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As I understand it, all claims lodged against runners in UK selling and claiming races are now made over the phone to Wetherbys between the hours of 09:30 and 15 minutes after the scheduled race off time on the day of the race.
In order to lodge a claim, a person (or an authorised agent representing that person) must be in possession of a valid security pin number previously issued to that person by Wetherbys.
In the event of there being more than one claim lodged against a horse, Wetherbys are authorised to decide the successful claim by ballot. On this particular occasion Annie Stokell’s name was the first out of the hat.
To the best of my knowledge, the duties and responsibilities as described in your post, historically fall under the title of General Commission Agent as interpreted by the relevant section of European Law covering agents and agencies. That is to say …
“An individual who accepts or sells goods and services for the account of a beneficial principal, but in his / her own name. He / She is independent of the benefical principal, has a claim for his / her commission, and, except in France, has the right when dealing with certain transactions to execute them as he / she sees fit.”
Given the above description I would strongly suspect that in matters of possible dispute between a said General Commission Agent and beneficial principal(s) civil commercial law would apply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(law)
Is an operating licence required if you wish to provide a service where somebody instructs you to place bets on their behalf?
“Operating Licence” I would suspect not … but rather the advisable need for a written and duly signed agreement between affected parties as to what is being required of them.
What about if multiple people wanted you to bet on their behalf except all in the same way? So whatever the crowd does, you do on each gambler’s behalf?
Again, I would think that such concerns would be covered by an advisable need for a written agreement between all parties concerned.
"These days I’d say that I’m as much a horse trader as I am a gambler," Findlay said. "When you make a mistake gambling, it can be pretty fatal, but when you make a mistake buying a horse, you can try again."
"There’s always the chance that you’ll hit the jackpot too, but I look at it in the same way that I look at gambling. If you survive, you’re doing well, and that’s all I’m looking to do, survive and then do it again next year."
Very must the gist of what Fred Winter reportedly told Charlie Brooks, when a then a young Charlie began his pupilage under the guidance of the great man at Uplands near 25 years ago. If my memory serves me correct, Fred Winter, in his usual forthright style, imparted the following advice to his eager to learn pupil.
By the time all the bills are paid, the best a trainer can hope for is to break-even from fees charged to owners. Where a trainer can make his ‘extras’ is by either good old-fashioned horse trading or by punting or a bit of both. The advantage of buying and selling horses is you don’t have to deal with bookmakers. While the problem with punting is that the owners you attract can be a right pain in the backside seeing as patience is generally not their strongest suite.
As a further illustration of Fred Winter’s legendary abruptness, “Don’t you dare make a bollocks of the weigh-in” were the first words that greeted Charlie Brooks as he dismounted from Observe after unexpectedly winning the Foxhunters’ Chase at the 1987 Cheltenham Festival. To this day, Charlie Brooks can’t remember if Fred Winter did ever get round to congratulating him on his most successful ever ride.
Nothing unusual on the UK AIM (Alternative Investment Market) site – indeed the share price was up at the close of Friday trading.
See for yourself by clicking here
While I haven’t done business with Sportingbet for a couple of months, my experience is that they tend to always drag their feet by some two / three days when compared to payout speeds of other somewhat higher profile UK sports betting books. Very much suspect that it’s a lot to do with Sportingbet’s banking operations being based in Luxembourg. Which could very well have a bearing on the geographic location from which an online client is doing business from being that I see that johngringo’s hometown location is listed as being Brazil.
Hailing from the City of Chester, I grew up listening to handed-down tales of Chester races. While obviously I have no knowledge if true, the story goes that because of jockey Kitchener’s weight or lack of it, he was strapped onto the saddle as precaution against either accidently or deliberately being nudged off his mount, Red Deer during the hurly-burly of the race. The story also goes that jockey Kitchener was so exhausted after finishing the race he couldn’t single-handedly carry the then much heavier than modern-day racing saddle in order to weigh in. Permission from the stewards had to be sought for some trusted person to assist him with the task.
