No ordinary racing politician: from betting £50,000 a week to saving the sport

Lee Mottershead meets the man at the top of the Racing Post's 2022 Power List - click here to see the rest of the year's most influential figures from position 20 to 2.

Before starting the interview, and with the opening pleasantries completed, BHA chair Joe Saumarez Smith politely explains that Greg Swift, the governing body's new director of communications, has asked him to record our conversation. When listening back to what was said, there is a reasonable chance Swift's jaw will have dropped to the floor.

That is not because Saumarez Smith went drastically off message or slandered stakeholders. The reason Swift might have been taken aback is the 51-year-old man at the head of the BHA is strikingly different to most racing politicians.

Quite obviously, he commented on the big issues of our time, including the soon-to-be published gambling white paper, affordability checks, levy reform and British racing's new governance structure. He was interesting on all those subjects, offering more candid insight than one might have expected, yet Saumarez Smith was never more fascinating than when talking about himself.

With a can of cola to his side, the Londoner chats about his time as a journalist, including a short stint with the Racing Post and a longer spell as deputy political editor of the Daily Express. He tells me about cycling 200 kilometres a week in the summer and his penchant for tackling mountains in the Alps.

There is a joke about owning half of London, not the city but a 44-rated Flat handicapper trained by Tim Vaughan. He speaks with conviction about working for charities focused on knife crime and prison reform. There is even a recommendation for a sourdough workshop in Borough Market. Most absorbing, however, is what Saumarez Smith says about being a punter.

Joe Saumarez Smith took over from Annamarie Phelps as BHA chair this summerCredit: Edward Whitaker

He loves racing and, before joining the BHA, loved betting on racing. That becomes obvious when looking at the bookcase in his personal office, a short hop from High Holborn.

"I think I've got the second largest racing library in the country," says Saumarez Smith, who keeps the vast majority of his 3,500-book collection at home.

Around the edge of the bookcase is a decorative trim made up of Racing Post form for the 2001 Prince of Wales's Stakes. "Can you remember who won?" he asks, then confirming that Fantastic Light was indeed the right answer. "Yeah, 100-30," he says. A subsequent check of the result confirms his recollection of the starting price was accurate.

The fascination with betting was instilled deep within him as a boy.

"At the age of eight I had a maths teacher who taught us fractions using odds," he says.

"The same teacher ran a racing tipping contest with Mars bars as prizes, so I started picking out a horse every day. Four years later, a friend of my father took me to Sandown. We went to the rails and stopped at Heathorns, where he said Mr Saumarez Smith would like to open an account.

"They asked if he was sure I was old enough, to which he replied I was, so at the age of 12 I ended up with a credit account. I spent a lot of my school days in the betting shop, although at that point I was a terrible punter."

He got better.

While at Bristol University, Saumarez Smith joined forces with some kindred spirits and began to punt more seriously, relying heavily and successfully on statistical analysis. He worked out that spread betting markets on the red and yellow cards given out in football matches took no account of the officiating referee's track record.

Such was his growing self-belief, he even rang racehorse trainers, offering guidance on where particular horses should run. He also went racing a lot, taking lifts from a friend called Betting Shop Bob.

"A big bet for me as a student was £40 but my rent was £35 a week, so it mattered," he says. "I wasn't a Patrick Veitch but I made money out of it. By the time I finished university I had started to compile my own ratings, particularly for low-grade handicaps."

On leaving university, rapid progress was made in the story getting business, first at the Sunday Telegraph and then the Daily Express, where inked into his contract was that he would be off work during the Cheltenham Festival – he has missed only one day in the last 33 years – and have a television showing SIS at his desk.

Joe Saumarez Smith chats with Sir Mark Prescott and William Buick at the 2022 Cartier AwardsCredit: Dan Abraham

"I always loved journalism – it just didn't pay very much," explains Saumarez Smith, who increasingly found his betting paid remarkably well, including at the time when he left the Express in order to do an MBA in America.

"An amazingly generous scholarship paid for the tuition and a stipend – William Hill paid the rest," he says, taking his mind back to the 1999 Wimbledon tennis championships. What follows is a big-money betting anecdote. More will follow.

