Betting on a horse race is never a ‘sure thing’. For 20 years, I tried and failed at picking a horse to win the Grand National at Aintree in the UK. Then one year, I did something a little bit different.

Down to my last fiver…

I’d just moved out of a home I’d shared with a former partner. After buying a Saturday Daily Mail, I was down to my last £5. It was going to be two weeks before my next pay day.

Reading the Daily Mail, I saw that it was the annual running of the Grand National steeplechase race at Aintree.

And now for something completely different…

I had tried to bet on this race (along with everyone else) every year, but never with any success. It occurred to me that at some level of consciousness, the results of this race were already known, so I decided to see if I could tap into that knowledge. By pointing the index finger of my right hand, but without reading the names of the horses, I scanned down the two-page listing of the entrants, waiting for something/anything to happen.

http://www.sandracer.com/2007_04_08_archive.html There were forty horses running that day.

I scanned down the first page, nothing. Three quarters down the second page, my finger felt a very quiet ‘ping’. I noted where and kept on. Scanning the rest of the page, nothing else happened, so I scanned down the pages again, and got the same ‘ping’. I looked at the horse’s name and it was “Silver Birch“. ‘Not bad for a Canadian living in England,’ I thought to myself, and headed out to the local bookies.

A result!

I put that last fiver on “Silver Birch” to win (not both ways, my usual bet) at 33-1 and then went back home to await the results. Turned out that “Silver Birch” won! I came away with £170, enough to get me through the next two weeks.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-448896/Pub-boozers-money-national-namesake-win.html (I used to live in Bracknell, too.)

(I have never been able to duplicate the results.)

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/iSZcn566a_0?rel=0

Picture credit: http://www.racingpost.com