Williams on the course: 'I work hard and study form, and watch the big backers in the ring'
Freddie Williams
Last updated: 2:17 AM BST 25/06/2008
Nicknamed "Fearless Freddie" for his willingness as a bookmaker to take on any gamble, no matter how big, and for his ability to remain calm as fortunes were won or lost.
Freddie Williams. who died on Saturday aged 65, earned the nickname "Fearless Freddie" for his willingness as a bookmaker to take on any gamble, no matter how big, and for his ability to remain calm as fortunes were won or lost.
A miner's son from Scotland, Williams was especially celebrated for his appearances at the Cheltenham Festival, where he was famous for taking huge wagers that the high street chains would not touch – especially on horses owned by JP McManus. Williams's rules included "Go with your own instincts, not the Form Book – particularly at Cheltenham" and "There's never a last race".
Williams once won £420,000 in a single day. But his instincts sometimes let him down. One day in 2006 he famously lost almost £1 million to McManus; then, to add insult to injury, he was ambushed by thugs wielding crowbars as he drove away from the racecourse, beaten up and relieved of a further £70,000.
The day, he admitted, had not been the best of his life, but: "I'm always the same, up, or down, it makes no difference. You have to be able to take the rough with the smooth, or you wouldn't have any friends, or family. And you've got to be hungry for it." Less than a week after the attack Williams was back at the racetrack, welcoming all comers. "He was as happy taking £100,000 bets at Cheltenham as he was taking £2 off wee Shuggie at the dogs in Glasgow," a friend recalled.
Frederick Williams was born on October 28 1942 at Cumnock, Ayrshire. His father and grandfather had gone down the pits, but at 14 Freddie failed the medical, having in his childhood contracted polio, which left him with one leg shorter than the other.
Barely able to read or write due to his interrupted schooling, Williams found a job sweeping floors in a soft drinks factory at Auchinleck, where he rose to be manager.
Meanwhile, he was showing a talent for mathematics and calculating odds. "There was nothing to do then but work and gamble," he recalled. "There were no televisions, so we would bet on pitch 'n' toss, when you throw two pennies up in the air. We were at it from dusk till dawn." He started as a bookie's runner, hiking from the pits to the railway station and back, then began in a small way offering fixed odds football coupons to punters in the mining community. He opened his first book at Auchinleck greyhound track in the late 1960s.
Later he moved on to horse racing, establishing a pitch at Ayr in 1974 and subsequently at Musselburgh, Hamilton and Perth, and opening a chain of seven betting shops.
He began to establish a reputation for daredevilry when he accepted a wager of £40,000, handed over in used notes in a Tesco bag at a Glasgow greyhound track. Williams was so successful that when the soft drinks factory went bust he led a management buy-out. In 1991 he sold his share in the factory, which made him a millionaire, and he invested the cash in his own venture, a bottled water company called Caledonian Clear. His business interests grew to include an up-market Glasgow restaurant.
His ambition was always to have a pitch at Cheltenham. For more than 20 years he languished on the waiting list until, in the late 1990s, the course decided to auction pitches; he paid £90,000 for the No 2 position. Four weeks previously Williams had undergone a quadruple heart bypass, but as he recalled: "I got loads of get-well cards after I bought the pitch, not the operation. I think they thought I had finally cracked, I'd lost it, but there's no place on earth like Cheltenham and that's where I wanted to be."
At the 1999 January meeting he had the first of many nail-biting encounters with McManus, who placed a fortune on a horse called Buckside in a bid, Williams guessed, to test his mettle.
The horse was leading until the last fence, but was caught near the line, and Williams recouped the £90,000 he had paid for the pitch in one go.
At the subsequent Cheltenham Festival he took a £100,000 each-way bet from McManus at 7/1 on his horse Shannon Gale in the Pertemps Hurdle Final. Shannon Gale finished fourth and McManus collected £175,000 from the each-way part of his wager; had the horse won, Williams would have been on the wrong end of a payout of some £900,000.
Despite their annual tussles, he and McManus were good friends, their relationship characterised by a striking degree of mutual respect. "I work hard and study form, watch the racing, and then watch the big backers in the ring, and see what they know, against what I know," Williams explained. "It's a pitching of wits, yours against theirs. That's what I love."
In addition to Cheltenham, Williams also had pitches at Newbury and York. He had horses in training with Jonjo O'Neill, Nicky Richards and Emma Lavelle.
Freddie Williams had two daughters with his ex-wife, Sheila.
Story from Telegraph News:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2188966/Freddie-Williams.html
