NONICTION

THE SPORT OF QUEENS: The Autobiography of Dick Francis (Otto Penzler/Macmillan: $20; 254 pp.) Dick Francis won his first purse at the age of 5--sixpence, from his brother Douglas, for jumping a donkey over a rail fence, on the fourth try, while facing the donkey’s tail. He never looked back again. “The Sport of Queens” chronicles the rare good fortune of a man doing exactly what he wants to do with one exception, an exception that proves a blessing and a boon to millions of readers. From an exuberant youth spent on the farm of a Welsh grandfather who rides to hounds, through a tour of duty with the RAF, to a career as Britain’s (and the queen’s) top steeplechase jockey, Francis’ life, to hear him tell it, is straight out of the Barnyard Beatitudes. Underscored by genuine and disarming modesty, with honest praise for rivals and colleagues alike, with rare communion with God’s noblest beasts, the updated reissue of Francis’ autobiography is odds-on to delight. He has broken dozens of bones (a fence-jumping jockey is thrown an average of once every six races; one pal shattered collarbones so frequently he had them removed). He’s been kicked in the abdomen and the back--riding a few days later with a brace. He’s been driven off the course in the “blood wagon” more times than he can count. But his book, written in deceptively simple, almost lyrical prose, is a model of balance.

Oh, the one “failure”? While leading the Grand National at Aintree, Liverpool--the long (4 1/2-mile) grueling Super Bowl of steeplechasing--after his last fence, his (and the queen’s) mount fell, an excruciating and still inexplicable mishap. A newspaper asked him to write about it. He did. Then he tried a novel. And another. . . . Yes, that Dick Francis.