Next day was racing day. Before lunch the guests relaxed, the pony-girls limbered up, went through some light training exercises, and were made ready. The afternoon was devoted to heats and seeding races. Under careful instructions from Gregor and strict orders from Don Estanio, Flame had done just enough to qualify for the six-runner final, but not so much as to draw attention to her blistering potential, in particular the incredible speed of her finish and the lung-bursting stamina of her staying power.

The buzz of excitement in the ring died to a murmur as the starter raised his flag for the final of the grand gala.

Betting had been intense, with tens of thousands of pounds being wagered on some girls - and comparatively little on Flame, whose odds were even longer than the field. With a modest thousand laid at 10/1, Don Estanio stood to win a mere £10,000 from a Flame win - but as the hosting owner it was he who traditionally kept the book. If Flame won he would make fifty or a hundred times that amount from the losing bets of the other guests.

The field of six girls were all magnificent.

Gold was a tall, lithe Indian girl from the old Portugese colony of Goa, her polished skin burnished to the colour which gave her her name. The glossy, richly printed four-colour souvenir programme produced by Don Estanio for the Gala described Gold, as one might a Siamese cat, as a 'chocolate-point', and one could see why. Not only were Gold's carefully waxed and elongated nipples, almost as extended as those of Flame herself, the colour of dark Bournville chocolate, so too were the prominent labia of her carefully depilated sex. The dark slash of her cleft, the chocolate brown lips separated and the cleft itself acutely deepened by a tight narrow crupper strap that seemed to be pulled so tight under the bulge of the polished mount that it must cut the sex itself in two, disappeared enticingly between her thighs.

Even taller than Gold was Ebony, unsurprisingly named given her colour. The tall, muscular negress ran with the minimum of harnessing and accoutrement, her shaven head - even her eyebrows were shaved - and smoothly hairless body emphasising her power. It was Ebony and another spectacular girl, Angelica, who carried most of the betting money.

In contrast to the black and smooth Ebony, the dark-haired Vivien, the smallest pony-girl of the six, was barely over five-four. She had snow-white skin - a brighter white even than that of Flame herself, but without the redhead's captivating quality of translucence. Her small, apple-firm but slightly down-pointing conical breasts were tipped with tiny, flat nipples - so tiny they had not been pierced, for there was no way in which the miniature nubs could have been stretched to accommodate rings of the diameter or thickness required to take the chariot reins.

Instead, Vivien's harness rings had been put through the ends of the firm little breasts themselves, pushed bodily through holes cleanly made behind the aureolae and emerging either side of the edge of the pale pink haloes that capped the pointed cones. The visual effect of hard metal rings pierced through the tips of the soft-pointed breasts was even more arresting, Flame quickly decided, than the sight of rings through toughened, teated nipples.

Flame, as she looked with quickened breathing at the heavy rings through the pale-skinned, virgin-like breast tips, recalled (so many moths ago now it seemed a lifetime away) how when she had first visited the Estancia and seen her first pony-girls she had asked Lady J what happened if a prospective filly had nipples too small to be pierced and take the thick harness rings. Her aunt had demurred, confessing she did not know. Here was the answer. Flame wondered how Vivien had been secured to enable her to endure the ordeal of having the holes pierced through the ends of her breasts themselves, instead of merely through her nipples as with Flame and the other girls, to allow her harness rings to be fitted in such a way. How, and with what, had the piercing been made - surely such a procedure could be carried out only with an anaesthetic, for what girl could endure it without? Yet the pony fancy required that the fillies be pierced without anaesthetic - it was part of the culture, part -as it were - of the rules of the game. Flame looked at the tiny, angelic-faced Vivien with renewed respect.

In addition to the singularity of her rings, Vivien sported a further peculiarity. At first sight Flame had thought the small, pale-skinned pony-girl to be fitted with some sort of wide, black chastity belt in place of the usual waist-belt and crupper strap. As the girl had trotted past with a surprisingly flowing grace, given her small stature, Flame had realised she was looking at the most extensive mat of long, black, silky pubic hair she had ever seen or even imagined.

Vivien's pubic tresses (there was no better word for them) grew in an extensive apron all across the base of her lightly rounded stomach and for at least an inch down the front of each strong-looking and surprisingly well-muscled thigh, and even further down on the inside of each alabaster column. Whereas Flame's own not inconsiderable thatch was flat-topped in a natural horizontal line across her taut belly, Vivien's raven black hair grew in a tapering triangle that extended up to and even just above the deeply indented navel. The girl's head hair was equally black and lustrous, brushed to shining perfection and shoulder length, but pulled back from her face. Flame saw the thick dark eyebrows, unplucked and growing in a heavy bar above the laughing dark eyes, and the soft dark down that grew where a man would have sideburns, and even along the edge of the firm jaw itself.

