ABSTRACT
Racecourse officials are like tribal 'elders', who have earned their status through long service, genuine expertise and consistently wise and impartial judgement. The upper echelons of the Jockey Club and British Horseracing Board at Portman Square tend to be viewed more as self-appointed 'chiefs', whose power is based on wealth, kinship and politics rather than on any particularly admirable personal qualities or skills. A jockey may protest against a suspension imposed for, say, careless riding – but it is usually the law itself, drawn up by the more remote colonial chiefs in Portman Square, that is criticized, not the racecourse stewards who are obliged to enforce it. Racecourse elders are among the few people towards whom jockeys still behave with genuine, as opposed to purely ritual, deference. Although jockeys always address the clerk of the scales as 'sir', other aspects of their verbal exchanges often show that they are on more friendly terms than this formality would suggest.
