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Harry Findlay is back (sort of!)

Discussion in 'Horse Racing' started by PNkt, Sep 18, 2017.

  1. PNkt

    PNkt Well-Known Member

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    'Now that I'm clawing my way back, I think I'll miss the desperation'
    Peter Thomas finds the world's loudest gambler in full flow again
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    Harry's back in town: fearless punter Harry Findlay has been through the mill and survived
    Edward Whitaker
    1 of 2
    UPDATED 9:37AM, SEP 17 2017

    "So there I was, sitting next to Lester Piggott at the dinner table," says Harry Findlay, "and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. William Haggas is walking round serving the sausages and Lester 100 per cent guarantees me that Denman was better than Arkle.

    "I say to him 'how can you say that?' and he looks at me and says: 'I've seen Arkle and you haven't. I've seen them all and I'm telling you Denman was better than Arkle, faster than Arkle.'

    "All he kept saying was how good Denman was, how with his stride he'd beat a six-furlong horse over six furlongs, how he was the greatest chaser that ever lived. They say he's a man of few words, but that's what he said, I swear. And I think he's right."

    Harry is back in town with a new book, a life story to tell, and to say it stretches credulity is putting it mildly; Lester and Denman didn't even make the cut in a tome that covers unlikely ground from Pentonville prison to the poor house via every Grade 1 racecourse in the country.

    "We tried to keep it to stories that somebody could vouch for, because otherwise people wouldn't believe it," says Findlay as the rest of us struggle to process the idea of the greatest and least communicative jockey the world has ever seen, ripping the established order of jump racing to shreds while one of Newmarket's finest trainers dishes out the bangers.

    There's a picture of the occasion in the book, which has to count for something, and when all's said and done, sometimes it's best just to go with the flow. Findlay has had a life that's barely believable but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

    For the racing fraternity, the 55-year-old mega-punter is best known – or hardest to forget, depending on your point of view – as the co-owner of the aforementioned Denman, winner of the 2007 Royal & SunAlliance Chase, 2008 Gold Cup and two Hennessys. Often to the bemusement of his unlikely partner, the dyed-in-the-wool West Country farmer Paul Barber, he landed on the scene like a live grenade and lit up the landscape with his decidedly non-tweedy antics.
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    Ruby Walsh looks bemused by the owner's antics while Royal & SunAlliance Chase winner Denman takes it in his stride
    Edward Whitaker


    Feathers were ruffled and enemies were made, but the man in the Clapham betting shop loved him and his larger-than-life exploits, added his own hard-earned tenner to Findlay's colossal stakes and cheered his big-race victories to the echo. Then the self-confessed "fat, lairy bastard" was gone, warned off by the BHA on a betting technicality that was turned over on appeal. Disgusted by the treatment he received at the hands of the authorities, he exited stage left and his purple silks went into mothballs.

    He still hasn't forgiven or forgotten those he believes led to his maltreatment and bats away all talk of him ever returning to the ownership ranks, but when it comes to the pure, undiluted pleasure of the Turf, his memories remain bright and unsullied.

    "I still look back on the Denman days with fondness," he admits. "I think if we hadn't gone so fast in the Gold Cup he won, he'd have won by 40 lengths and won the next five Gold Cups as well, but they were great days and you can't do more for racing than that. It wound a few people up but a lot of people loved it and even the way it ended was something I could deal with.

    "Me being warned off was the biggest load of bollocks of all time and a complete ****ing liberty, but it was nothing compared to what happened afterwards."

    If anything, the days of Denman, his County Hurdle winner Desert Quest and Royal Ascot winner High Standing, his time spent shaking up the great and good of racing, rewriting the etiquette book from cover to cover, were more of a calm between storms than a maelstrom in themselves.

    For those unfamiliar with Findlay's existence beyond the horses, Gambling For Life may come as a shock to the system, but for the man himself the book has clearly been a project that has veered between score settling and soul searching, between comedy and catharsis. His days as a teenage jailbird, locked up for nine months for credit card fraud, beaten up by warders, left battered and bloodied in a ditch, were traumatic ones but they were formative; "what happened afterwards" was what almost finished him.

    A lifelong champion of the racing greyhound and perhaps its greatest evangelist, Findlay decided that, in spite of his straitened circumstances, his house gone, his time on the racetrack at a bitter end, it was nonetheless his life's mission to reverse the seemingly irreversible demise of dog racing. He took out a lease on the Coventry track, produced algorithms and business plans that would make it the straightest, cleanest, most popular and sustainable version of the sport in living memory, and did his utmost to fund it while his allies gathered behind him.

    One by one, however, for reasons Findlay still distrusts, they fell away, leaving him exposed at the head of the phalanx, £1.6 million in the red and eventually ruined both financially and psychologically, infinitely more so even than by a similarly monstrous loss on the All Blacks in the 2007 Rugby World Cup.

