Continuing.... the Bob Rothman Interview with Bob Rothman - Horse Trading (part 2) 

(missed part I? If so, click here)

 

BR: ...One weekend I was talking to the guy who was the handyman at the stable. We were just chatting and he said “Oh I backed this horse at 20 to 1 and this one at 16 to1.” My ears pricked up and I said “Oh really, how come you can do that.” He told me he used to work in racing, “I used to ride out, and I hear a lot of stuff . In fact the owners of this place, they have a horse that is going to win in a couple of weeks time called Tom Forrester.

 

I forgot all about it really. A week or so later I was sat having breakfast and I suddenly thought, crikey that horse will be running soon. I had better check it. I opened up the paper and there it was. It was the first time I had looked at a racing paper for years. I thought, my God, this is a sign, this is karmic resonance (laughs).

 

I must have intuitively known this was the right day and I was driving into work and I stopped at the traffic lights near the Chessington World of Adventure and there was a Ferrari in the window of the garage there. I looked across and it was a beautiful sunny day and the Ferrari was about 30 grand – this was 20 years ago. And I thought – I’ll win that! That’s it, I’m going to win that Ferrari today.

 

The horse was 14 to 1. So I went to the bank, I got 2 grand out and I took the morning off work. I said to the guys, I’m just going out for a meeting, and I spread all this money round these betting shops.

 

JP: You couldn’t put it on all at once?

 

BR: No, because you would kill the odds. I felt like I had done a good job as they had only shortened up to 12. Which I thought was pretty good. It took a lot of driving around, 50 quid here and a 100 quid there.

 

JP: But you knew enough about betting to know that you needed to do that?

 

BR: Oh yes, I remember now, I managed a betting shop before I went to university. That was how I knew that bookmakers, if a stranger came in with a big bet for a horse, they would ring it through to their head office. If two or more shops rang it through the head office would shorten up the horse and so I was putting it in, in fairly small amounts in different betting shops.

 

JP: So really that job in the betting shop was your apprenticeship almost? The way it turned out.

 

BR: Yes, it was helpful. Not in picking winners. Anyway, I guess like many people, the race came up, the horse ran absolutely terribly (laughs) and I was choked, I couldn’t believe it, I had just wasted two thousand pounds. I wasn’t well off at the time. I needed the money.

 

In fact I had split up with Sandy and I was living at a friend’s house in a tiny little box room while she was sitting at home entertaining people around the swimming pool and I was running out of cash.

 

Anyway, I rode my horse that weekend, and Bill said “Oh hello, I hope you didn’t back that horse, or lose too much on it.” I couldn’t tell him what I had done and I told him I had lost a tenner. And he said “that’s good. Its good, because what happened was their grandmother died and they had a funereal in the morning. So obviously they went to the funeral and they must have unsettled it in some way...

 

BR: Anyway, finally I start winning and I guess fundamentally my strategy was to identify other people I thought were winners, and help them win by getting money on for them and that way I would be privy to the information and it worked. I met a couple of very good people who mentored me and helped me sift through. I mean at one stage I had around 40 people ringing me up every day with information. It was driving me mad.

 

But luckily I could turn to one of my mentors and say, I’ve had this guy ringing me up about this horse here. “What an idiot” he said, I’ve spoken to the stables this morning and it’s not even fit. What about this other guy, he has rung me up about this horse. He would say, “that is ludicrous, it is not the right distance for that horse.” So he helped me sift out horses and information and I learnt about the business and then finally I started winning.

 

The first time I won, I think I won about twelve thousand quid over a couple of weeks and I was going halves with this other professional. I found a guy who used to be a racehorse owner, in fact, he still had horses. He had some outlets and some bookmakers who were taking what in those days were called Sporting Life prices.

 

In other words they were laying the prices in the paper, fundamentally when they find mugs they would say, look you can have this price in the paper, and I said, don’t you worry, I will give you the bets, and we will win. So I did, I gave him the bets, we lost the first week. I sent him £500 I think.

 

The second week I think I won about £3,000, the third week around £8,000 and then about another £5,000. It was about £13,000 he owed me and.... he did a runner (laughs).

 

JP: Oh no!

 

BR: I caught him, I wondered what was going on, anyway, I caught him one night emptying his office out and he gave me three cheques and they all bounced. The saddest thing was the professional I was working with, he was in

for half, so I had to honour the £6,500 of the £13,000 that we won. So my first major victory actually put me even more in the hock.”

 

JP: That is not fun is it? So you didn’t know him very well then.

 

BR: No, I didn’t know him very well. He had been introduced through someone else. It is another of those things you start learning.

 

JP: What happened to the money do you think.

 

BR: I don’t think he had the money. I think what happened was, I had given him cash to put the bets on and it turned out he had a horse. He was in trouble and he had a horse that was running, it was running in a cellar somewhere, and he had taken the cash…

 

JP: A cellar?

 

BR: A cellar, which is a low grade horse race and I think he was desperate and he had taken the cash that I had given him, and maybe the cash we had won as well, and he had backed his own horse and lost it all. Anyway, he was going skint and he was a sad person. So it was a lesson. It’s not the only time. That’s one thing about trading in the stock market, you don’t get knocked, do you, you always get paid.

 

JP: Yes, you do, I’ve never had a situation like that.

 

BR: I had another one. I had a bookmaker and I sent him a £5,000 deposit and I bet with him and I won’t mention names because the guy who used to do his card is now a very major player in racing, but with the bookmaker I bet and won £1,000 so now I’m owed £6,000 and he did a runner (laughs) with my five grand and my winnings. So the first lesson is…getting paid.

 

JP: This is still 1985/86 we are talking about?

 

BR: Yes, or maybe 86/87.

 

JP: And you have been doing this ever since so it is now over twenty years...

 

(to be continued)