"I had seven-folds and eight-folds on the first-round matches," he recalls. "I took odds of between 6-4 and 5-2 about eight grass specialists who were playing higher-ranked clay specialists. The stake was about £800 and seven out of the eight won. It paid out £58,000. If my other selection hadn't lost his match in five sets, it would have hit the William Hill payout limit of £500,000."

It was a massive win. The £800 stake had hardly been small change, either, but it was perfectly normal for Saumarez Smith.

"I was turning over quite a lot," he says, before pausing when asked how much.

"Dunno," he replies. "Probably £20,000 a week, maybe a bit more. Reasonable amounts. There were times during the early era of Betfair when I was easily betting £50,000 a week. I punted on anything where I thought I had a mathematical advantage, mainly horses, but I was also one of the first people who had access to the Asian football markets."

He profited from deducing that in Formula 1 match bets you needed to back the slow driver with a reliable engine, not the fast driver with an unreliable engine. Kicking King had a fabulous engine. When romping home in the 2005 Cheltenham Gold Cup, he helped to pay for a devoted supporter's new kitchen.

"My first bet on him was £600 at 40-1 with Coral in October and I then kept backing him through the winter," says Saumarez Smith. "I left some asks on Betfair, £20 at 600, £20 at 800 and some tenners at smaller prices.

"When it was announced he was sidelined, they all got wiped out. The night I discovered the news, I had been out to dinner with a mate. He asked me who would win the Gold Cup and I said Kicking King. He saw the horse was 1,000 on Betfair. Instead of realising he must be injured, he had a £50 bet."

Kicking King gave Joe Saumarez Smith a huge punting triumph when winning the 2005 Gold CupCredit: Edward Whitaker

After being all but ruled out of the race with an infection, Kicking King made the starting line-up. From his spot in the the grandstands, Saumarez Smith watched what unfolded with a strange sense of certainty, perhaps helped by having won on the Triumph Hurdle courtesy of Penzance.

"It's ridiculous how confident I became," he says. "I never felt any doubt he wasn't going to win. I had another £500 at 8-1 on Gold Cup morning, even though I already had a huge position.

"I thought I had backed him to win £100,000 but forgot about a £25 each-way double I placed on him at 40-1 and Penzance at 25s. That paid over £28,000, although I didn't remember doing the bet until I found the slip when tidying my desk drawer. When I went to collect my winnings from the Coral shop on Essex Road, the manager said it was the biggest win he had ever paid out."

The following season he heeded the advice of journalist Donn McClean and placed a string of ante-post bets about War Of Attrition winning the Gold Cup. The outcome was a £135,000 return. With neither of the two Cheltenham victors was a penny laid off, despite Saumarez Smith having been such an early convert to Betfair that he attended the launch party. (He turned down an invitation to invest £35,000 in the start-up firm and therefore missed out on a £9.2 million windfall just four years later.)

"My view on trading is you should trade out only if there has been a basis change to why you had the bet in the first place," he says. "I also didn't have a family at the time and I wasn't married. It was good. It got the adrenaline going."

Not for the first time, Saumarez Smith displays a tendency towards understatement.

"I made a good living from punting for quite a long time, to the extent most of the bookmakers closed me down," he reveals. "At the moment, William Hill and Betfair let me bet. I'm done with everybody else.

"Once I started getting restricted by bookmakers, I did have a team of people who ran around betting shops, but facial recognition came in and they got eliminated. I don't have time to punt in huge amounts now, anyway."

To provide evidence of that, Saumarez Smith points out he gives six days a week to the BHA, whose board he has chaired since replacing Annamarie Phelps. Following a change to the organisation's rules, he will continue in the position until 2025.

"Being chair of the BHA is like inheriting a country house," he says. "You have it for a certain amount of time and want to make sure the roof is fixed and the foundations don't collapse.

"I want to do as much as I can to get racing into a sustainable position and moving into a positive growth direction. I'll hopefully be helping to shape which way the sport is going, but I'm realistic enough to know all political careers end in failure. I'm sure horseracing politics is no different."

Joe Saumarez Smith and BHA chief executive Julie Harrington arrive at the memorial service for Lester PiggottCredit: Edward Whitaker

If the BHA can be successful in some impending battles, the failure he fears is inevitable might just be averted. The first major test will arrive in the form of the gambling white paper, which Saumarez Smith - a keen advocate of data-driven policy - expects to be published in the first week of January.