    "There have been four or five bone-crushing defeats, but I've been gambling all my life and it never got me low," he explains, putting monumental gambling losses into his own unique perspective, "but I really felt it was my destiny to save greyhound racing and it destroyed me when it didn't happen.
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    Happier times: Harry Findlay pursues his destiny as the "saviour of greyhound racing"
    Steve Nash


    "People told me lies and strung me along and I fell for it and it sunk me. If I'd have lost £1.6m on the All Blacks or the Scarlets or Black Caviar it wouldn't have hurt, but to think of how Coventry turned out, and then to see the people who ripped the sport off now in positions of power, that took me as low as you can get.

    "The trouble was, the BHA thing turned me into a bit of an animal, too aggressive and abrasive. If I could do it again, I'd have left me out of it, because people have a problem with me and they always have, but it was my own personal quest and all of a sudden my family's got nothing, I've got a wife [Kay], a daughter who's got five years of school left and I've got zero income and zero confidence."

    The thought of Harry Findlay with zero confidence is something akin to the notion of Superman without his red underpants. Bold, swaggering self-belief has always been Findlay's trademark, from his early, tempestuous days making a name for himself on London's dog tracks to his 15 minutes of fame on the front of the nation's tabloids in the Denman era, so to imagine him beaten, bowed and, God forbid, not betting, is a hard and unedifying thing to have to do.

    In the days that followed his heaviest defeat, however, that was how it was. Relocated with his family from a mansion near Bath to a tiny house in Devon, he found himself "physically unable to get out of bed for two months. I couldn't eat, Kay would bring me up some scrambled eggs in the morning and I'd get up at half-twelve and eat it with my hands.

    "Imagine it – you haven’t got a shilling and the phone never rings. I used to walk the dogs on a flat road and it always felt like I was walking uphill, and I'd never, never, never, never, never felt like that before. I was in prison, beaten up, spent Christmas Eve in solitary confinement, not a friend in the world and I still thought 'I'm going to come back from this', still felt like a lion, but this was different.

    "There were two or three times when Kay left the house in the morning to take [his daughter] Ella to school and I thought 'if she doesn't come back, I couldn't blame her'. I tried not to be like it but I couldn't help it."

    Seeing Findlay now, well-fed and watered, shouting the odds at full volume once again and filling the room with rudeness, crudeness and penetrating insight, it's hard to imagine the reclusive man who was suffering, medicating and scared. It's in weakness, however, that many of us find out most about ourselves, and for the first time the High Wycombe grammar school boy turned professional punter found himself dealing with the same sense of mortality as the rest of us, the same doubts that afflict every thinking gambler on the planet, albeit on an incomparably huge scale.

    Unlike many, though, he came out the other side with a Dostoyevskian slant on the nature of despair and an irrepressibly optimistic take on his time in spiritual and financial penury.

    "At least I'm an expert on Rioja under a tenner now!," he booms, following up with an assessment that is as characteristic as it is shocking. "Now I'm clawing my way back, I think I'll miss the desperation of the two years when I had to win to stay alive," he declares, with an unaccountably warm mistiness. "I was petrified of losing money and I'm only just weaning myself off it. If I have a decent bet on a horse now and it gets beat I have to pinch myself and tell myself I haven't got to jump in the river.

    "But would I change anything? No, not at all. I've won lots and spent lots, but that's what money's for. Why would you want to hang on to it? Kay and me have lived like kings, turned left on every aeroplane, been places we'd never dreamed of and we've loved it.

    "There have been low moments, but she knows me and she understands what I am. She was brought up in a tough part of Sheffield and she's never worried about material things; people don't understand how she could put up with the gambler's lifestyle, but she's very special and she's always been there for me."

    It was as if Findlay's life had turned full circle and he was back to the days of selling off the family silver to fund a new era of life-changing bets. The Fiat went for six grand, along with Kay's jewellery and whatever else wasn't nailed down, giving him a historically modest £11,000 'tank' to go into the football World Cup with, which became £16,000 when "one of Hambleton Racing's won at 5-2, never came off the bridle", then £80,000 by the time the tournament was over.

    Harry was back, albeit in a reduced way, betting smaller, spending less but having opinions again – strong ones at that. He still loves his annual stay in Australia and still rates the South Sydney Rabbitohs winning the National Rugby League as the result that saved his relationship with Kay – "I was so sure they'd win and I know there's not a person alive who'd have lived with me if they hadn't won" – but now he has an equally strong fancy that Melbourne Storm will take this year's title, and isn't afraid to shout about it.

    "It's my duty to help tip people a winner and if the Storm don't win, I'll eat that chair," he roars. "It's got to be your biggest bet of the year."

