It's a brave woman who strays onto the Holy Ground of racing, for this is a sport where there are no women - only girls and ladies. Social scientist Kate Fox has written a book about what she calls the racing tribe. To do this, she adopted the jargon of the anthropologist so that trainers are shamans, jockeys are warriors and punters can be divided into two groups: enthusiasts and socials, the latter being subdivided into suits, pair-bonders, day-outers and beseeners. ( You know who you are.)
The lowest of the subclass are the bookies or sin-eaters. Suspect, marginalised, out to "do" the innocent punter, the bookmakers form that part of the racing fraternity whose lot it is to take the stick for the whole disgraceful carry-on and we cleanse ourselves by making a scapegoat of them in their porkpie hats, loud voices and grubby wooden stands. (Medieval sin-eaters were hired at funerals to take on the sins of the deceased by eating a token crust of bread.)
Fox did the rounds of the tracks, including that annual Irish festival - Cheltenham. My one and only excursion to Cheltenham was on a day of such freezing temperatures that I was forced to spend most of it in the hot whiskey tent, leading me to the conclusion that racing is great fun altogether.
It took Kate Fox three years researching to reach the same conclusion. Racing, she says, is one of the friendliest sports there is. People don't get aggressively drunk, women are not molested and even the horses have a good time.
It is, she says, a sport especially suited to corporate entertainment because business guests can bring their spouses and those who have a short attention span won't be taxed since no race lasts more than a few minutes and then you have to go and look at the animals, study the racing card or have another drink. It's also ideal for flirting since it combines what she thinks are the three main constituents of that particular sport: alcohol, a shared focus of interest and the fact that you can strike up a conversation with a stranger using the old familiar mantra: "What do you fancy in the 3.30?"
For her researching, Fox wore black tights, a crotch-length miniskirt and one of those Oliver Twist caps designed to make the wearer appear helpless. It got her absolutely nowhere for the racing people, chivalrous to a man, gave very little away.
Addictive gambling and corruption in racing are not dealt with in The Racing Tribe - surprising omissions when the results of the former can be tragic and the press carries regular accounts of fixing, doping of horses and money laundering. But maybe not so surprising since this is less a scientific study of racing and race goers and more a public relations exercise extolling the virtues of the sport. And indeed, why not? Fox's project was funded by the British Horseracing Board, the Tote and a corporate catering company.
Mary Russell is an author and critic