Tales of an Amorphic Destiny

Ascott Races

February 24th, 2008 at 04:43pm James

Being sponsors of a race, Sarah’s employers were given a number of premier admission passes to last Sunday’s Ascott race day. She was lucky enough to nab 2 of them so we went along to try our luck.

Usually racing is a purely Spring/Summer event for us so going in the winter was a slightly different experience, ie it was bloody cold.

However our passes did allow us admission to the upper indoor levels of the stadium so we managed to keep warm most of the day. Exceptions were when I ventured out  to the betting circle before each race looking for good odds and when we went out to watch the races themselves. Holding cold beers on these occasions led to almost frostbitten fingers!

Last time we were at Ascott we had a particularly lucky day, our best bet being Sarah’s £10 on a 14-1 shot that came in. Said bet was based on the fact that the horse’s name was "Misty Dancer", (Sarah’s cat was also called Misty) but I’m not one to look a gift horse (pun intended) in the mouth.

This time round we weren’t quite so fortunate, at least not in the first few races. We had a few close calls but nothing that paid out. Our first win of the day came during what turned out to be the most amusing race of the day. One horse threw its rider (this was not the amusing part) but then proceeded to continue running around the track, jumping all of the fences.

It actually ended up crossing the line first in front of our horse. Fortunately for us there’s some legislation somewhere in the racing rulebook that says both horse and jockey have to cross first to win, making our second-crossing runner the ultimate winner! Hurrah!

By the last race we’d had a little more luck and were almost back to evens. So we bought ourselves some warming gin + tonics, (the blue Bombay Sapphire gin poured into the tonic bottles – classy!) placed some strategically spread bets across almost the entire field… and held our breaths…

After all of our horses crossed the line placed absolutely nowhere we started breathing again, consoling ourselves with the fact that the £40 or so we were down was about equal to the price of the free passes we’d gotten anyway. Ah well, win or lose it was, (as always) a fun day out. Probably won’t go back until there’s a bit more sunshine about though.

On the way home we stopped in at Richmond to meet up with Barnaby. After dropping in to our old work local The Sun for a pint, we went on to enjoy a ridiculously large and extremely tasty tapas meal at the local Spanish restaurant.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!

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