NEXT Saturday, June 16th, is celebrated across the world as Bloomsday but to that small constituency of Joyce fans who are also flat racing fans, the only day where Bloomsday makes real sense is when the June 16th falls on the Thursday of Royal Ascot.

For it was on that day in 1904 that the outsider Throwaway surprised the racing world and the characters of Ulysses, to win the Gold Cup at Ascot.

Synopsising the plot of Ulysses could take up the entire edition of this week’s The Irish Field but, put simply, it is a literary masterpiece following two men, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dadalus, as they wander around Dublin in a modernist reinterpretation of Homer’s Odyssey.

To say that the book is pervaded by horse racing is overstating things but the matter of the big race in Ascot does form one of many significant threads running through it.

The first allusion to racing appears in the second chapter where Stephen, a school teacher, visits Deasy to be paid for his work. Deasy represents Nestor, the master of horsemanship in the Greek poem.

While in his office, Stephen admires the portraits of three racehorses – Repulse, Shotover and Ceylon – on the walls of his study. An interesting coincidence regarding the three portrait horses is that they were all ridden by Tom Cannon in their greatest triumphs.

SIGNIFICANT CONNECTION

In a novel where the theme of the father and son relationship is of great importance, it is interesting to note that Tom Cannon’s son Morny would ride the favourite, Zinfandel, in the Gold Cup later that afternoon. Of all the equine portraits that could hang on the wall of a study, it seems remarkable that they should have a significant connection to each other and a link to a rider of the day’s big race.

The matter of that big race makes its introduction in chapter five when Bantam Lyons bumps into Bloom outside Sweny’s Chemist on Lincoln Place. He asks for a look at Bloom’s paper as he wants to see about the French horse in the Gold Cup, Maximum II, a horse who had won the previous running of the Gold Cup in 1903.

Bloom tells him to keep the paper as he’s about to throw it away, which Lyons (half-listening as he scans the card) misinterprets as a tip for the horse Throwaway, the outsider of the four runners, and rushes off to back it. Throwaway would be ridden by W. Lane, a rider already having a fine season in 1904.

The other runner in the four-runner Gold Cup is a familiar one to historians of the turf. ‘W. Bass’s mare’ is introduced by Lenehan in chapter seven when he asks the staff of the newspaper office, “Who wants a dead cert for the Gold Cup?”

Without waiting for an answer he tips, “Sceptre with O. Madden up”. Having won four classics at three, Sceptre was now a five-year-old and coming towards the end of her racing career. She had been held by the Gold Cup favourite Zinfandel in the Coronation Cup at Epsom’s Derby meeting on her only previous start in 1904.

The ‘O. Madden’ in the plate was the reigning champion jockey, Otto Madden, who would retain his title again in 1904.

Meanwhile, at Ascot, the runners jumped away in the Gold Cup. Contemporary reports have Throwaway setting a fair pace to Sceptre with Maximum II last as they turned for home, when Sceptre slightly headed Throwaway, and Zinfandel took closer order with him.

Throwaway, however, was to stay-on best and won cleverly at the finish by a length. Zinfandel finished second, Sceptre third, while the French visitor, Maximum II, the horse Lyons fancied before meeting Bloom, finished last of the four under George Stern.

Lenehan troops into Barney Kiernan’s pub on Little Britain Street and is told he looks “like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner.” Crestfallen, he relays the result from Ascot. “Throwaway at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest nowhere.”

The disappointment sinks in. Terry the barman has had half a crown on Lord Howard de Walden’s Zinfandel. Blazes Boylan has had two quid on Sceptre for himself and a ‘lady friend’ (Bloom’s wife). Even Bantam Lyons, who had been intent on backing Throwaway when leaving Bloom, had met Lenehan in the meantime, who duly put him off it.

MISTAKEN BELIEF

The mistaken belief among the bar patrons that Bloom has secretly backed the horse and is too sly to let on begins here and it’s not until later in the night that Bloom understands how the misunderstanding had come about.

Back at Ascot, owner Fred Alexander led in his surprise winner before King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. Cannon and Madden would come in for some criticism in the press for giving Throwaway too much distance out in front. The general conclusion drawn was that Cannon, having ridden Throwaway in the past, was quite happy to discount that horse’s chance and he instead concentrated on keeping tabs on Sceptre.

Both beaten horses were turned out again the following day with Zinfandel (this time allowed to stride on) winning the Alexandra Plate ‘in a hack canter’ while Sceptre was well-beaten again in the Hardwicke. Her Royal Ascot is best summed up by Lenehan when he paraphrases Hamlet, “Frailty, thy name is Sceptre.”

A word then for the winning rider on the first Bloomsday. “A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane” and it’s hard to argue with that.

Two years prior Willie Lane had been crowned champion jockey. By Royal Ascot 1904 he was well on his way to the Triple Crown on Major Eustace Loder’s Pretty Polly, with only the St Leger to be added. From this glory, however, disaster was around the corner.

Lane was to be badly injured in a fall in a selling plate at Lingfield later that year and would never ride again. He was just 26.

A rare photograph of Throwaway still hangs on the whitewashed walls of the James Joyce Tower in Sandycove. Willie Lane is usually portrayed in contemporary postcards in the purple and white striped silks, black velvet cap and gold tassel of the Duke of Bedford. These are silks which have in more recent years been carried by, appropriately enough, Bloomsbury Stud.

A strange coincidence which might have brought a smile to Joyce’s face as his most famous character wandered around Dublin accidentally tipping winners within the pages of a novel 114 years ago this month.