Rafael and I rushed along from the accommodation block to the barn.
‘Come on, you two,’ Charlie Hern shouted at us. ‘Hurry up and get in position.’
We quickly lined up with seven others, including Keith who stood on the end. It reminded me slightly of the FACSA special agent parade at the National Guard facility on the morning of the Hayden Ryder raid.
But that is where the similarity ended.
The FACSA team had been a crack outfit while this motley crew appeared anything but. Instead of a smart uniform, the nine of us wore a variety of T-shirts, jeans and assorted footwear ranging from Rafael’s ankle-high jodhpur boots to my off-white trainers.
George Raworth appeared from the office in which I had been interviewed earlier, and walked over to where we were paraded. He was casually dressed in blue jeans and a polo shirt, in contrast to the last time I’d seen him wearing a suit and tie on the giant TV screen at Churchill Downs as he’d led Fire Point into the Derby winner’s circle.
During my stay with Tony and Harriet, I had used the Internet to do some research on Mr George S. Raworth.
He had been born near El Paso in western Texas where his great-great-grandfather had established a longhorn cattle ranch in the 1890s, just as soon as the railroad had arrived to transport the stock to markets in the north.
The 100,000-acre ranch was now run by two of George’s cousins, primarily producing beef for the California market, but also raising American Quarter Horses, a strong muscular breed with a compact body, favoured as cowboys’ working horses, and named for their prowess as the fastest equine breed over a quarter of a mile from a standing start.
George had started his adult life training the young Quarter Horses from the family ranch, racing them at the Lone Star racetrack near Dallas, before graduating to the more lucrative Thoroughbred circuit.
Initial successes had marked him as a new golden-boy of American racing but his reputation had been tarnished over the years by several cases involving the misuse of medications, especially steroids.
He was now in his mid-fifties but looked somewhat older, with a head of prematurely white hair and facial skin ravaged both by teenage acne and by too many of his former years having been spent in the harsh Texas sunshine.
He walked along the line of his staff and stopped in front of me.
‘And who are you?’ he asked in a voice that didn’t have as much drawl as I’d been expecting.
‘I’m Paddy, sir,’ I replied in my best Cork accent. ‘I has only started today.’
‘Well, Paddy,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the most successful training barn in the United States. Did you see the Derby on Saturday?’
‘Indeed I did, sir,’ I said, ‘On TV.’ I smiled broadly at him.
He smiled back and moved on down the line.
Satisfied by the inspection of his staff, he faced us.
‘Well done all,’ he said. ‘Now for the Preakness and then the Triple Crown.’
George turned and went back into the office.
Charlie Hern scowled at the line. ‘Go on then, the lot of you, get to work. Paddy, you go with Maria. She’ll show you what’s where. You’ll do four horses to start with until we see how you go. Maria, show him Stalls One to Four.’
Maria was the only female in the line-up. Slim and young, she was wearing a skimpy, olive-green T-shirt above tight denim jeans with mock-designer holes in the knees. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones under a bronze skin, and she clearly knew how to display her body to maximum advantage, but she didn’t seem too pleased to be asked to look after the new boy.
‘I should not be treated like common hot-walker,’ she said with a slight Spanish accent, tossing her thick dark hair from side to side in displeasure. ‘I am not hot-walker, I should be groom.’
She was certainly hot, at least to my eye.
15
I very quickly slipped into the routine of George Raworth’s barn.
Other than Keith, the barn foreman, there were seven full-time staff, including Maria, plus a yard boy who was clearly the oldest of us all, using his ever-present broom more as a support than for actual sweeping.
Maria showed me where the stable equipment was stored.
‘Have you been here long?’ I asked her, trying to be friendly.
‘I came here January as hot-walker,’ she said haughtily, still unhappy, ‘but I should be groom by now. I have done my study.’
A hot-walker was someone employed simply to lead the horses around as they cooled after exercise. It was the lowest rung on the horse-care ladder.
‘But I am still treated by boss as mere hot-walker.’ She sighed and drew herself up to her full height, posing and pouting with obvious irritation. Her facial expression reminded me of a flamenco dancer.
I berated myself slightly for fantasising about Maria cavorting around a dance floor in high heels. I was not here to chase the female stable staff.
‘Is being a hot-walker all that bad?’
‘I want better,’ she said. ‘How come you are groom already when I be here much longer?’ She turned and walked off, gyrating her hips in an overly belligerent manner. I found it rather sexy, and she knew it.
I sighed and went to work.
I cleared the soiled bedding in stalls one to four and replenished the straw for the equine residents, placing the waste into the huge grey metal skips that were earmarked for the purpose at either end of the barn.
I was quite surprised to see that straw was in widespread use, the preference in the UK having moved towards wood pellets, shavings or shredded newspaper.
As Keith had told me earlier, the barn had thirty-two stalls — two blocks of sixteen built back-to-back down the centre — with a wide covered walkway called a shedrow that ran right around the building inside the exterior walls.
The stalls, like the rest of the building, were constructed from wood and they opened onto the shedrow so that the horses were able to look out over half-doors.
At each corner of the barn was an exit with a sliding door. During the day the doors were left open with only a single bar across the gap to prevent any loose horses from escaping.
The doors were slid shut at night but not locked. The wooden structures, together with large quantities of straw and hay, meant that fire was always uppermost in people’s minds and large signs with ‘No Smoking/Prohibido Fumar’ hung from the rafters every twenty feet or so along the shedrow.
The barns at Belmont were fitted with sprinkler systems but, nevertheless, locked exit doors would hamper the evacuation of the horses if the worst was to happen, as had occurred in 1986 when forty-five top Thoroughbreds, collectively worth several million dollars, had all died one night when fire destroyed barn 48 on the eastern edge of the site.
George Raworth, accompanied by Charlie Hern, made a tour of his stable, stopping at each stall to inspect the occupant and discuss progress. We grooms had to remove the bandages from the horse’s legs and stand, holding the animal’s head, while both George and Charlie ran a hand down the back of each equine limb, feeling for unwanted heat in the tendon or ligaments.
Like many others, the Raworth’s horses all wore leg bandages as a matter of course, not because they were injured but to add support and to hold cotton pads that prevented nicks and bruises caused by kicking into themselves. The bandages were also used to hold medications and liniments in place, often used after racing to ease any slight sprains.
‘Everything OK, Paddy?’ Charlie asked as he and George came into Stall 1 where I had a firm grip of the headcollar of a four-year-old gelding called Paddleboat.
‘Fine, sir, thank you,’ I replied.