Racing: Uneven field for the odds men

Winds of change are blowing for the small bookmakers. Andrew Longmore joins them at Ascot

THERE was a time when on-course bookmakers should have been registered with the Royal Mint not the Bookmakers Association. Those were the good days, the days of the true punter, of Groucho, The Chest and a cash economy; pounds 100 bought a licence to print money, not set up a pitch, and pacemakers had nothing to do with racing and everything to do with steadying the fluttering hearts of the bookmakers.

"I'll be lucky if I get six pounds 100 bets all day," said Ron Bolton, surveying the clientele at Ascot yesterday. "If I got a pounds 1,000 bet, I'd fall off me stool."

Spend an entertaining half an hour in the company of Ron Bolton and you will form the distinct impression that the balance of power has changed. It is not the punters who are the mugs now, but the hard-pressed bookies, who dream no more of the big touch, only of making enough to cover the cost of their badge (about pounds 50), petrol and the hire of stools and lists (pounds 12).

Most on-course bookmakers are part-timers, out for a day in the fresh air and a dose of camaraderie. "If I was lucky enough to make two per cent profit on turnover today, I'd come 'ere with a Scottish kilt on and dance a jig," Bolton says. "But, don 't get me wrong, I don't want letters to the Sporting Life saying "Me 'eart bleeds for you." I work when I want to, go home when I like. No one makes me come 'ere, it's a good life."

And Bolton was smart enough to stow something away from the good times, just to lend a bit of gilt to his retirement. He is 63 now and his two sons are ready to inherit the family pitch, hard won through years of erosion in the ranks. Bolton had his first bet at the age of eight, bought his first "tools" (bag, board and stand) for pounds 25 from the local garage owner, set up at Walthamstow dogs with nothing in his pocket, went broke, saved for another two years and started for real on the racetrack in 1967. He works the southern tracks, less often than he used now that he can watch the Racing Channel for a fiver and save himself a bout of midwinter pneumonia.

It has taken him 31 years to graduate from the junior ranks in the third row to a decent pitch at the front, three or four off the best stand of the lot, near the rails. "At the front, you can see what everyone else is doing, but they can't see you." On a desultory day at Plumpton, the advantage means little; on money- spinning days at Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival you need all the help you can get.

Even in an industry notoriously averse to change, the oncourse bookmakers inhabit a world of timeless practice. Clerks write down the bets in ancient ledgers, bookies call the odds. Signalling the odds down two-way radios not in semaphore is about as far as the revolution has penetrated. But on the grounds that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", the system has survived. Three million on course bets last year, 41 complaints. "Can't be that bad, can it?" Bolton says. "I'm as willing to change as anyone, but how can you better the system?"

Bolton feels the on-course bookie has suffered enough from social change without the meddling of racecourses wanting a tax on turnover. Punters used to creature comforts no longer venture out to the ring when they can bet happily inside and watch the television; wages are paid into banks not back pockets. "If you had pounds 200 in your pocket you'd be more likely to come out and have a good bet," Bolton says. "But going to the bank and taking out pounds 200 for an afternoon's betting. You wouldn't do it, would you?" And Bolton is in the stalls. Others are worse off.

Down in the cheaper enclosure, the Silver Ring, Tony Lusardi is pricing up the opening race. He reckons if 60 bookmakers go bust and he invents a miracle drug to prolong life, he might reach the hallowed ground of the Tattersalls halfway through the next millennium. In the meantime, he is intent on wheedling a few quid from racing's underclass. He does so with a cheery manner and a computerised ticket system, which provides punters with hitherto classified information like what horse they backed and how much they might win.

By the time of the off, his book looks a little lop-sided - "half the battle is finding out what can't win; eight can't win here if they start now", he says - even more so when the three favourites jump the last together. "Need a miracle here," he mutters.

It comes, Ivor's Flutter turning a pounds 100 loss into a profit of pounds 106.60 in a few flying strides. pounds 173 pounds taken, pounds 66.40 paid out. "Got me nose in front," he grins. "Couple more like that and I should cover me expenses."

Lavish sponsorship by Victor Chandler, though, suggested the continued existence of the mug punter. Two halves of a Ron Bolton betting ticket was proof enough for me.