Two more pony girls made up the field for the final: Marietta, whom Flame had first seen on her very first visit to the Estancia all those months ago, and Dancer. Dancer was a lithe, lightly built pony-girl of just under six feet who, until Flame's stunning display had so taken the competition by storm, had been the favourite to win the dressage.

Dancer had not been pleased to lose to Flame. Unusually, indeed somewhat against the rules, her groom had arranged the arena doors so that Dancer, outside and waiting her turn to come on next, could watch Flame's display and the Bulgarian-born runner-turned-ponygirl had known she had met her match even before the climactic demonstration of stoic stillness and self-discipline under Gregor's uncoiling black coach whip.

The starter's flag fell, and the six ponies hurled themselves against their harness straps to spring the six lightweight cars forward as the diamond-sprinkled audience burst into a cheer that would have enhanced any football crowd. On the very outside because of her sand-bagged performance in the heats, Flame knew she would have to make a flying start to be able to cut across towards the quicker inside route before the first turn. If she did not, she would be on the outside of the turn, emerge from the turn inevitably last and then have to go the long way round to pass the other five. She did not doubt for a second that she had the speed - and now all restraints were off. Gregor had given her her head and the tactics of the match were down to her as much as to her confident, trusting driver. After barely half-a-dozen strides she had pulled significantly ahead, a dozen more and she felt the pressure of Gregor's double tug on the rein pulling through her left driving ring, twisting the stiff, leathery nipple in its wire cage sideways, the rein drawing taut to flatten the bounding breast, telling her she had room now to pull to the left and turn in front of the cars inside.

The pressure lifted as she began her move. She could feel, too, how Gregor had moved his weight right forward on the car, tipping the finely balanced rig forward so that its weight shoved hard against her back, pushing her forward, urging her on at maximum speed. The pair now knew each other intimately. Gregor knew just how far he could urge the car ahead, putting the weight onto Flame, without actually pushing her off her feet, causing her to stumble and fall. Flame willed her long legs to pump harder, and as Gregor had taught her lifted her knees high, flinging her lower leg and foot right forward with every stride.

The high-stepping, flowing action was not merely for effect - although certainly the grace and fluidity of Flame's action was a pleasure to see. As well as looking good, it was the most efficient way for the athlete to make use of the semi-balancing, semi-lifting effect of the car behind her. Like a moon runner, Flame's apparent weight was reduced, her real weight partly borne by the shafts of the car, and in the weeks of intensive training Flame had learned to exploit the effect with devastating result.

Now she was in on the low inside rail as the turn came up. She could hear the pounding feet and the whirring of the car wheels behind, the rattle of the lightweight vehicles as they bounced on the smooth, hard sand of the track.

Down the next straight she sensed the presence of another car coming up almost alongside, but kept her steady pace to hold the inner line at the next turn, forcing the other girl, whoever she might be, to run wide, cover more distance to maintain position.

Flame's breathing steadied into her deep running rhythm after the first initial burst of speed. In her ears she could hear the cheering of the onlookers, urging on their own favourites or now shouting for her, Flame, the surprise front runner. Like all racing crowds, this one loved to see a new face and form come from behind to surprise the pundits. But more than the yells of the supporters, she listened for the fall of footsteps behind and beside her, the whirr of the chariot wheels of her rivals. She did not look round. She relied instead on her implicit trust in Gregor to guide her, to hold her pace steady if she was doing enough to stay ahead, or urge her forward if she needed to speed up.

There was nothing to be gained by going too quickly too early: this was the final, twice as long as the heats, four laps in all. Each pony-girl would need all her strength and stamina simply to run the course, let alone win against the others.

Through the next turn Flame keep her steady stride, her knees lifting high in the required manner, her foreleg swinging forward and down to give her balanced stride length, the forward push of the chariot shafts at her waist-belt letting her lean forward, to give the back stride its smooth power. For the race Gregor had slackened off completely the lower belly strap of the harness, releasing the upwards pull on Flame's still prominent and highly visible clitoris and relieving Flame herself of the distraction of continual, and not very comfortable, clitoral stimulation. The relaxation let her concentrate more on the job she had to do, but now her wildly leaping breasts were beginning to ache duly, their braless state and the steady pounding rhythm of the run bouncing them heavily at every stride. It might be what the spectators wanted to see - but Flame preferred life (and knew she could be even faster) when permitted the restraining comfort of even a lightweight breast harness. After two laps, her pounding, pumping body glistened under the arc lights with its thin sheen of running sweat.

