Now even the biggest firms are influenced by what prices the exchanges are quoting the night before

West Country bookie Andy Smith is renowned for laying some of the thickest bets south of the M4. At Cheltenham three years ago, he took £250,000 at the meeting, won about sixty large on the final day, and then went down to run a book at the point-to-point at Holnicote on the Saturday. ‘There’s no technology down there. I had a pencil behind my ear all afternoon, but I was only about £3 out at the end of it.’

A passionate National Hunt racing fan, 43- year-old Smith has been calling the odds for 31 years. He started out with his Bristolian father Chris Smith when he was barely out of primary school. ‘I could clerk at the local point-to-points from the age of about 12 onwards. There’s nothing to beat some little course high up on the Mendips when the wind’s blowing. I still go back to them from time to time,’ he says.

Running man

Smith, who divides his time between homes in Marbella and in Bristol, isn’t your typical bookie. A fitness fanatic, he runs half- and full marathons and is hoping somebody will lay him even money that he can run the 2006 London Marathon in three hours and ten minutes. ‘I did three-nineteen in the North Yorkshire marathon last time out,’ he says proudly.

However, there’s no doubt it’s National Hunt, rather than marathon running, that makes Smith come alive, and his enthusiasm for jumps racing is infectious. Not surprisingly, his favourite tracks are places such as Wincanton, where he sponsors the Novices Hurdle each February and where urban faces from Bristol and Bath still mingle with canny wax-jacketed farmers from the South West. It’s where gossip and information from all four corners of the racing parish is eagerly and knowledgeably disseminated. And Smith is privy to more knowledge than most.

For him, one of the most exciting jumping prospects for the current season is Howard Johnson’s Champion Hurdle hope Arcalis, who romped home in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle in November, and also won the Supreme Novices at the 2005 Cheltenham Festival.

Demon days

‘They say it had been working like a fucking aeroplane leading up to that Newcastle race. And when the jockey, Tony Dobbin, got off afterwards, he said it was an absolute machine. I think it’s got the best hurdling technique of any horse I’ve seen since Istabraq. You could get 6/1 about it for the Champion straight after Newcastle – and that’s a massive price.’

Smith also likes Hennessy winner Trabolgan for the Cheltenham Gold Cup and reckons Henrietta Knight’s promising young novice chaser Racing Demon ‘looks a hell of a horse’ and, he feels, is a much stronger candidate for this spring’s Arkle Trophy than Irish novice Justified, who flopped at the Festival last season. (‘He needs really soft ground, which he won’t get at Cheltenham in March’.)

The bookmaker was also impressed by Jonjo O’Neill’s Newbury bumper winner Wichita Lineman, who ‘quickened up three lengths in spite of going sideways in the final furlong’. Wichita Lineman is a half-brother to Rhinestone Cowboy, whose narrow defeat by Pizzaro in the 2002 Festival Bumper was ruinous for many punters’ Cheltenham fortunes. Smith has a hunch the resurgent Jonjo and his team will avenge that loss next year.

Smith is a punter as well as a bookie and has always been receptive to the mystique and fun of a good old-fashioned touch or betting coup (even when he’s been on the wrong end of it). ‘My first proper winner was a pony on a 12/1 chance at Taunton and I remember I bought fish and chips all round to celebrate,’ he says.

However, he also feels strongly that ‘as a form-book punter, you want racing to be nearly 100% straight’. He clearly doesn’t think it is in 2006, and seems certain where the blame lies.

‘In the old days, a stable lad maybe used to have a fiver or a tenner on his horse when he knew it was off and win himself £50 or £500. Now he knows he can make five times that by galloping it too hard the day before the race and then laying it on the exchanges. The Jockey Club shouldn’t need outside experts to point out these things. Policing racing is so easy. If you give me enough money, I can tell you which horses aren’t going to win.

System failure

‘There was a horse at [a recent major National Hunt meet]. It was 11/4 favourite on the boards, but it went to 9/1 on Betfair just before the off and then it was 17/1 on the exchanges after jumping just one fence. And what happened? It finished fifth. Also, think back to when those jockeys were pulled in five years ago. There were 21 horses named. One of our biggest ever punters backed all of them and they all won. Did they think he just got lucky, or what?’

Tic tac no

Neither is Smith impressed by the calibre of some of the individuals calling themselves racecourse bookies. ‘I used to love getting out of bed at 5am on the day of a big meeting, getting all the news, doing my homework and working out the proper odds on a race.

However, now even the biggest firms are influenced by what prices the exchanges are quoting the night before. The people setting these prices are effectively telling us what odds they want to back a horse at. Ladbrokes, Hills and Coral are still sending money down to the track, yet because of the exchanges, the horse’s odds get bigger.

‘I used to be a leader in the West, but not any more. Most of the socalled bookies there now are just followers. There’s still the Irish boys such as Justin Carthy of Chronicle, who’s terrific, but 99% of the rest can’t clerk and can’t tic tac, either: they might as well just be agents for the exchanges,’ he says.

In light of this, then, it’s perhaps not surprising he’s cut back on his racecourse interests. He sold his pitch at York and he is considering selling up at the new Royal Ascot, too, where he reckons ‘they’ll be charging £100-a-day admission before long’. But then Andy Smith has never been that bothered about flat racing (‘Too much “us and them’’,’ as he puts it) and the suave charms of Ascot and Knavesmire don’t excite him anything like as much as the jumping game.

Changing times

It seems Smith isn’t happy about how things are progressing in his trade. ‘You don’t get so many personalities going racing any more, either. Eddie Fremantle used to come up to me regularly and back the rags. Now he knows he can lay the favourite and back the outsiders at 400/1 on Betfair,’ he says.

However, he concedes the opposite is true for the average punter. ‘If I back two winners a day, I’m ahead but that’s not enough for a bookmaker. I need four because I’ve got about £100,000 a year in expenses. The punter’s got no staff to worry about and no tax return. In fact, the punter has probably never had it so good.’

And long may that continue, we say.