in all the papers, arguing eloquently that he was innocent. I believed him. No one in their right mind would drug a horse as bad as 'Our Little Sister' for a nothing race on the all-weather at Wolverhampton. In every photo in the subsequent press furore, he bore the same worried expression he had worn that blustery day at York. That troubled mask is the uniform of everyone whose horse is running, from starters orders until the horse is safely in the winner’s enclosure. It marks the horse people, as if with a brand. Those who aren't directly involved but have just as much at stake are similarly afflicted. The suits are less well cut, but you can see the need in their eyes as they will their horse on. I try to steer clear of the obvious gambling addicts, but it is a useful moral lesson to occasionally see the whites of their broken eyes. Never gamble more than you can afford. Or you will end up on the edge of Owners Viewing area worrying about where next week's dinner money will come from.

There is also another stand, the Grandstand. I go into the Grandstand because bookies in the County stand won't accept £1 bets anymore. There are a couple in the Grandstand who will, so I sneak through the dividing fence, flashing my members badge to get let back in after sticking a quid on number 5 in the 2nd race. The Grandstand is an even a harder drinking stand than the County, with people wearing jeans, or occasionally, awfully, novelty costumes. I once saw a man dressed in a bright pink plastic suit with little yellow horse shoes on it. He made his friend, a one day only transvestite with stubble and halitosis look well dressed. I have also seen people come as horses, leprechauns, sumo wrestlers and nuns. One of the best scenes I saw at the races was a man dressed as a nun who was so drunk he urinated on a bookie's stand. The outraged bookie called security, and the nun was dragged from the stand and ejected, all the while cheerily pissing away in the brawny arms of the bouncers. I like the Grandstand in short bursts, but it becomes tiresome after too long.

The track itself is wide and flat, roughly in the shape of a D. The winning post is in the straight, with a deep green wood near the turn for home. The 6 furlong and 7 furlong starts run off towards to road to Leeds and into cornfields, which become golden as the season goes on. The far side of the course is bordered by houses. From the stands, you can see people in their back gardens, having a cup of tea and enjoying the races for free. Jockeys love it. The space allows them to get horses through to challenge. The flatness makes it kind to horses. Horses aren't really built to go up and down, and steep gradients and twists and turns force them to shift their balance, change their leading legs and mess with their minds. York allows for a straight shootout with very few hiding places. Surprisingly it is something of a graveyard of champions. The great Brigadier Gerard lost in the International Stakes at York, his only loss in 18 races. In 2015, Golden Horn won the Derby and the Arc, but lost by a nose at York, again in the Juddmonte International. It is a great track for wily local trainers and underdogs, who often bushwhack highly fancied outsiders.

Occasionally, York races will produce a moment of real beauty and meaning, like a dust mote in a sunbeam. In 2012, Frankel, perhaps the best miler ever to run, was brought to compete in the Juddmonte International Stakes by his trainer Henry Cecil. Cecil was true legend of the Turf, the trainer of 25 Classic winners in a glittering career. He was British flat racing in the 1980s, a decade he dominated so thoroughly that one of his owners paid him the compliment of saying 'Horse racing is easy. You buy a horse and send it to Henry Cecil and then it wins.' But by 2000, Cecil's career had nosedived, a failed second marriage, tabloid scandal and the death of his brother seeming to break him. He spent most of the next decade in the wilderness, as his stable shrank, the winners dried up and he succumbed to the bottle and what seemed like a terminal decline. Then in 2010, Khalid Abdullah sent him a colt by Galileo out of the mare Kind. The Saudi prince was one of the few owners who didn't abandon Cecil in the dog days. The colt, strong and wayward, was named Frankel. Cecil battled and worked to polish him, to teach him to settle and not waste his great speed and strength too early in a race. The work paid off. Frankel destroyed all competition, never losing a race over a mile and carving on tablets of stone the message 'Henry Cecil is a trainer of genius.' In the Juddmonte, the race sponsored by his owner, Frankel ran further than a mile for the first time. No one could believe a horse so dominant at a mile could ever be better over a longer distance. But no one could believe he could be beaten. By this time, Cecil was a broken man, deep into a second bout with a cancer that had robbed him of his good looks and reduced his famous voice to a whispering husk. But he dragged himself to York, to run Frankel in Abdullah's own race. The York crowd had adored Cecil. Aristocrat to his marrow, he would stop and talk to members of the public at York, asking their opinions of his horses, chatting to prince and pauper alike. 35,000 crammed inside to see the monster colt that was Cecil's final masterpiece, to see their hero. I walked 2 miles on ruptured knee ligaments to jam into the Silver Ring. I fought my way to the front, and climbed, hanging on the fence just yards from the track.

Frankel was immense. Starting slowly, he dawdled at the back until they span around the final turn. Then he accelerated so fast I thought he would tear the ground away beneath him, ripping 8 lengths out of a star studded field. He ran them into the dirt. Cecil was mobbed. As Tom Queally, Frankel's jockey, paraded the horse in front of the roaring stands, Cecil was cheered to the echo. Three cheers for Sir Henry became six then nine. No one wanted to let him go. Cecil thanked the crowd, his voice a broken reed, shattered by chemotherapy. At the end of the season, Frankel was retired. Cecil died a few months later. But for that afternoon, Cecil was back where he belonged, on top of the world and bathed in sunshine. On that day noise was so loud, you could close your eyes, and imagine you were in 1854, when 150,000 crammed onto the Knavesmire to watch Voltigeur and The Flying Dutchman.

Maybe we won't be there on a day like that. But York races is one of the few places in the world where all classes mix freely to draw joy from the same spring. We will go and we will drink and gamble and glare at the race card and all will be wonderfully well with the world.

All my love,

Jonny