A day at the races: Serene Assir discovers a world beyond Do you know the difference between a horse and a donkey?" A seasoned bettor at the Gezira Sporting Club race track, 60-year-old Ali Mursi, is concealed behind heavy shades. The first four races of the day are through, and he hasn't won any money yet. "A horse runs," he goes on, "and a donkey bet on it." Open to bettors every Saturday and Sunday, their location weekly shifting from the Gezira to Al-Shams Club in Heliopolis and back, the races are a hidden world. It is enough to pass through the gates to realise that the track makes up a battleground unlike any other in Cairo's sports world. Indeed, no other playground, as it were, is so clearly split down the middle, with two apparently incompatible aims cohabiting in harmony: sport and money. "You see," Mursi continues, "horse racing is different from any other sport. And people who take an interest in it also differ from any other audience. They have a direct, financial stake in the victory or defeat of a given horse. And this creates an addiction like no other. Such is the passion of most of the bettors that you will find very few of us willing to skip a day at the races, come what may." Entry into the grounds may be free, but few will attend unless they are looking to place a bet; they must be die-hard equestrian fans, at least. Most often, however, they are both things combined. "For some people, horses are a hobby. They are beautiful companions. Ask the actor Ahmed El-Saqqa, he'll tell you. For others," Mursi explains, "it is the gambling that counts." It is perhaps this double appeal that renders attendees so diverse in nature. The most surprising aspect of the race track is that it brings so many different fish into the same, remarkably specific kettle. Dressed in a traditional galabiya and turban, Ibrahim, 87, stood avidly watching the fourth race of the day. "I've been coming here for 60 years," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "It started off as a hobby, when the jockeys were truly cultured and the horses well taken care of. Things have changed now, for the worse." Indeed, although the races are now a game few people would even consider joining, they were once the passtime of film stars, business tycoons and princes. Stories of singers Farid Al-Atrash and Abdel-Halim Hafez still permeate the track; the former is said to have staked an entire building on one horse -- and lost. But jeans-clad Ahmed, 28, refuses to believe that the days of horse racing are gone. "It's all or nothing," he says. "You have to enjoy the game as a hobby before you consider winning or losing. But once you start, it grows into a full-blown addiction." Asked whether he would miss a day at the races, he replies that he would be willing to "cancel any appointment before skipping a Saturday or a Sunday at either of the tracks". However, the priority for him is, without doubt, "the cash. You can make a lot of money out of horses. By placing a single LE10 bet, you can end up making LE2,000." He was among various specimens of the archetypal racetrack aficionado, including Adel Shawqi (not his real name), who wore a black tuxedo, a beige woollen scarf and fashionable shades, examining the horses one by one as stable boys paraded them before the hungry crowds. "It's an addiction, like any other," he smiled. "Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply not telling you the whole truth. That does not mean that horses don't hold a special place for me -- they do." Yet for Mohamed Sultan, star composer of old and husband of the late singer Fayza Ahmed, who was also present at the track, "The key is that horses are fundamentally good, kind animals. It is my love for them that brings me here." Clearly, it is this strangely whimsical love of horses, mixed with an adrenaline-pumped, basic materialism that creates the only possible bond between people from such a variety of walks of life. For the male-dominated track constitutes a bizarre meeting point for people who, in all likelihood, would never have interacted with each other given the gaps in age and class. And, regardless of the complex psychology of betting and addiction of fast cash, suffice it to say, as one bettor from the crowd called out, that "what's here today is gone tomorrow. We'll all end up as paupers one day." As for jockeys and owners, the process has, at the outset, an entirely different appeal. Owner Sayed Abdel-Rahman, whose horse Allam won the fourth race of the day, described to the Weekly how he never bets: "I own a stable, and it is my job to choose and raise winning horses. I own about 60 horses, but only 35 of them are running at present; the rest are still too young. I can tell you, though, that I love horses. I can't live without them, even though neither training nor raising them will ever bring me any direct income." Similarly, jockey Walid, who rode Fagr to victory on the sixth race, said he trained every morning, in preparation for the track. "The feeling of winning is, of course, wonderful. I like running, I like winning," he said. "My family raised me to love riding -- my father is a jockey too. We don't make much cash out of our victories, only about LE250, but I am nevertheless content with my lot in life." Perhaps the key to the day's flippancy, however, lies with expert trainers, on whom the horses' physical preparation prior to the race depends. Ahmed Ali, who trains both Arab and mixed-race horses, explained that each kind has its benefits. "Thorough bred Arabs are beautiful, and excellent over long distances," he said, "while baladi horses, though faster, cannot handle longer races." Meanwhile, he complained that, "despite the fact that people are so eager to spend money on betting, those who actually take care of the horses in stables on a day- to-day basis, who get them ready for the races, are given no form of security or health insurance by either their employers or the race organisers." So sustained interest in the horses among both bettors and owners notwithstanding, love for all things equestrian does not make it through the exit gates on the way out. Only the memory of cash does -- more lost than won.