He believes intensive lobbying against a ban on bookmaker advertising has paid off, yet there are still serious concerns about affordability checks, which Arena Racing Company chief executive Martin Cruddace estimates are costing horseracing £40m a year.

"I'm obviously worried about the unintended consequences of what the government is trying to do," says Saumarez Smith.

"Having been a political journalist, I know stuff can suddenly appear in a white paper that nobody was expecting. There could be an affordability check at £100. We have been told it won't be there, but funny things happen. I worry that last-minute lobbying will have caused something to be introduced that really will harm the industry."

While in no way denying that those suffering from gambling harm need to be properly protected, nor that some bookmakers have "tainted the whole industry", he argues: "There are certainly elements among politicians who feel people have to be helped from their base urges to gamble. Generally that comes from people who don't gamble themselves.

"It feels to me that the Gambling Commission has used the fact the white paper hasn't been brought out to make their own decisions about what restrictions should be placed on gamblers. Operators say they are being ultra cautious as they don't want to lose their licences. The problem with all this is there is no room for nuanced judgement. It's a sledgehammer approach."

Racing's recent lobbying of the government has focused not only on affordability checks but also levy reform. The BHA has pushed for the scheduled levy review to result in the existing system being amended so that it incorporates bets placed by British punters on international races and changes the method by which bookmakers pay racing from one based on profits to turnover. It is on the latter front that Saumarez Smith predicts there could be the most imminent progress.

"The delay to the publication of the white paper hasn't been helpful to us, but I'm hoping we have a positive announcement in the white paper," he says.

"The industry benefits financially from our superstars getting beaten - and that is not a good look. If we move to a turnover model, bookmakers will know exactly where they are and we can work together to grow betting on the sport.

"What the turnover rate is set at is clearly key. You don't want to set it so high that bookmakers are incentivised to drive people to other products, but we need to get them to pay a fair price for a premium product that bettors really like."

Joe Saumarez Smith: 'The industry financially benefits from our superstars getting beaten – and that is not a good look'Credit: Edward Whitaker

It sounds like a convincing argument. It would be wrong, however, to say the BHA chair is convinced beyond doubt about the sport's new governance structure, in which stakeholders have agreed ultimate power should rest with the BHA board.

"I keep saying it's all about deeds not words," he stresses.

"If you had a blank piece of paper you wouldn't design the governance of the sport either as it was or as it is now. The BHA regulates its shareholders, which the government would say could never happen in the city. The new governance structure is imperfect but better.

"It's all about whether people are willing to take some short-term pain for long-term gain. The test will come when the BHA is asked to make difficult decisions. Do people pick up the phone to their friendly KC and injunct us? I really hope that doesn't happen but I have to be realistic and say it could happen.

"That said, there is real optimism at the moment. Some of the people the industry might have seen as blockers are actually the people being most helpful and creative in looking for ways that things might change."

It feels like a positive way to finish – although given Saumarez Smith's prowess as a punter, you might be interested to know he now bets on second division football in Portugal and Finland.

"There are anomalies in those leagues and it takes a bit of time for markets to settle down," he explains, also confirming that he continues to enjoy games of poker, on occasions at the home of Victoria Coren Mitchell, with her husband, David Mitchell, serving drinks.

"I've played in the World Series and can hold my own," he says, following that up with a warning. "I play with Oli Bell on a fairly regular basis. He's very good. Don't play poker with Oli Bell."

If, however, you fancy a job in racing politics, you might find the experience highly educational.

"Good poker is about controlling your emotions and understanding that it's all about the long term," says Saumarez Smith.

"Poker also teaches you about dealing with the ups and downs of life. You have to constantly question whether something is still working. The racing industry could do with a lot of that."

The Power List from 20 to 2: the most influential figures in British and Irish racing this year

This interview is exclusive to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Read more articles by Lee Mottershead for members here:

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Guy Harwood: 'I was shaking. I wouldn't have liked it to go wrong a second time'

Kieren Fallon: 'I was arrested for something I didn't do - it was ridiculous'

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