It was entirely characteristic of the horse to ignore an obstacle, he just ran straight into it. I don’t think Dick was in the least bit interested in betting. It’s a dimension of the sport that hasn’t really entered his consciousness.Dick rode for me in 1951 on The Solid Man, at Newton Abbot in Devon. He was tipped by Alf Rubin from the Daily Worker, who really had no other option – he was the only man who did. The vet said, “Don’t let him lie down,” and Dick was one of the two peole who took it in turns to walk with him all night So it was rather ironic that Russian Hero won at 66/1.
His hands were as good as mine were bad.
We have had certain parallels in our lives. We both had ponies when we were seven, and I think we had a rather similar dedication to our particular spheres of activity in later life Dick left as little as possible to chance. He would walk courses and study the opposition and be as prepared as one can possibly be. I used to do a lot of homework in a similar way.My first talking part in the Grand National was in 1949 when I was situated down at the first fence That was the year Dick rode in his first National He came second.
The winner was a horse that he had won several races on – Russian Hero – and Dick had been instrumental in saving its life when it was stricken with colic. Tom Masson, who used to direct the Bertram Mills circus troupe – Dick as a young man rode ponies for him – once observed “a better pair of hands on a pony I have yet to see” That didn’t surprise me at all. Last year he retired after half a century, and was also knighted. He wrote for the ‘Daily Express’ from the early 1950s, but began his career as a schoolboy tipster; he owned horses too, including successes like Attivo He lives in Knightsbridge with his wife, Pat.
Dick Francis saw victory in the 1956 Grand National vanish when his mount, the Queen Mother’s Devon Loch, collapsed. He turned to writing, as racing correspondent for the ‘Sunday Express’ and author of nearly 40 bestsellers. The Queen – who, like her mother and daughter, reads his novels – awarded him the OBE. Now 77, he lives with his wife, Mary, in the Cayman Islands
PETER O’SULLEVAN: In racing, if you are involved on a professional level, you don’t really meet in the sense that you’re introduced, you sort of meet by osmosis. You become part of a large family and everybody knows quite a bit more about each other than one would suspect. I had seen Dick race as an amateur, and I thought he was a very nice, quiet rider Quite obviously, he had extremely good hands. Soon they will find genes that make the flies resistant and will lead to a much better understanding of addiction to alcohol Morgan would be excited..
The racing commentator Peter O’Sullevan (far right) is 80. The fly may provide clues.Researchers have built an inebriometer, that enables them to measure the flies’ ability to cope with alcohol. The flies are put into a long glass column into which alcohol vapour is pumped. As the flies become inebriated they become uncoordinated and roll down the column. The more they are able to resist the intoxicating effects of the alcohol the longer they take to roll down the column.