The hard-headed Tote CEO left believing in miracles thanks to his star homebred

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Here he catches up with Tote chief executive Alex Frost, who tells him all about star filly Queens Gamble, her background and the lives of those she and her relatives have impacted. Subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

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Alex Frost is every inch the cool, composed businessman, as you would expect of a former City whizz-kid who brought together a team of investors to turn around the Tote and now acts as the organisation's CEO.

But when it comes to horses, and one special filly in particular, he admits to losing all common sense and believing in poignant, perhaps even preternatural twists of fate.

It’s easy to understand why when you hear the story of Queens Gamble, who has won both her starts in Cheltenham bumpers by a combined 18 lengths and bids to extend her unbeaten run to three in the Fitzdares Adores Henrietta Knight Mares' Open National Hunt Flat Race at Huntingdon on Sunday.

It begins with her maternal granddam Gambling Spirit, a 2002-foaled chestnut daughter of Mister Baileys, as Alex explains.

“Henry Candy bought her as a yearling for next to nothing, eight or nine grand I think, but she won five out of 11 races for a group of partners including my dad and John Inverdale,” he says.

“They were only at a certain level, but she was really getting going and there was talk of her going for the Silver Cambridgeshire and other exciting races. Then one day she broke her leg right in front of us on the gallops, and it looked like she’d have to be put down.

“However, my wife Olivia’s mum Gina [Galvin] was really keen on finding a broodmare, so we did all we could to save the mare from the worst fate by bandaging her up and standing her with her leg up in the air, and luckily she proved to be a very good patient, she recovered well and we got her out to Ireland to be bred from.”

With tongue firmly in cheek, Alex refers to the family’s first choice of mating for Gambling Spirit as “the sire of all sires”.

Yes, it was the brilliant racecourse talent but ultimately bitterly disappointing stallion Hawk Wing, in his last year at Coolmore before he was banished to South Korea in 2009.

“He’d become a little exposed at that point, but he was affordable and there was hope, though as it turned out he was as unsuccessful as all the other Woodman sire sons were,” says Alex. “He gave us a filly who we named Gambling Girl and sent to various trainers but with not much success until finally Jessie Harrington took her at the age of four.

“We didn’t have great expectations of her but we ended up having great fun. She won seven races in just about every discipline you can think of: a bumper, a Grade 3 hurdle at Down Royal, two chases, a maiden on the Flat at Leopardstown and so on. She even finished a close fourth in a Listed race at one point.

“But what was particularly lovely was that she took us all around Ireland at a time when my mother-in-law was suffering progressively worse from Parkinson’s disease, and dying from it. It was incredibly emotional, going to places like Roscommon with her, as she loved nothing more than a good day at the races.”

Gambling Girl was eventually retired, and history has repeated itself a little with her first-born foal also being out of the ordinary.

“We took her to Getaway, as we loved him as a racehorse and then a stallion, and the result was this lovely filly with massive great ears and a big G on her forehead,” says Alex.

“My mother-in-law’s name was Gina, of course, so we thought something pretty weird was going on, and then she died soon afterwards, and so the filly just felt very much like a parting gift from her, somehow.”

Queens Gamble scores at Cheltenham last monthCredit: Alan Crowhurst

Queens Gamble, as the miraculously marked filly was named, was to cause emotions to run even higher yet.

A year before her birth in the winter of 2018, Alex had enjoyed seeing the warrior Many Clouds battle to a brave victory in the Cotswold Chase at Cheltenham only to watch on in horror as the horse collapsed and died after the line.

He was so struck by his trainer Oliver Sherwood’s equanimity and eloquence in front of the TV cameras in the aftermath of the awful incident that he put a couple of bottles behind the bar of the pub in Lambourn that he knew the handler would be going to after racing.

“I didn’t know him at all at that point, but he wrote me the most lovely letter to say thank you, and we got talking and I promised him that if I ever had a suitable filly we wanted to race, we’d send her to him,” explains Alex. “So we sent Queens Gamble to Oliver around this time last year.”

Not long after, Alex was rung by the trainer out of the blue, which is always an ominous sign for owners. However, this time the bad news was about the caller himself, not the horse; he had been diagnosed with stage four lymphoma and his prospects of surviving it were bleak.

“Oliver got progressively worse with the cancer, and had to go through five rounds of chemo, and in the meantime the horses in the stable just weren’t running very well at all,” says Alex. “Not that that mattered at all to us in the circumstance, of course. There was no pressure on our filly to even run, let alone win.

“But then in the spring Oliver rang me and said he’d give her a run, which we thought was a bonus as we’d happily have brought her home unraced, and that it would be at Cheltenham on the Thursday before Easter, with the results of a crucial scan to see if his cancer treatment had worked due on the following Saturday.”

This is where things start to get a little spooky, as Queens Gamble had no right to run well in that competitive heat, taking on a number of winners and placed performers including the Listed scorer and hot favourite Mullenbeg, and was duly sent off at 16-1.

And yet she made smooth headway through the field and stormed clear for a remarkable ten-length victory under Jonathan Burke.

“I was there with my 14-year-old daughter who’d been brought up looking at this filly, and adores her and lives for her, and she screamed the house down when she came up the home straight,” says Alex. “She ran into Oliver’s arms and nearly knocked him over, as he was a skeleton of a man by then. We were all in floods of tears. I can honestly say it was definitely the best experience of my life.

“I told Oliver to give us a call to let us know the results of his scan, and the tension was almost unbearable after six months of brutal turmoil, but he got the all-clear at 11pm that Saturday night and he’s really turned around since then and looks fantastic now.”

A much happier, healthier trainer welcomed Queens Gamble back into the Cheltenham winner’s enclosure after she confirmed the promise of that first effort by winning a Listed bumper by eight lengths at the Open meeting a fortnight ago.

Oliver and Tarnya Sherwood with exciting dual bumper winner Queens GambleCredit: Edward Whitaker

What makes her rise to leading Champion Bumper fancy all the more surprising is that at home she shows none of the killer instinct she brings out on the track.

“It’s very strange,” says Alex in all seriousness. “She’s so loving around our kids, and very soft around our baby. Everyone you speak to says the same.

“When we had her home for the summer we’d find her dancing in time to music on the radio in the stable, or lying down in the paddock in a strange way. I know it sounds nuts but honestly, it’s as if she has a human side to her.”

I'll admit to being sceptical when Alex first told me there was a strange, almost spiritual side to the story of Queens Gamble, as I find it hard even to believe in luck, good or bad. Everything happens for a reason, I say.

But having seen pictures of the filly peering adoringly into a carry-cot containing Alex’s youngest daughter when she was a baby, and serenely resting her head on her when she was a few years older, and then a video of her literally boogying with her whole body to some high-energy house music, I have to say I’m now a believer.

It’s funny how horses have the power to move the most hard-hearted cynics, even journalists and financiers.

“It is,” agrees Alex. “But unless you allow yourself to believe, and put common sense to one side for a moment, you’d never chase the dream by owning or betting on horses.”

Amen to that.

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