An Arm and Four Legs: A Journey into Racehorse Ownership: A Journey into Horse Ownership (Paperback)

Stan Hey, TV writer and sports journalist best known for co-writing the 80s sitcom 'Agony', grew up in working class Liverpool at a time when off-course gambling was still illegal and the racing community (mostly aristocrats and landed gentry) treated outsiders, particularly city dwellers, as shifty interlopers. Therefore, it took him quite a while before he even considered becoming a racehorse owner. For him, as for most punters, ownership was something only spoken about after a successful day's betting, and the inevitable drinks that follow. Up there with winning the Lottery. In terms of making money, however, it equates to buying a struggling, lower division football team. Hey presents some shocking statistics on just how difficult, impossible it is to make owning horses pay. If anyone wants to know why the sport was once dubbed the Sport Of Kings and is still dominated by royalty (latterly from Dubai rather than Europe), this book will explain.

Much of the prevailing political intrigue of the sport revolves around the prize money issue as the paucity filters down the chain to extremely poorly paid stable staff, many of whom are leaving the sport in droves. Hey sets his own travails as a partner in three courageous but untalented racehorses against this background. Old news to racing fans, but (I would hope) illuminating to those who still consider themselves outsiders. Those who think the recent shabby efforts of the Football Association are as bad as it gets will take comfort from the shambles that passes for the administration of British horse racing.

Strangely, or perhaps not given the goings-on in other sports, horse racing continues to give large amounts of entertainment to a lot of people. And Hey himself never loses touch with his essential enthusiasm for the game even when the champion jumps trainer, Martin Pipe, turns out to be great with other people's horses but not so hot with the partnership's.

As someone who would like to own racehorses and has talked to some who already do, I was prepared for this book to disabuse me quite bluntly, but if anything (and perhaps this is where Hey the romantic writer wins out over Hey the hard-bitten journo) it has made me more enthusiastic if also rather more realistic. Perhaps because Hey's agenda was not to win the Grand National or Cheltenham Gold Cup, but to get out of the house occasionally and have fun, the overall effect of the book is one of making ownership seem almost normal. Certainly more socially acceptable than, say, base jumping, but perhaps not quite so normal.