‘Not like this. I was once asked to share the agent’s fee with a jockey that everyone knew was hard up as a result of being laid off for months with an injury. I happily did that.’

‘Have they ever demanded anything else?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like where you must run your horses?’

Clive stared at me again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not. That’s what I’ve heard.’

He shook his head. ‘You’ll be telling me next that the agents also decide who will win.’

I said nothing. I just stood and looked at him.

‘Oh my God. You are saying that.’

Clive Beale and I watched the fifth race together from the balcony at the front of the owners and trainers’ lunch area, and we were paying particular attention to the second of Simon Paulson’s runners, Night Shadow, again ridden by Jimmy Shilstone.

I had told Clive of my concerns about the first race and how, in my opinion, Jimmy had purposely not won on Plantagenet King by being far too slow early on, hence giving him too much to do to catch the eventual winner in the closing stages. Clive had watched a rerun of the race using the Racing Post app on his phone and, while he was not totally convinced, he did agree that Shilstone had not ridden his best ever race.

The fifth was a Class 5 Handicap steeplechase over two miles and three furlongs, the start being at the highest point of the course, at the beginning of the back straight. The horses had to complete almost two full circuits and negotiate sixteen fences in total—five down the back and three in the home straight, jumping each of them twice.

Handicaps are races where the better the horse, the more weight it carries, such that, in theory, each of the runners has an equal chance of winning.

Every horse that is qualified to run in handicaps is rated each Tuesday by the official handicapper, calculated on its previous performances. The very best steeplechase horses, like those that compete in the championship races at the big meetings at Cheltenham and Aintree, are usually rated higher than 160—the great Arkle was rated at 212—but this particular race was a lowly Class 5 contest, which meant that none of the runners had an official rating of more than 100.

Night Shadow had a rating of 99, which was the highest in the race, and hence he carried the top weight of 166 pounds, while the other nine carried one pound less for every one point that their rating was lower. The horse carrying bottom weight was rated at 80, nineteen lower than Night Shadow, so it carried nineteen pounds less weight, at 147 pounds.

However, top weight clearly hadn’t put off the betting public, and Night Shadow went down to the start as the four-to-one favourite.