As robnorth suggested there was definitely a strong hint of skullduggery about the 1844 running of the Chester Cup for I came across this particular reference of the race in an Independent on Sunday article
of Wednesday, 5th May, 2004.
The Chester Cup started life in 1685, when the local Mayor and corporation put up a silver trophy to be run for "five times round". Thankfully, the modern jockey has to cope with passing the winning post but thrice. Today’s renewal is the 169th since the two and a quarter mile contest attained more or less its present form in 1824 ("starting at the Castle pole, twice round and ending at the coming-in Chair") and the race’s tapestry is as colourful as that of the track on which it is run. By 1836 it was the biggest betting race in the calendar, with a local paper reporting "upwards of a million of that sterling stuff which keeps the world going round changing hands".
One Cup yarn is worth the retelling. A huge punt was landed in 1844 by the 7-2 favourite, Red Deer, carrying 4st. His rider, the boy Kitchener, weighed 3st 4lb, less than a giant truckle, and was virtually run away with as Red Deer grabbed a flier after four false starts and scorched off to score by 12 lengths. One of the beneficiaries in the coup, with winnings of £100,000, was Lord George Bentinck, manager to the winning owner, the Duke of Richmond. Bentinck had taken a day off from the Turf reforming duties for which he was famous. He was the Chester starter.
The very last sentence of “He was the Chester starter” certainly asks more questions than it answers.
It was also told to me that during the era when jockey Kitchener and Red Deer were winning the Chester Cup, like Windsor on the River Thames, it was possible to arrive and leave Chester’s Roodee course proper by means of small boat. Unscrupulous bookmakers would sometimes hire such boats in order to facilitate a rapid getaway should they not wish or be able to payout on later races. Mind you a fleeing bookmaker had to be quick because if spotted leaving before the final race of the day was run a hue and cry would be raised by way of alert. With the result that many a bookmaker, minus his belongings, would indeed leave Chester racecourse by means of the nearby River Dee but not necessarily by boat, being that he would be required to either swim or drown.
Which tends to somewhat lend weight to the then occurring practice by distressed racecourse bookmakers of absconding across the Welsh border in order to avoid meeting incurred obligations to English creditors. Being that the Chester section of the River Dee is a natural dividing line between that part of England and Wales. Although, some would claim that while certainly originating from such dishonorable racecourse practices, the derogatory term ‘to welch / welsh on a bet’ also has its roots in the long forgotten English nursery rhyme “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief; Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.”
Exactly which is the most accurate explanation about the origins of the ‘to welch / welsh on a bet’ expression has long been lost in the linguistic mists of time. For arguably there are elements of plausibility in both versions when one knows how historically fond the racecourse betting fraternity were when it came to adopting slang as a means of terminology, some of which still remains in fairly common usage to this day.
A report on Ffos Las as made its way onto the Wales pages of the BBC website at …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/8104725.stm
I note that the video report goes to some length to draw attention to hopefully how the Irish could well positively respond to the existence of Ffos Las.
For those who may be interested “Ffos” is the Welsh language equivalent of the English noun "Ditch / Trench" and I understand relates to the fact that area was previously an open-cast coalmine while “Las” is the colour Blue – so make of that what you will.
I wouldn’t be a layer for a gold clock. Making any kind of worthwhile income from backing horses to lose is all about salami sliced profit margins allied to turnover. I’m personally more temperamentally suited to punting and that provided by a wider margin for error approach. Being that I’m a lot more comfortable with the long-term knowledge that I can tolerate getting my punting decisions wrong a lot more times than a layer can.
Now I originate from the City of Chester, from the late 1940s through to the legalization of betting shops at the start of the 1960s, my late father’s cousin was one of the major illegal off-course SP bookies around the city. And, rather than settle the bets and divi up the money after a day’s racing at his place of residence. For a small fee he would “borrow” other peoples’ houses for the purpose, on the grounds it would be less likely that unwelcome “callers” would come knocking. My grandmother’s house being one such temporary office he would use on occasions but nevertheless, he still took precautions.
