Horse racing is awash with language and slang that can be disconcertingly unfamiliar to the uninitiated. Some terms are intended, quite deliberately, to bamboozle the novice racegoer, while some are just, well, obscure. Here are a few that you may come across, in the racing press, on the racecourse or even in your local betting shop

Bag – Short for ‘bag of sand’ which, in turn, is rhyming slang for ‘grand’, meaning £1,000; the latter comes from ‘grand’ in its adjectival sense and apparently dates from the early twentieth century

Bits – Usually followed by ‘on’ or ‘against’, meaning odds of 10/11 or 11/10.

Blow up – Nothing to do with a horse losing its temper, but rather weakening in the closing stages of race, due to lack of fitness.

Burlington Bertie – The protagonist of a music hall song from the turn of the century but, in horse racing parlance, rhyming slang for fractional odds of 100/30 or ‘a hundred to thirty’

Carpet – Odds of 3/1; hence ‘double carpet’, meaning odds of 33/1

Cockle – £10; from the rhyming slang ‘cock and hen’, meaning ‘ten’.

Duck egg – From the same derivation as ‘duck’, originally ‘duck’s egg’, in cricket; a ‘0’ in the form figures of a horse, indicating an unplaced run.

Dwelt – A past tense of ‘dwell’, but in the sense of ‘to pause’, rather than ‘to live’; used to describe a horse that is slow to leave the starting stalls.

Handy – A racing position on, or just off, the pace during a race.

Hanging – Deviating from a straight line, one way or the other, usually because of fatigue, but also because of adverse camber.

Keen – Over-racing, to a greater or lesser degree, but inevitably wanting to go faster than a jockey wants and expending vital energy in the process.

Jolly – The favourite in any given race; derived from the phrase ‘jolly old favourite’.

Lady – £5; short for ‘Lady Godiva’, an 11th century noblewoman who, according to legend, once rode naked through the streets of Coventry, but also rhyming slang for ‘fiver’.

Monkey – £500; apparently derived for a Rs. 500/- banknote in circulation in India during the British Raj, which featured a monkey

Plate – An aluminium racing horseshoe; hence ‘spread a plate’, meaning to lose such a horseshoe.

Pony – £25; similar derivation to ‘Monkey’, except the Rs. 25/- banknote featured a pony.

Skinner – Also known as a ‘Result’; a race in which a bookmaker faces little or no payout.

Steamer – Also known as a ‘Springer’; a horse that unexpectedly contracts in price, usually from long odds, in the face of market support.

Tongue tie – Denoted by a ‘t’ on a racecard; a strip of material tied around the tongue and lower jaw of a horse, to prevent the horse swallowing its tongue or slipping it over the bit.

Under pressure – Used to describe a horse being encouraged by its jockey to run faster; a horse may, or may not, respond to such encouragement, hence phrases such as ‘headway under pressure’, ‘weakened under pressure’ and so on.

Village – The main betting ring on a racecourse, usually located in the Tattersalls enclosure.

Professional jockeys – Flat or National Hunt – must have balance, coordination, incredible core strength and endurance, but the nature of horse racing dictates that they are often put under pressure to make racing weights. In Britain, the minimum riding weight for Flat racing was raised from 7 stone 10lb to 7 stone 12lb in 2002 and again from 7 stone 12lb to 8 stone in 2013. Even so, according to the National Health Service, 8 stone is underweight for any adult, man or woman, taller than 5’ 5” and is, in fact, the ideal weight for an adult man who stands just 4’ 11” or 5’ 0” tall. National Hunt jockeys, for whom the minimum riding weight is 10 stone, fare a little better, but still weigh, on average, a stone less than their natural weight.

Of course, the ongoing battle with the scales is nothing new; some of the best jockeys in history have undergone, quite literally, decades of self-denial at the dinner table to remain at the top of their profession. Lester Piggott, who routinely rode at a little over 8 stone for most of his career, reputedly subsisted on a diet of champagne and cigars to keep his relatively tall, 5’8” frame the best part of two stone below its ideal weight.

Ian Watkinson, a National Hunt jockey who rode at the same time as Piggott, long before the advent of so-called ‘summer jumping’, struggled with his weight so much that he had two sets of clothes. A tall, robust individual, Watkinson rode at 10 stone, or less, during the season, but by June or July his weight would skyrocket to 12 stone 7lb or even 13 stone.

More recently, Sir Anthony McCoy, who was Champion Jockey for 20 years in a row, had the summer jumping programme to keep him ‘on the go’ but, nevertheless, subjected himself to a punishing regime of abstinence and hot baths to keep his weight in check. He once revealed that, in 2010 – the year he won the Grand National on Don’t Push It – his Christmas dinner consisted of less than 600 calories. McCoy rode at, or around, 10 stone 3lb for most of his career but, within eighteen months of his retirement, in April, 2015, gained two stone in weight.

Thankfully, nowadays, low-fat, high-protein diets, which do not involve starvation rations, coupled with cardiovascular and strength training, have largely replaced the more extreme methods of weight loss employed by yesteryear, such as self-induced vomiting, or ‘flipping’. Nevertheless, in an unforgiving industry, mental and physical suffering among jockeys is still commonplace.

According to trainer Conor O’Dwyer, the Hurley Family Kilbeggan Handicap Hurdle, run at Kilbeggan, in Co. Meath, on the evening of June 21, 2010, was a ‘bad race’ that would not take much winning. So it transpired, with his six-year-old D Four Dave – a maiden after eight starts in point-to-points and over hurdles – sauntering to an easy, seven-length win under jockey Mark Walsh.

Available at 14/1 earlier in the day – after finishing only ninth of sixteen, beaten 41 lengths, in a similar race, albeit over two furlongs shorter, at the same course just over two weeks earlier – D Four Dave was returned at 5/1, suggesting that improvement was expected. Indeed, it was. Owner Douglas Taylor had, in fact, cleverly orchestrated and executed a massive gamble which, notwithstanding one or two minor setbacks, netted the best part of €200,000 from betting shops throughout Dublin and Kildare.

In a plot borrowed, almost directly, from Dick Francis’ novel, ‘Even Money’ – which had been published less than a year previously – Taylor recruited hundreds of ‘couriers’, to each of whom he supplied an envelope containing a completed betting slip, €200 in cash and explicit, printed instructions. Each of his employees was also provided with a cheap wristwatch, with an alarm set to 18.55 – five minutes before the ‘off’ of the race in question – at which point they were to hand the slip and cash to the betting shop cashier, taking the current odds available on D Four Dave. On completion of the transaction, they were to hand over the betting slip counterfoil to a supervisor, who would drive them to the offices of MCR Recruitment, of which Taylor was managing director, to collect a fee of €30.

Many of the couriers were foreign nationals with, at best, a limited knowledge of English, so misunderstanding inevitably led to bets being placed too late, or not at all, and printed instructions being handed to betting shop staff. Betting shop staff also noted that, in some cases, the ‘runners’ wore two wristwatches, which was an indication that something unusual was occurring. Nevertheless, the timing and synchronisation of placing the bets left them powerless to react in any meaningful way.Taylor later said the coup ‘was just for fun’ but, even so, Paddy Power reported losses of up to €50,000 and Boylesports claimed to have lost ‘a five-figure sum’, so it was, as Boyelsports spokesman put it, ‘a really good punt landed.’