THE FERRET was found hiding in a bucket on a building site near Manchester just before Christmas but by last Tuesday she had taken up residence on the shoulders of Sheila Crompton.
As a débutante at the 156th running of the Waterloo Cup on the late Lord Leverhulme’s estate at Great Altcar, Merseyside, she attracted more than her fair share of admiring glances from the gentry assembled in the nominators’ enclosure. Among the Range Rovers brimming with Fortnum & Mason hampers, champagne and communist cigars, Ms Crompton’s ferret, all pulsating tan and cream fur with the head of a grand inquisitor, was finding high society a much more agreeable environment than dusty bricks and mortar.
Hare coursing with greyhounds has a longer history than most. The Greeks introduced the Romans to it and the English clergy bred greyhounds for the nobility. Chaucer’s monk in the Canterbury Tales was besotted with the sport: “Greyhounde he hadde as swifte as fowel in flight, Of prikyng and of huntyng for the hare, Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.”
There were no monks in evidence this week on the open fields of the Altcar estate but the passion for these regal dogs was palpable among the crowds gathered for this, the Cheltenham Gold Cup of hare coursing.When William Lynn organised the first Waterloo Cup in 1836, he did so primarily to attract custom to his hotel in Liverpool. Lynn ran the competition in tandem with a steeplechase at nearby Aintree which we now know as the Grand National. He was rewarded with daily crowds of up to 75,000. Parliament and the stock exchange closed early to await the pigeons carrying the results from the distant field. This week, the first-day crowd was barely a tenth of that figure. We live in an era when learned tribunals debate the human rights implications of being obliged to wear a tie to work; hardly surprising then that the visceral goings on over the three days of this meeting have their detractors as well as their passionate advocates. Some tribes have their Glastonbury, others their Bayreuth, the coursing family have their Waterloo Cup.
The contest features 64 greyhounds in a knock-out competition culminating in the final on Thursday. Only two dogs are released at a time by an official, known as the slipper, hidden behind a screen past which the hare streaks after being evicted from the neighbouring field by a team of beaters.
Once the quarry has sped about 80 yards ahead, the slipper releases the dogs, one wearing a red collar, the other a white, Within about ten seconds the dogs will catch up with the hare who then embarks on a turbo charged zig-zag aiming to escape to the safety of the brambled boundary. A judge on horseback in full hunting pink awards the dogs points for speed and agility, and signals the winner with a red or white flag. The average course lasts about 40 seconds and if the hare eludes the dogs for much longer than this, then they will often give up from exhaustion.
The bank at the opposite side of the coursing field serves as an unofficial lager enclosure and provides a stunning horizon for the gentry in the nominators’ enclosure. Choruses of approval echo from the bank at the sight of a hare being caught by the dogs. By contrast, a kill elicits nothing more than a murmur from the nominators’ side, as if at the family dinner table, ageing Aunt Edith has just dropped her monocle in her soup, the sight regarded merely as an inevitable fact of life.
Mark Prescott, the Newmarket racehorse trainer is an ardent coursing man. “I was talking to the RSPCA man and I told him we live in a lunatic world because he was here hoping every hare gets killed to strengthen his case and I’m here praying every hare gets away so that the dogs are tested properly,” he said.
Midway through the first morning the anti-coursing marchers, about 150 or so, were shepherded by mounted police to the fringe of the nominators’ enclosure. “Welcome to your Waterloo,” one banner proclaimed. Their hostility was civilised and fairly routine, acknowledged with supreme indifference by the enemy. Clarissa Dixon-Wright ambled around the enclosure in a pork pie hat while Stephen Little, the bookmaker and coursing aficionado, cut his usual eccentric figure in his full-length fur coat shouting the odds at his pitch next to his blue Bentley.
Prescott saw his first Waterloo Cup in 1961. “I came on a train from Newmarket with my bike and cycled from Liverpool. I watched from the bank and there was an old fellow in gumboots on the course trying to catch his dog; it was pouring with rain and all the boys on the bank were there and one of them shouted ‘Five to four on, him in the flat hat and the wellies. Run you bastard.’ I was caught up in the magic. Lord Sefton who used to organise it was a bit of a yo-yo. He had his hut in the enclosure where you can see nothing. If it had been my land I’d have been up there with all the nobs and have all the yobs over this side but he got everything wrong.”
SHEILA Crompton is a late convert to coursing. “My first Waterloo Cup was the Millennium so this is only my fourth time. I used to think it was a horrible affair and I thought I would loathe it but I came along that year to watch it and I loved it.
If coursing goes, the hare goes. They’ll all be shot because the farmers have to control them. I’ve been writing to my MP asking him to come along and experience it for himself but he doesn’t want to know. He’s a rabid anti-coursing man. The ridiculous thing is that he’s perfectly content for me to go hunting rabbits with my lurchers but not for me to watch coursing. I have two lurchers and we go out hunting rabbits.
Last Sunday we were out rabbiting but we only bagged five. We always get permission. A farmer with a rabbit problem rings us up and we go along and take care of it for him. I never used to go on marches but I do now. I’m growing old disgracefully.”
TOM RYAN, who trains his dogs in Tipperary, has won the Waterloo Cup three times. Before decimalisation, the greyhound and the hare graced Ireland’s silver sixpence and threepenny bits.
“I’ve been coming here for 18 years and have been breeding greyhounds all my life. I was brought up with them. My father before me and my grandfather. My father won in 1932 before I was born.
“The coursing greyhound is a different breed altogether from the track dog. It’s like flat racing and jump racing. I don’t think it will ever be banned. We’ve been hearing for years that this is the last time but look at that crowd today.
“We did have a danger (of a ban) in Ireland about five or six years ago but we agreed to put muzzles on the dogs so now they don’t kill the hares. The dogs can’t touch them, they can just knock them over but there’s someone appointed to rescue the hare straight away. I’ve seen the hares afterwards and they’re perfect.”
Two of Ryan’s three dogs were beaten on the first day along with the favourite, Judicial Best, owned by Sir Mark Prescott.
JOSE ROMAO drove from his hamlet south of Lisbon, through Madrid, Paris, the Channel Tunnel and several hundred miles north to enter his bitch Spital Glory in the Waterloo Cup.
“We drove for two days to get here. The Waterloo Cup is the most important coursing in the world. To be here with a dog is a dream come true. In Portugal, everyone comes by horse and the slipper walks among the horses. Coursing is the most natural form of hunting. In parts of Portugal where there is no coursing, there is far more shooting of the hares.”
Spital Glory lost her two courses on the first day. Romao will cherish the few minutes they lasted for the rest of his life.
