Pulse(70)

But he was not the only person on the terrace that I recognised. Rupert Forrester was also there, no doubt checking that all was in order. He looked in my direction and then came over.

‘Dr Rankin,’ he said, ‘good of you to help us out at such short notice.’

He extended his hand and I shook it.

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Lovely day for it.’

‘Thank goodness,’ he said. ‘It makes a huge difference to the gate.’

I could imagine. No one wanted to go racing in the rain.

‘I saw you on Monday,’ he said. ‘At the inquest of that poor man.’

‘I spotted you there as well.’

He nodded. ‘I was there to represent the racecourse. Fortunately I wasn’t called by the coroner. Always difficult when someone dies on the premises.’

‘The man actually died in hospital,’ I said.

‘Yes, so he did. But there have been others. We had three in one day last year, at the Festival. Two heart attacks and a burst aneurysm. The racing must have been too exciting for them.’ He laughed at his own inappropriate joke. ‘Ah, well, I must get on.’

He disappeared into the weighing room while I went back to enjoying the sunshine. But he had made me think.

Human life was very fragile. I knew that only too well from my work. No one expected to go for a day at the races and not make it home again afterwards. But it happened all the time. Not just heart attacks and burst aneurysms but also strokes, cardiac arrhythmia and pulmonary embolisms. All were common causes of sudden and unexpected death, to say nothing of road accidents and other forms of trauma.

Yet some people’s bodies could take all sorts of punishment and still continue to operate almost normally.

And jockeys like Dave Leigh were clearly in that category.

Jack Otley was late returning from his lunch and Adrian Kings wasn’t particularly pleased at having to wait to give his briefing.

‘I hope you haven’t been drinking,’ Adrian said acidly when he finally arrived.

‘Of course not,’ Jack replied, somewhat aggrieved.

Good job too, I thought. We were the only three racecourse doctors on duty, the absolute minimum requirement and one less than was customary at Cheltenham due to the intersecting nature of the track. No wonder Rupert Forrester had been so pleased that I was able to step in at such short notice.

Adrian, however, was never going to admit that he was steering his ship too close to the rocks, and certainly not to me.

‘All three of us will be out on the course,’ he said. ‘Plus we have four ambulances. That will provide plenty of cover.’

The racing authority rules were quite simple. Irrespective of the number of ambulances available, not enough doctors would result in racing having to be abandoned.

Briefing over, I went out to fetch a coffee from the cafeteria and came face-to-face in the corridor with Jason Conway.

He looked at me and I at him, from a distance of about eighteen inches. I was quite calm.

‘Hello, JC,’ I said.

‘Doc,’ he replied, not batting an eyelid at my use of his nickname.

‘How many rides do you have today?’ I asked.

‘Three.’ He didn’t move.

I stared deep into his eyes. Then I looked away. I wasn’t going back there.

‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘I hope I don’t have to see you later.’

‘No chance,’ he said.

In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, jockeys were always supremely confident that they wouldn’t get hurt. They had to be, otherwise they’d never do the job in the first place. The fact that, when doing their work, they were actually chased by an ambulance didn’t seem to faze them at all.

Jason pushed past me, back into the changing room.

I breathed out slowly through my mouth and walked on to fetch my coffee.

I had made a promise to myself not to ask any of the three jockeys anything about spot-fixing in racing, and this was one promise I intended keeping. No one else seemed to think it was happening anyway, and Grant had tried to convince me that I must be mistaken.

Except that I wasn’t.





26


The first race of the afternoon was uneventful as far as the medical team were concerned but, nevertheless, I relished being back in the Land Rover bouncing along behind the horses in a two-mile novice hurdle.

However, the second race, a handicap chase over three and a half miles and twenty-four fences, stretched us to the limit, even beyond it.

Eighteen runners went to post in a competitive Class 3 contest but only half were still standing at the finish. Of the other nine, three pulled up but six fell and four of the jockeys were injured.

The field was tightly bunched as they came past the grandstands with two complete circuits still to cover. My Land Rover was the second vehicle in the following train, immediately behind the lead ambulance.

‘Two fallers, first fence in the back straight,’ came the voice of the spotter in my earpiece. ‘Horses up, jockeys not.’

The Land Rover driver pulled the vehicle over onto the grass and I was quickly out the door and running. The lead ambulance had also stopped.

‘Doc two attending,’ I called into my radio.

‘And ambulance one,’ someone said into my ear.

‘Ambulance two taking over the lead.’