Dick Francis's Gamble by Felix Francis Page A

that can be done?” I’d asked him. “An operation or something? How about a metal plate? I still have one in my ankle from a previous break.”
    â€œThis part of the neck is a difficult area,” he’d said. “Far more complicated than even an ankle. There are so many planes and degrees of movement involved. Then there is the attachment of the skull, not to mention the inconvenience of having the nerves for the rest of your body passing right through the middle of it all, indeed the brain stem itself stretches down to the axis vertebra. I don’t think a metal plate would help and it would certainly be another problem you could do without. In normal life, your muscles will hold everything together and your neck should be fine, just try not to have a car crash.” He’d smiled at me. “And, whatever you do, don’t get into a fight.”
    For weeks afterwards I had hardly turned my head at all, and, for a while, I’d gone back to wearing a neck brace to sleep in. I remember being absolutely terrified to sneeze in case my head fell off, and I hadn’t even been near a horse, let alone on one’s back. So much for being a carefree risk taker. The Health and Safety Executive had nothing on me when it came to my neck.
    â€œI’d love to come and watch your horses work,” I said to Jan, returning once again to the present. “But I’m afraid I can’t ride one.”
    She looked disappointed. “I thought you’d love it.”
    â€œI would have,” I said. “But it’s too much of a risk with my neck.”
    â€œWhat a bloody shame,” she said.
    Bloody shame was right. I longed to ride again. Coming racing every week was a pleasant change from spending all my time in a London office, but, in some ways, it was a torment. Each day I chatted amicably to my clients as they wore their racing silks and I positively ached to be one of them again. Even after all this time, I would sometimes sit in my car at the end of a day and weep for what I had lost. Why? Why? Why had this happened to me?
    I shook my head, albeit only slightly, and told myself to put such thoughts of self-pity out of my mind. I had much to be thankful for, and I should be happy to be twenty-nine years old, alive, employed and financially secure.
    But oh how I wanted still to be a jockey.
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    I watched the first race from a vantage point on the grandstands, the vivid harlequin-colored jackets of the jockeys appearing bright in the sunshine as they cantered down to the two-mile-hurdle start.
    As always, the undiminished longing to be out there with them weighed heavy in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if it would ever go away. Even though Cheltenham had been the scene of my last, ill-fated ride, I held no grudge towards the place. It hadn’t been the racetrack’s fault that I had been so badly injured. In fact, it was only due to their paramedics’ great care after the fall that I wasn’t paralyzed, or dead.
    Cheltenham had been the first racetrack I had ever known and I still loved the place. I had grown up in Prestbury village, right alongside, and I’d ridden my bicycle past the backstretch every morning on my way to school. Each March, as the Steeplechasing Festival approached, the excitement surrounding not only the track but the whole town had been the inspiration for me first to ride a horse, then to pester a local racehorse trainer for holiday jobs and finally to give up a planned future of anodyne academia for the perilous existence of a professional jockey.
    Cheltenham was the home of jump racing. Whereas the Grand National was the most famous steeplechase in the world, every racehorse owner would rather win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
    The Grand National was a handicap, so the better horses carried the greater weight. The handicapper’s dream was that all the horses would cross the finish line in a huge dead heat. But it would be a