The Sporting Life

In his wood-paneled London office near Covent Garden's clamorous produce market, A. B. (for Arthur Bernard) Clements, 60, editor of the Sporting Life, sat down one morning last week to flip through his mail. As usual, it contained requests for him to arbitrate disputes between British horse-race bettors and their bookies. As usual, Clements prepared a judicious answer to each query.

Bets, under British law, are not contracts, and disputes over them cannot be taken to court. Instead, Britain's racing fans toss their problems to Editor Clements and the daily Sporting Life. They get straight, prompt answers, which in track circles have all the authority that courts give to true legal questions; Editor Clements guesses that to date more than $1,500,000 "and innumerable pints of beer" have ridden on his decisions.

Sporting Life is the arbitrator, critic, memory and chief tipster of British racing and other gambling sports. Sporting Life reporters at every track decide the starting odds by which bets are settled all over Great Britain, impartially provide all trainers with tips on the opposition. They answer some 11,000 queries a year on everything from saddle sizes to 19th century Derby results. Circulating 60,000 copies a day (at 4 1/2-c- a copy), Sporting Life is as essential as the Times to the "well-britched people" who control or patronize British racing; eight copies go to Buckingham Palace.

Blank Checks. Founded in 1859, Spotting Life began as a weak weekly imitation of one of the world's most colorful journals: Bell's Life in London. Zesty Founder John Bell began covering bare-knuckle prizefights in 1822, expanded his sheet to cover London low life from society scandals to East End bloodlettings. In 1886 Sporting Life bought Bell's copyright and was in turn bought in 1920 by Odhams Press Ltd., publisher of the Laborite Daily Herald (circ. 1,640,707) Sunday People (4,953,548).

Sporting Life has long tolerated a screwball tradition. Best-known character in its raffish staff of olden days was its longtime (1925-37) editor, a retired army captain named Chris Towler. From writing for a dog magazine, Towler learned a deft touch with copy, prodded staffers into developing a brisk, racy style. But he gambled heavily and badly, often forced his reporters to open accounts at banks where he was overdrawn in order to get a supply of blank checks.

Bookie v. Tote Board. When Towler died, Odhams turned the paper over to A. B. Clements, who became a reporter at 14, worked his way up on the Sporting Life rewrite desk. Brisk, red-faced Editor Clements (called "A.B.C." by his reporters) runs a 55-man staff, every one willing at all times to bet on almost any issue, including how long it will take a fly walking up a wall to get to the ceiling.

Sporting Life's major crusade is against tote boards, which are gradually replacing Britain's famed bookies, with their derby hats, their rhyming slang--and their ads in Sporting Life. Writes Clements of the board: "Uninspired, uninspiring. To see the stolid, sad-faced queues lined up to bet on numbers at prison windows, the somber ritual repeated if, perchance, they are concerned with the payout--it is a dreary business."

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