One was robbed! How I caused Royal rumpus by nosing ahead of a Princess

AMATEUR races do not usually elicit much newspaper coverage. Never, that is, unless there is a member of the Royal Family involved.

It was all a bit of a hoo-ha, you see. These things happen in races – a bit of bumping here, a bit of boring there: general argy-bargy. You can’t legislate for what might occur around the tight turns of, say, Beverley, if a horse happens to jump a path and takes himself to the inside rail and someone else is bumped in the process.

Well, you can legislate, and that is what the Rules of Racing are for but, sometimes, shit happens. That’s what I’d have said to the Princess Royal, if she’d still been speaking to me. She wasn’t, though. Not after the Contrac Computer Supplies Ladies’ Handicap, a race over a mile and a half, worth £2,262 to the winner. Worth nothing to the winning jockey, obviously, apart from a rather nice crystal vase.

It was hardly the Diamond Race at Ascot, but if you’re a competitive beast, you want to win every race you enter, not just the glamorous ones.

Wherever the Princess Royal rode, the ladies’ changing rooms would receive a hasty makeover, which was incredibly useful for the rest of us. She changed alongside us and did not expect any special treatment. I found this rather confusing, given that I had been brought up to curtsey to the Queen and follow official protocol.

When I curtseyed to the Princess Royal in the changing room at Beverley and called her Your Royal Highness, she said: “Don’t be ridiculous.”

She was standing in her underwear at the time, so perhaps a curtsey was inappropriate.

The Princess Royal was riding a horse called Tender Type. Waterlow Park, my mount, was having a terrific season. He was quiet and gentle, an all-round gent. He was the perfect ride for an apprentice or an amateur.

My mother had driven me to Beverley. As we neared the course, I felt the familiar twinge in my stomach. It wasn’t stomach cramps due to laxatives; it was nerves. I rubbed my hands together - they were clammy – as a Range Rover sped past us.

“That was Princess Anne,” said my mother. “Make sure you keep out of her way today.”

I had read the form on all the other runners, I had thought about the race and had memorised the tactics my father wanted me to use. I was in a heightened state of nerves, talking ten to the dozen, taking in details and remembering facts that I would never normally digest.

The same thing happens now when I do live television or radio. I get nervous in the build-up and then, as soon as I see the red light and know we’re live, I relax. From the start of the programme, I feel in control, and the more that goes wrong, the more I enjoy it.

In this particular race, there were 10 runners. The Princess Royal was wearing colours similar to mine – hers were chocolate and turquoise, mine turquoise and brown.

“I hope the punters don’t get us mixed up,” I said as we circled at the start.

“Unlikely,” she replied.

I swallowed hard, even though there was no saliva to swallow. I was out of my depth.

The mile-and-a-half start at Beverley is right in front of the stands, and the crowd was leaning over the rails, shouting encouragement to us.

“Come on, Cler!” I heard a voice say. “Don’t mess it up. My cash is riding on your backside.”

Waterlow Park had never been that quick to jump out of the stalls. He dawdled, stumbled slightly and broke slower than the horses all around us. We were last of the field as we passed the winning post the first time.

At least, I thought we were last. As we turned away from the grandstand, he saw a path made by the pedestrians crossing to the inner section of the racecourse. He jumped it on an angle, took himself to the inside rail and made up about four lengths in the process.

It was at that point that I realised I had not been last out of the stalls. One horse had reared as the gates opened and had been almost 10 lengths behind us all. By the time we got to that first bend, he had made up the ground and was just behind me, on my inside as Waterlow Park jumped the path.

“What the hell are you doing? Watch out! Watch out!”

There were other words that were shouted. Naughty words that I need not repeat here.

Oh God, I thought. I’ve carved someone up. At least it wasn’t the Princess Royal. She’d never swear like that.

I heard more chatter behind me, but I was focussed on the horses ahead of me, on where the gaps might appear and what I needed to do to achieve the best possible finish.

We swung into the straight, and the field fanned across the course, as they often do in amateur races. It was like the parting of the Red Sea, and I let Waterlow Park accelerate. He didn’t find as much as I expected and could not pull clear. I kept pushing and could hear the cracks of whips all around. There were three of us in a line and then I could feel another horse closing fast. As we flashed past the line, I thought I might just have won, but I wasn’t sure.

A stride past the line, the turquoise and chocolate colours of Tender Type were ahead. The Princess Royal had made up a huge amount of ground in the straight and had finished faster, but none of us were sure who had been in front on the line.

I took my time pulling up, partly to allow for the result of the photo finish to be called, and partly because I was scared. I’m not sure if I was frightened of having lost or of having won. Either way, it spelt trouble.

My mother was, to quote Procul Harum, a whiter shade of pale as she greeted me in the paddock.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” she said, in an urgent whisper.

“Yes! I think I’ve won.” I attempted to win her over with a hesitant smile.

“Not that!” she replied. “The first bend. The very first bend - what the hell were you doing? You nearly brought down Princess Anne. I have just had the Duke jabbing his finger at my forehead telling me you are effing dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed loose on a racecourse in any effing country in the world.”

The Duke was David Nicholson, the Princess Royal’s racing guardian. He was a champion jumps trainer, a man who had won Gold Cups at Cheltenham. I could imagine him in full flow, accosting my mother (whom he’d known all his life) and taking out his fury on her. Now I could see him giving Princess Anne the full force of his opinion. She had been robbed. Robbed and mugged by a highwayman. Me.

The PA made a noise. The judge had been studying the black-and-white freeze frame of the finish for well over five minutes. A cheer went up from those punters who had backed Waterlow Park. At least they were on my side.

Waterlow Park had stuck his neck out, and his nose, with its sheepskin noseband, had passed the post just in front of Tender Type, who finished best of all to dead-heat for second.

I slid to the ground and took my time taking off the saddle. I really, really did not want to go into that changing room.

I weighed in and went out to the winner’s enclosure to receive my trophy. On the way back into the weighing room, the Princess Royal was standing with her back to me.

As I spun round, my world stopped turning. I swallowed and stood there, not knowing what to say. I looked her in the eye, mainly because she was not dressed and I was embarrassed to look anywhere else.

“So, are they having a stewards’ enquiry?” she said.

“No,” I replied.

“Really?” The air had grown chilly. “Nothing happens too early on to make the difference of a short-head.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am. I really am,” I said. That’s where I should have stopped. I really could have walked on into the room and quietly got changed. But I am me and I don’t always know when it’s best to stop talking: “Most genuinely sorry . . . but I was not about to pull up in the straight and let you win.”

The Princess Royal fixed me with a steely glare. “Well, maybe you should have done,” she said, and turned back to continue dressing. If I had had a weak bladder, I might have wet myself.

Clare Balding is author of My Animals and Other Family, published by Penguin, price £20. She is speaking at Ilkley Literature Festival on October 12 www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk