‘Start at the back and try to pass as many horses as you can,’ said the trainer, as we stepped on to the all-weather track at Lingfield.
It was only a practice gallop but I couldn’t have been more excited if I’d been lining up for the Gold Cup.
Darcy had been loaded on to the lorry that morning with eight other horses for an outing to see if any of them happened to show signs of what the trainer calls blistering speed.
Unless your horse has blistering speed you can forget going ‘under rules’. When it comes to horses there is what I think is fast, which is how it feels on the training gallops every morning, and there is actually fast — the speed achieved by the 1 per cent of thoroughbreds who win races out of the 1 per cent of thoroughbreds who reach the racetrack.
So I think Darcy is fast but then I get to Lingfield early one morning, as the course officials are preparing for the day and the lorries emblazoned with names like Godolphin are pulling up at the back of the stands and a few stray spectators are drifting about.
And before the track has a proper race on it, I get to gallop Darcy almost for real. She seems to know she is somewhere significant when she comes off the lorry. She jogs behind her stablemates on tiptoes along aisles marked out with white racing rails until we come to the pristine beige all-weather track, which is so wide and long it seems to go on for ever.
We do a circuit in canter to warm up and the trainer explains the plan. We will canter to the starting post, then begin to race each other.
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