Stolen horses, protests and a search for oats – how racing carried on in the wars
Pandemic could cause first shutdown since 1939 but the sport’s resilience has been tested before
Should the 2,000 Guineas, which is due to be run at Newmarket next month, go the way of the Grand National and be postponed, it would become just the second Classic not to be held since 1814. That remarkable statistic is due to the fact that racing, while not exactly flourishing and with intermittent stoppages, kept going through both world wars.
Considering that in the history of Flat racing there have been roughly 1,000 Classics, those five top-notch races each year designed to establish and perpetuate excellence in the thoroughbred, it is some record.
Yet even the one race that did not happen – the 1939 St Leger, which was meant to take place a few weeks after the German invasion of Poland – has an incredible story. That should have been one of the great 20th century Legers; Blue Peter, the British Triple Crown candidate who had won a 27-runner Derby by four lengths, against Pharis II, widely regarded as one of the best French horses of the last century.
Pharis II came over for the race, went back home and, after the German invasion of France, the kindest way to put it is that he was “borrowed”, along with four other stallions and 21 broodmares, from his Normandy stud for the German army stud at Altefeld for the remainder of the war.
Meanwhile, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler’s foreign minister, commandeered Baron Edouard de Rothschild’s entire string of 118 horses for his own stable, but Corrida, France’s great two-time Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner, fared less well. She disappeared from her Normandy paddock during the battle of the Falaise Gap in 1944. No trace of her was ever found and, with two armies marching on their stomachs around her, one can only speculate what happened.
The most valid objection to racing during both wars was that it got, unnecessarily, in the way of the war effort. Transport – racehorses went everywhere by train up until the First World War and the railway network was essential for moving soldiers about – was one problem, while there were restrictions on fuel and even oats.
At Gatwick, where a pale-imitation Grand National was held during the war, the transport issue was overcome by making all 75 runners at one meeting walk to the course. The winner of the first took five hours to walk from Findon.
For those who were against racing, war was the perfect chance to have it banned. Racing fans resisted and an indecisive government swung like a pendulum between being for and against it, banning for short periods and allowing it to start up again.
The Jockey Club argued, successfully, that those who were able had already signed up and by stopping racing it would throw a lot of people largely dependent on it out of a job.
However, those opposed seized on every opportunity to attack it. In February 1915, the anti-racing press jumped on a report that wounded soldiers would be turned out of the makeshift hospital that had been made of Epsom’s grandstand so that racegoers could dine in comfort.
The papers also alighted on news that an officer returning to the front could not get on a train to Southampton because it was full of racegoers heading for Hurst Park. The solution: racing by train was banned.
Finding itself popular with the masses, who did not have much else in the way of sport, one northern meeting was instructed to sell only expensive enclosure tickets so the poorly paid munitions employees were not tempted to skive off work.
The counter-argument, however, to those who objected to racing while the flower of the nation’s youth laid down its life in France, was a letter from the trenches to The Sporting Life.
“We went out to the front to fight for King and country, to preserve national institutions so dear to the hearts of Englishmen,” it read. “We return to find one of our greatest national institutions – the Derby – is threatened for the first time in its history. Have the men responsible for this attack fired a single shot in defence of his country?”
Most of the Flat racing in the First World War was at Newmarket, and in 1917 Lord Rosebery advised the Jockey Club to let the RAF take over the Rowley Mile as a pilot officers’ school, although there was a bit of give and take involved because the RAF boys happily cleared off on race days.
However, it was another practicality – the tight rationing of oats – that caused many problems. A bowl of oats was equated to how many chickens could be fed and eggs laid. Although jumping continued without too many people noticing, many horses had to be put down while others were sent to the front as chargers.
The Second World War was different. Jumping stopped early and, between 1940 and 1945, Flat racing was regionalised to save transport costs, although, for big races, dispensation could be secured to take a horse to Newmarket.
But, unlike with David Lloyd George in the First World War, the sport had a pretty good relationship with the prime minister, Winston Churchill, a prominent owner himself, who had no intention of being obstructive.
Nevertheless, things were tight. You could only put a racehorse on a train if sending it to the docks to sell it to the United States to bring money into the country. The number of horses was greatly reduced, most fillies were turned into broodmares without racing and, pertinently this weekend, the human cost of the war included four Grand National-winning jockeys killed.
“The effects of both wars were different on the breed,” explained David Oldrey, one of the sport’s foremost historians. “There was no reason to believe horses in the 1920s were any worse than they were before the war. The times for the Derby and Oaks continued to get slightly better and the breed got over the First World War surprisingly well.
“The Second World War was a completely different story. The number and quality of horses dropped terribly. There was an appalling crash in the times for the Oaks and Derby – a drop-off of 1½-2 seconds in average times in the 10 years after the war compared to the 10 years before, which equates to about 10 lengths.
“After that it took years to recover properly, as much of the best blood had been shipped to America. It took until the late 1950s to get back.”
When racing starts up again after coronavirus, there will be those opposed to it but the objections will not be the same as those in either war. This time, it will be that it is an unnecessary draw on NHS resources. But if racing can go behind closed doors, in a way that is unlikely to spread the virus, and the pressure on the NHS has eased a little, it should meet the requirements of that most tricky of customers: public perception.