As a child I was fascinated watching him lay out a blanket on the parlor floor, close the curtains and empty out a dozen or so clock bags full of coins and betting slips onto the blanket. Now this was no ordinary blanket he used, for stitched in to each of the four corners was a rope handle. “What are the handles for?” I innocently asked my grandmother. “Well” she said, “if I slip out the back door, go down the entry and bang on the front-door, watch him snatch up the blanket by those four handles and leg it out the back door.” I later found out that he would never “borrow” a house unless it had an escape route.
When I got a bit older he would let me settle a few simple straightforward bets and give me the task of counting and bagging all the pre-decimal non-silver coins, of which there were piles. What he would sometimes tell me was after paying out one-shilling-and-sixpence (7.5p) to his collection agents and putting aside a further sixpence (2.5p) for what he referred to as “emergency legal costs” he’d be over-the-moon to clear a shilling (5p) profit on every pound he took. Today’s exchange layers haven’t the luxury of working with the kind overrounds that are built into the Starting Price mechanism as my father’s cousin had in his day. And, also remember if an exchange layer gets it right a lot more times than he / she gets it wrong then Betfair will want their near 5p / shilling in the pound cut.
I have the utmost respect for those layers who have mastered the art of getting it consistently right over time but like I say, it is most definitely not for me.
Five years out of the game? You could struggle you know.
You are dam’ right there. For the best part of 20 years (circa 1982 to 2002) I well and truly turned my back on punting and got on with earning a living the generally accepted orthodox way. I just could no longer bring myself to have a bet and have to pay the taxman a then 8p in every £ for the off course privilege of doing so. At the time the only way of getting that particular monkey off my back was by not having a bet at all. After a while it got very much like giving up smoking, You miss it to begin with but as the months and the years roll by you find others things to take its place.
What drew me back into the fold some 7 years ago was the coming together of 3 factors…
1: Freedom to bet without having to pay the taxman directly for the privilege.
2: The arrival of the Internet and all the accompanying opportunities that have come with it.
3: And finally and most importantly of all, no longer being a wage slave, for now I’ve got free time to burn.But like West Derby Ken hinted, I was terribly ring rusty to begin with, it took me a good couple of years before I got my horseracing punting cap back on straight again. Fortunately, I recognised this right from the restart and even to this day I refuse to get carried away with my punting endeavours. I daresay after 20 years of betting abstinence combined with my advancing years, experience has taught me that punting like life, isn’t a race. It’s about negotiating a way from one end to the other no matter how much time one is ultimately given to do it.
I heard one tale told about him by his longtime Just-A-Minute colleague, Peter Jones. For it seems that Sir Clement and Kenneth Williams didn’t get on with one another at all. Indeed, when Kenneth Williams died I seem to recall that he was most definitely dammed by faint praise from Clement Freud.
Peter Jones alleges that on some occasions when Kenneth Williams was in full flow during the recording of a Just-A-Minute broadcast. Clement Freud would lean back in his chair and put his feet up on the table, which would annoy Kenneth Williams no end. When after the recording, Williams would start to audibly complain about the unprofessionalism of what he’d done. Clement Freud’s reply would invariably be along the lines of “What on earth are you complaining about, this is radio, nobody can see it”.
I see that Hayley Turner has a doctor’s appointment today with the BHA’s chief medical advisor and namesake, one Dr Michael Turner. Will have see if the good doctor passes her fit to ride or keeps Miss Turner on the sick list for a while longer.
Clearly time to take heed of one of the great hidden intellects of the forum, sell my horses, cancel my writing contracts and give the game up.
Which is something that you [ap] will have to do eventually, as I’m sure you aware. But, until either the bailiffs or the grim reaper comes calling then quite frankly what else are you going to do to make life interesting.
The fact is that a jockey has much more in common with a goalkeeper or wicketkeeper.
Certainly the jockey has a decisive influence over the horse’s progress in any race he ever starts, but this is not in the main about the inspiration he puts in, but about the mistakes he does not make.
Like a wicketkeeper or goalkeeper whose primary responsibility is to not drop the ball, the jockey’s primary contribution is a negative one: not making mistakes.
