A DAY at the races is still one of the most enjoyable days out when the sun is shining, and in many ways has changed little in the fundamentals since these pictures were taken in the forties.
At the top are eager punters at Ayr racecourse, one of the five major racecourses in Scotland. Admittedly there are few racegoers now who wear a top hat and carry an umbrella on their arm like the chap to the left. And the woman bottom right is wearing a dead animal around her neck in a fashion now frowned upon.
But essentially scanning the runners for the horse you have bet on, and mounting excitement as they thunder towards the finish line is still the same today, although we now have the luxury of having giant screens to look at, while the purists still like to scan the horses through binoculars.
Bottom left is a rare sighting of royalty at Hamilton Park racecourse as King George VI, in a natty double-breasted pin-stripe suit in July, 1947, strolls through the crowds. You only needed a couple of police officers to keep the crowd back as in those days people knew their place.
It has never been a sport just for toffs however, and bottom right are the crowds in Edinburgh getting on trams to go to a race-meeting at Musselburgh, which was known then as Edinburgh Racecourse. I’m being overly dramatic in suggesting that the little girl in the middle is pleading with her father not to go as he loses too much money on the gee-gees. She’s probably looking forward to the day out as much as her parents.
My contact with the rolled-up racecard tells me that National Hunt racing began in Scotland with races across the Scottish countryside with a far-off church steeple as the goal which is where the term steeple-chase comes from.
The spring meeting, the first of the flat season, is at Ayr tomorrow and Tuesday. “Get your money on Inaam,” adds my contact.
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