By Dave Fowler
When Frankie Dettori won seven races at Ascot in 1996, bookie Gary Wiltshire gave up everything to pay his punters. Dave Fowler tracked him down to find out what happened next...
There are two hard facts everyone in racing knows about bookmaking legend Gary Wiltshire. One: on 28 September 1996, Dettori Day, he got spanked on the rails for a cool million - perhaps the largest single loss ever sustained by a course bookmaker. Two: he paid up.
Whether he likes it or not, these facts will supersede anything else in Wiltshire's life. They define him professionally and personally. Perhaps they'll be etched on his tombstone next to icons of a racehorse, a winning post, a wad of fifties and the words: 'From Folkestone to Ayr, Wiltshire was there.'
It's only right, then, that we kick off our interview with the inevitable, dead-pan question: 'So, Gary... how was Dettori Day for you?'
'I wasn't even supposed to bloody be there!' laughs Wiltshire, basking on the rails in brilliant sunshine at York's Ebor meeting. 'I was actually on my way to Worcester, but there was a monster traffic jam on the M40. I phoned my clerk and told him to turn around and head for Ascot instead. We arrived five minutes before the first race and set up on the rails.
'I had no intention of really getting involved. In fact, we were winning going into the last two races. When it came to the last race, we were just behind. Just. However, every bookie thought the last race was a free holiday: you could lay a 16/1 shot at 2/1. I mean, Frankie wasn't going to ride seven winners, was he?
'On that last race we took anything we could get. Punters were queuing up for miles, and I'm glad the whistle blew to start the race or we would have carried on forever.
'I remember the bell ringing as they came into the straight. Frankie was still in front and I told my clerk we could really be in it. That was some understatement. Anyway, that same night I went to work at Milton Keynes dogs. The first bet I took was £1 on trap two at 2/1. I thought, "Fuck me, it's going to be a long way back from here!"'
Born within the sound of the Bow Bells at Holborn, Gary Wiltshire's first job was manning the family's flower stand at Leather Lane market. At just 17, a local bookmaker approached him and asked if he wanted a job as a clerk. The interview consisted of being able to read, write and down a pint of lager 'for luck' in each of the pubs as they drove from London to the races in Essex in a black taxi.
Young Gary might have arrived on track half-cut, but the day's bookmaking went well and he was hooked. Within a few years, Wiltshire had his own pitches at the dogs at Hinckley and Milton Keynes (which his son still runs today), and at point to points.
Treating 'the lords and ladies the same way as dustmen', he fast made a name for himself as a quick-witted bookie who could be trusted. Within a decade he was a track-side face; within two he was virtually racing establishment. Then fate twisted, Frankie galloped home on Fujiyama Crest, and the world of Wiltshire fell apart.
Heavy going
'The worst thing,' explains Gary, with a heavy heart, 'was that we went back to work at Ascot on the Sunday and no one bet with us. No one! That hurt more than anything - people really thought they weren't going to get paid. I had property and cars to sell, and I sold the lot. Everything! And everyone got paid. What else was I going to do?'
'Bookmaking and horses: it's a lifestyle for me. It's a drug, a disease. Money doesn't really come into it. You know, it cost me a lot of money and a house, but I was part of history. Without Dettori Day, would people know me as well? You could even say that, in the long-run, it has helped my name and, ultimately, my business.'
Wiltshire is genuinely a racing obsessive, more so than many of his fellow bookmakers. Ask him what he does away from work and he'll answer, in all seriousness: 'Watch greyhounds and horses.'
Less well known is the fact that Wiltshire has also owned both, having some success with My Odds, a onetime favourite for the all-weather Derby and for whom he once refused £100,000 from a US racing consortium. He's still got the faxed offer on the wall: something to perk him up on slow days.
No Pleasing You is his horse these days, trained by Norma Macauley, a sprightly 70-something who still insists on driving the horsebox herself. One of Gary's last ambitions is that one day Dettori himself will get to ride it.
Dream team
Recently, Wiltshire's career took an unexpected twist when he was offered a job at the Tote. Like many traditional course bookmakers, he had become increasingly disillusioned by the dominance of the online betting exchanges. Gary also reckoned - not illogically - that racing's big personalities were fading fast, in line with general attendances at the country's 59 courses.
Then he bumped into Joe Scanlon, managing director of Totesport. Joe was part of a team, along with Tote chair Peter Jones and Tote Pool managing director Nigel Roddis, who were in the process of revamping the Tote, turning it from a crusty, state-owned betting pool into a thrusting, multi-faceted sports bookmaker to rival the Big Three.
'I was dead to the game, driving round the country getting stale,' admits Wiltshire. 'Getting a chance to work for the Tote represented a new start for me. Sure, it was tough working for someone else after all these years, but I got the buzz back. Instead of going out there every Saturday and trying to score with a header and missing, now I'm going out and enjoying looking for the ball.
'You know, it's difficult as an individual bookmaker to always keep your head: you always want to be able to say, "We won." And it's too easy to say the odds are always in the bookie's favour. After Dettori Day, what else could I tell you! No, I don't miss all that. The Tote has given me a new lease of life. It's looking forwards into the new century - not backwards.'
Wiltshire's debut for the Tote was on the rails at Royal Ascot this year, alongside blonde Tote girl Pam Sharman from Essex. You might expect Gary's nose to be put out by a bird on board, but he's remarkably sanguine about the proposition, reckoning 'bookmaking may not have always been a woman's game, but look about now and you see them more than ever'.
It's probably too easy to see Gary and Pam as a beauty-and-beast team, but they're both as tough as each other. Pam was previously in charge of Tote credit, looking after the highest concentration of UK credit customers in British racing.
As a duo, they represent a significant rails force on 90% of the UK's courses, with the remainder to follow. The Tote, it seems, is dedicated to the most aggressive period of expansion in its history, which isn't bad for an enterprise that miraculously survived the government privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s.
'The government-owned Tote used to be old-fashioned, but these days we're leading from the front - and the top,' admits Wiltshire, perhaps the most unorthodox civil servant since Quentin Crisp. 'When we launched on the rails, even Tote chairman Peter Jones was there shouting out the odds. How unlikely a situation is that for most major bookmaking companies? Everyone at the top of the organisation is involved in driving the whole project forward, and when you see that you know it will succeed.
'I guess I thought working for the Tote would be easier than being on my own, but I was wrong. It's just very different. There aren't many days when I'm not racing.
'Last Friday and Saturday, I was at Newmarket. On Sunday, I was giving out a Totesport prize to the Glamorgan cricket team in Wales. On Monday, I was doing the dogs at Romford and presenting prizes at Epsom. I'm at York today and at horse trials until early next week. After that, I'll check myself into the doctor's to see if I'm still alive.'
So have things turned out nice again for the London lad turned country boy?
'Yeah, they have!' laughs Gary, as the first punters pile up to Totesport and the first race of the Ebor meeting. 'I always wanted to be a bookmaker and, in the end, I got everything I wanted. Like they say: a bad day at the races is still better than a great day at the office.'
GARY'S FIVE GOLDEN RULES
1. Come racing. It always feels better to watch racing live while having a bet.
2. Always play the placepot. It's the best bet in racing and you're not up against the bookmakers.
3. Concentrate on major meetings.
4. Always try to follow the money.
5. Never chase losers. Remember, there's always another day to hit back.
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