Yes, I very much go along with that goalkeeping analogy in so far that goalkeepers / jockeys don’t win games / races; they keep their teams / horses in the game / race so it can be won.
I’m reminded of what the great American rider, Willie Shoemaker said to a then young Gary Stevens after Stevens beat him in a driving finish one day.
“After five years of racing against you I’m glad to see that you are finally learning how not to get in the horse’s way.”
My first principle of betting was also that of the late Phil Bull.
It is the prime duty of a backer to strive continuously to secure the best possible odds for the stakes being put at risk because like it or not, after that everything else is in the lap of the gods.
Did anyone see this program on TV last night?
No, but I read about it being that a text version of it made its way onto the BBCs website at…..
…..Click Here
“Greatest ever jockey” – a highly debatable statement but nevertheless one hell of a horseman. Why do you think that other even greater horseman, the late Fred Winter, put Francome up so many times on runners he trained?
While he would defer to Fred Winter on all matters to do with horses, John Francome never could follow his Governor’s instructions to “Only speak when you are spoken to and then say very little and – I won’t tell you again Francome, stay away from those stable girls.”
On the subject of Phil Bull and jockeys, I can well recall the story that Australian born rider, Edgar Britt told about riding many a Phil Bull owned horse during the 1950s.
Britt wrote in his autobiography that it initially took some getting used to when it came to receiving his riding instructions from the owner rather than the trainer once he had weighed out to ride a Phil Bull runner.
He went on to write that the more he rode Bull’s horses, the more it began to dawn on him that this particular owner knew what he was talking about. Nevertheless, there was one particular instruction that always puzzled him. And then one day, events transpired in the pre-race parade ring whereby one of the runners was lead away to be hurriedly re-platted causing a brief delay.
With time on their hands for something of a prolonged conversation between the two men, Edgar Britt wrote that the dialogue went as follows.
EB “Can I ask you a question Mr Bull? It’s about something you always ask me to do when I ride one of your horses down to the start”
PB “Certainly Edgar, what do you want to know?”
EB “Well Mr Bull, I can’t understand why you keep making such a point of telling me which side of the course I have to ride on to get to the start.”
PB “As I think you already know Edgar, I do have a bet on a good few of my runners.”
EB “Yes Mr Bull, I have heard something to that effect said about you.”
PB “Well, from where we are standing now, the betting ring is some distance away – is it not – therefore, I can’t be in two places at the same time. So, while I am here with you my agents are over there ready to carrying out my instructions.
Now, while you have been doing what you have to do to prepare yourself before a race. I’ve been standing here weighing up the opposition. So Edgar, when I tell you to ride down to the start on the stands-side rail, that’s my signal to my agents to wade in. If I tell you to go down the middle then that’s my signal for them to go steady and if they see you going down on the opposite rail then they are under orders to do nothing – and that’s about it in a nutshell, Edgar.”
“Interesting stuff about Phil’s association with William Hill and Towser Gosden.”
Alex Bird, in his 1985 autobiography, makes passing reference to the Phil Bull-William Hill link when he wrote that:
The son of a Yorkshire miner, he [Phil Bull] won a scholarship to Leeds University where he obtained a BSc degree. Then just before the war he ran the Temple Time Test, which he advertised in the sporting press under the name of William K Temple BSc. The idea was to issue a list of horses to clients each week based on time performance. It was a successful operation and punters who backed the horses to level stakes made a substantial profit over the year. In fact the system paid so well that William Hill closed the accounts of many of Bull’s clients.
Phil Bull and Hill met on the issue and had a heated discussion. But the outcome was that the two became very good friends and joined forces. Phil became the bookmaker’s personal assistant, going to races with him during the war. He even ran Hill’s advertising and organised the ante-post prices.
After being forced to sit it out for 12 months, I understand that the thinking behind the Robert Winston tactic of riding on northern courses is an attempt to step into the so-called “Cock of North” freelance ridings boots of the recently retired Kevin Darley. Early days yet, some way still to go and a few more bridges to mend but appears to be making a fair fist of it at present.
Just keep your fingers crossed Mr Winston that nothing else crawls out of the woodwork to bite you.