Winner by a long shot
What are the longest odds on a winning horse?
The longest-priced winner in British racing history was equinoctial, who won the Grants Whisky Novices’ handicap hurdle at Kelso on November 21, 1990, at odds of 250-1.
Trained by Co. Durham’s Norman Miller and ridden by Andrew heywood, in his four previous starts equinoctial had been pulled up twice, fell once and been beaten by a whopping 62 lengths at hexham.
The most famous long odds winner was 100-1 former point-to-pointer Norton’s Coin. Described as an ‘ugly, plain chestnut’ by his owner, Carmarthen dairy farmer Sirrell Griffiths, he stunned the racing world when he won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1990 with Graham McCourt on board, beating the punters’ favourite, Desert Orchid.
Theodore, the St Leger winner of 1822, is the biggest priced Classic winner after winning at 1,000-5 (200-1). The horse was said to be lame, suffering from corns, but he gave jockey John Jackson his eighth and final St Leger win.
Theodore is joint longest-priced flat race winner alongside Beechy Bank, who won at Warwick in September 2002, and Dandy Flame, who won a maiden stakes at Wolverhampton in July 2016.
Arctic Blue (Chepstow 2005), Maoi Chinn Tire (Wetherby 2010) and Lights Of Broadway (Taunton 2012) have all won at 200-1 over jumps.
James de Souza, Newmarket, Suffolk.
An old Army expression for something dubious is: ‘It’s all my eye and Betty Martin.’ Who was she?
ThiS odd phrase has been the subject of much scholarly debate. it’s thought that the original form was simply ‘all my eye’, probably from the old French expression
mon oeil!, which is still in common use. An early citation comes from the 1763 operatic parody Fitz-Giggo: A New english Uproar: ‘Begin the dust! and let the benches fly!/This treatment, gentlemen, is all my eye.’
Betty Martin arrived soon after. in a letter from October 1781, one Samuel Crisp asks his sister, who, like him, was infirm, to visit him, concluding: ‘Physic, to old, crazy frames, like ours, is all my eye and Betty Martin.’ he adds by way of explanation that it was ‘a sea phrase that Admiral Jemm frequently makes use of’.
Just who Betty Martin was remains a mystery. in 1816, the New Monthly Magazine And Universal Register published the following in its column Oedipius Jocularis or illustrations Of Remarkable Proverbs, Obscure Sayings And Peculiar Customs: ‘A man going once into a church or chapel of the Romish persuasion on St Martin’s Day, heard the Latin litany chaunted [sic], when the words “Mihi Beate Martin” occurred so often, that upon being asked how he liked the service, he replied it was nothing but nonsense or something worse, as from beginning to end “it was all my eye Betty Martin”.’
however, the prayer is not part of the Roman Catholic liturgy and Latin scholars point out it is ungrammatical.
The actor Charles Lee Lewis gave us his theory about Betty Martin in his memoirs in 1805. he recalled her as an abandoned woman who induced one Christopher Martin to marry her. She became notorious and a favourite phrase of hers was ‘all my eye!’
The lexicographer eric Partridge suspected Betty Martin was a character of the ‘lusty London’ of the 1770s, whose name has lived on in this phrase.
Tom Allen, Durham.
Is George Weah the first footballer to become a head of state?
FURTheR to the earlier answers, though not head of state, Jozsef Bozsik, a brilliant hungarian midfielder of the Fifties, became a politician after he retired from the game. A member of the Communist Party, he was a Deputy in the hungarian Parliament.
On November 25, 1953, he was in the Mighty Magyars team who defeated england 6-3 at Wembley.
During the hungarian Revolution of 1956, Bozsik and his team honved were abroad as they prepared to take on Athletic Bilbao in the european Cup.
The team departed on a tour of South America without the permission of the hungarian authorities. Some players decided to remain in the West, including Ferenc Puskas, widely regarded as the greatest hungarian player of all time.
Bozsik returned to hungary and was captain of a weakened national team in the 1958 World Cup.
in 1961, he became only the third man, after Billy Wright for england and Thorbjorn Svenssen of Norway, to achieve 100 caps for his country. he died of heart failure aged just 52.
Tony Shapcott, Newport, Gwent.