No man's a tropical island

Riding a horse in a professional race is something few people get to experience - but it is an imagined thrill for every racing aficionado. It must make one feel rather alive.

Those glorying in the profession of jockey speak dreamily about the rush. Does this make up for them being a bit sawn-off?

I got close to the real thing this week, riding shotgun to a bloke shooting the moving patrol film of a race - video footage used to ensure that jockeys stick to rules in running.

This cameraman sits strapped to a seat bolted to the back of a bakkie driven by a would-be Lewis Hamilton, metres away from the front of the galloping field.

It wasn't your usual racecourse with long straights and wide bends, mind. It was Champ de Mars in Mauritius, one of the tightest, trickiest circuits in the world.

In more than half a century of hanging about racing I've never had this experience.

The first thing you notice is the language. The riders are focused, but fired-up, because money and rep are on the line and positioning is critical.

Racing is the biggest game in town in Mauritius, so there are eager spectators all along the rails. Yet no public blushes are spared as the jockeys ask each other to please make way, kindly move to another vicinity entirely and, by the way, they remind each other of certain bits of anatomy.

You career along a sandy track inside the running rail at about 45 kays, enveloped in heavy breathing, hoof-falls and yelling, and the sheer physicality of it all hits you like a clod of mud in the kisser. As we increasingly go racing from a lounge sofa, with action at a remove on an HD flat-screen, we lose the vivid colour of the game - its blood, sweat and tears; its human-animal interface; its grittiness.

Get close to the action and you're reminded of how important pace and rhythm are; how a small misstep can lose a runner many lengths; how particular riding tactics work for some horses, not for others; how a winning horse and rider are momentarily a divine, single-minded unit.

I travelled to a faraway island in the Indian Ocean to rediscover some of the vitality of racing, and I'm thankful for that. Was the sorcery of Prospero at play?

O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!

There will be more about my racing and roistering in Mauritius in the Travel section of sister paper, the Sunday Times, in a couple of weeks' time.

Meanwhile, the spring season saddles up at Turffontein tomorrow, with the precocious Rake's Chestnut and Majmu launching campaigns that promise magic in coming months.

The Prix de la Arc de Triomphe, one of the world's great races, is run at Longchamp in Paris on Sunday. It might be the Green Island rum talking, but I've a notion that an Ariel-like Frankie Dettori will enchant aboard Ruler Of The World at about 16/1.