Re: Earliest Racing Memory

My first memory of horse racing existing was an arcade machine at the local sideshows in the 1960’s. This machine had several horses on a carousel with various numbers of nags for the different Jockeys. As I remember you placed one old penny on the jockey of your choice and were rewarded with different amounts depending which jockey won. Because there were different numbers of each jockey, the ones that paid out the most were rarer and came in less often. If I recall correctly the jockeys were:-

Wragg- win 2p
Smyth- win 2p
Smirke- win 4p
Piggott- win 6p
Breasley- win 12p (A shilling in old money)

No doubt our own Gingertipster could have found a sure fire way of finding the value, but I did pretty well out of it myself for a primary school kid, with an almost Rainmanesque ability to follow the sequence, and it got to a stage where grown men were following my bets. I even think there was a whiff of a large cigar and a "Now then, now then, young man" from one of my dedicated followers

That scenario would never have seen the light of day in these politically correct times.

Looking back, I suppose it was the Virtual Racing of its day, a race every few minutes, fixed odds, no fallers etc, and in a way we have come full circle.

It would be several years later before I placed my first bet in a real race, backing The Dikler each way the 1973 Grand National. A portent of things to come he finished 5th and they were paying 4 places!!