    The world order has been restored. It may not be my world order or yours, but it's his and it's hard to ignore when it's at full volume. The noise may not go down well with those who hoped he was dead and buried, but £10 punters the world over will be rubbing their hands at the return of a man who's one of their own, albeit nothing like anybody else.

    'I can't turn on a washing machine, so what job could I get?'

    Harry Findlay recalls the day when his destiny as a lifelong punter was decided. Despite the best efforts of his mother to deter him, the Glasgow-born son of two nurses was irresistibly drawn to greyhound racing and when he won more than £80 on Balliniska Band's 1977 Derby success at White City, the die was cast.

    "I knew I was a genius from that moment, and in essence I was ****ed," he recalls without a hint of self-effacement, but does he ever consider that his undoubtedly razor-sharp brain, the one that brought him millions and compelled him to spend even more, might have been better set to work in more conventional channels, perhaps finding a cure for cancer, or at least making regular money without scaring the wits out of his loved ones?

    "Oh no. No, no, no, no no," he chants in disbelief, before adding an extra "no" just to be on the safe side. "I'm too selfish for that and I'm also the world champion at not being able to do anything. I can't turn on a washing machine, I've never even driven a car, so what job could I get?

    "The longest job I ever had lasted for two months and I don't know how I lasted two months. I couldn't stand the thought of being in the workplace when there was a good race meeting going on.

    "I didn't care what it was, as long as it wasn't work. I didn't want a big house, I didn't want to own racehorses, I never worried about money, but I've watched every Open since I was 12, and that's the richest thing I've got.

    "No matter what profession you do, as you get older it's harder to enjoy. But when you're a punter, the older you get the more you enjoy it. There's nothing like sport and betting for that.

    "Plus I hear people do things they shouldn't be doing, say things they shouldn't be saying, because of their jobs and it's created a dangerous culture. Political correctness is going to destroy the world, and when I see people want to commit suicide over losing their job, that can't be right."

    It's a bold and unwavering approach to life, and while the psycho-analysts argue over whether it's an addiction, a compulsion or simply a bloody good time, Findlay has bounced back and has no regrets. Almost.

    "Not buying Coventry dog track instead of leasing it, I regret that," he confesses. "But that's it. Well, that and maybe Dan Carter getting injured in the World Cup quarter-final."

    He grins. The phone rings. There's a horse to be backed. Time to go to work.

    Gambling For Life: Harry Findlay by Neil Harman, published by
    Trinity Mirror Sport Media, is available now at £16.99 from racingpost.com
     
    #1
  2. Ron

    Ron Well-Known Member
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    Couldn't stand the bloke but he's certainly been through it and credit for trying to save greyhound racing. I even felt myself feeling sorry for him being ****ed over. Bloody hell, never thought I'd be saying that.
     
    #2
  3. newapproach

    newapproach Member

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    I always found him good entertainment value, and if you can screen out the bullshit, he said some worthwhile things.
    I'm glad he upset the tweed brigade, most of them are tossers.
     
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  4. Ron

    Ron Well-Known Member
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    Yes that as well
     
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  5. Chaninbar

    Chaninbar The Crafty Cockney

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    So the best steeplechaser ever debate is settled once and for all by Lester Piggott - Denman! Kauto Star not even in the frame :wink:. If only the great man had signed onto the Beeb's 606 all those years ago he could have saved a lot of grief <laugh>. Whatever else he's spot on with his assessment that work becomes more of chore the older you get.
     
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  6. OddDog

    OddDog Mild mannered janitor
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    Nice read - thanks for posting Princess <ok>
     
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  7. mick the jolly sailor

    mick the jolly sailor Well-Known Member

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    Good stuff. Will definitely be buying the book. Always liked him. People like him are good for racing.
     
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  8. stick

    stick Bumper King

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    What does Piggott know about 3.1/4 mile chasers ffs
     
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  9. Chaninbar

    Chaninbar The Crafty Cockney

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    You're assuming that the great man actually said what HF attributed to him.
     
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  10. Archers Road

    Archers Road Urban Spaceman

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    I'll definitely be reading his book. Racing needs its Harry Findlays, and its Terry Ramsdens.
     
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  11. floridaspearl

    floridaspearl Well-Known Member

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    Nice piece thanks princess
     
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  12. SwanHills

    SwanHills Well-Known Member

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    Yes, a great jockey but I sometimes wonder about some of his pronouncements during his life, e.g. "Meadow Court should have beaten Sea Bird II in the 1965 Derby." What utter rubbish! Sea Bird put that crap remark finally to bed in the Arc of that year.
     
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  13. Ron

    Ron Well-Known Member
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    Perhaps someone was supposed to have got at Sea Bird and failed
     
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