Down the front straight for the final time, Flame sensed again a challenge, felt Gregor's weight urge forward and was just quickening her stride when a searing streak of liquid fire burned across her shoulder blades, followed by another cutting downwards across her upper right arm and blazing across the exposed muscles of her taut belly, just below her harness belt. Not since her ceremonial flogging in her aunt's stable-yard during her initial training had Flame/ Jayne's back smarted to the kiss of the whip, and in her surprise and outrage that Gregor would without warning use the whip on her the pliant, supple pony-girl faltered and almost stumbled. As she did so she slowed perceptibly, and in the instant her flying challenger was up alongside, then inching ahead. She saw it was Ebony, the tall and muscular super-fit fancied favourite, she of the shaven body and mask-like eyes. She heard again the crack of the whip but this time felt nothing, hearing instead on the same instant Gregor's angry shout, seeing out of the corner of her eye the tail of Gregor's whip flash upwards, harmlessly, past her face, swinging outwards, away from her. She realised instantly that the lash stroke which had burned her shoulders and belly had come not from Gregor but from Ebony's driver, a swarthy middle-European dwarf whom, she had heard in stable whispers, had been sacked from a mid- European circus for cruelty to his charges bordering on sadism. The illegal whip strokes - drivers could use the lash freely on their own charges but were forbidden under pain of disqualification from interfering with other ponies - had come from him, a deliberate foul to put her off her stride.

And the foul had succeeded. Now Ebony was ahead, and cleverly moving across to try to cut Flame out. A few inches more and Ebony's wheels would be ahead of Flame's, then the outer car could move in, closing the door, leaving Flame the only overtaking option of dropping right back and going round the outside. All this Flame sensed as much as saw and in response leant further to her task, giving just sufficient surge to prevent the ploy from working.

Instead the wheels of the two cars clashed lightly once, twice. The tug and pull of the sudden check to the car's smooth running speed might have thrown another pony off her feet, but Gregor and Flame had trained for this also, Gregor rigging a make-shift brake on one of the practice car's wheels to simulate the side-swinging effect of just such a collision. Flame's lurch to the left to correct the swing was instinctive, and pulled her level again as, this time, Ebony stumbled and checked her stride. Again the Turk's whip lashed out, but this time across the glistening black shoulders of his own charge, his rough voice cursing her for a fool.

Flame saw now that Ebony bore her owner's brand not on her crupper, as virtually all other pony-girl's, but high on the left side of her back, in the middle of the shoulder blade, the raised wealed ridges of the mark indicating a particularly painful branding. High on Ebony's hard-working buttocks Flame noticed a series of smaller marks, as miniature brands: only later from Gregor did she learn that Ebony's fiendish groom and cruel master had her ritually branded with a tiny whip-like brand every time she lost a race.

Flame needed no help with the explanation for something else she noticed as she ran fast alongside the tall, athletic negress: bright crimson drops of blood beaded the upper slopes of the shining black buttocks and ran freely in streaking rivulets into the deep valley between. Flame could see they were caused by small cruelly sharpened spikewheels, like spring loaded spurs, set onto the shafts of the car in such a way they jabbed the pony-girl's flesh every time the driver leaned forward in his seat, shifting the car's centre of balance.

All this Flame took in as the pair swung through the penultimate turn, side-by-side. Now there was only the back straight and the final turn to go.

Flame knew now she could win, would win. Ebony was on the outside, had dropped back slightly as they emerged from the turn. The black girl would have to run faster and further to overtake - and Flame knew she had reserves of speed and strength left, were they needed.

The dark-skinned fast-running girl drew alongside again, and Flame felt Gregor urge her forward. As she surged she heard a strangled cry from the girl alongside, and saw the sharp spikes of the spurs dig hard into bunching, muscled buttocks, freshly bright beads of crimson welling immediately on the satin black skin as the Turk also lent forward to urge his girl faster. Flame lengthened her stride and her rattling car pulled marginally ahead as they went into the turn. Leaning into the bend Flame kept her pace steady, and sensed her rival drop back, her challenge spent.

The straight opened out ahead, the tape taut across the track. The crowd was on its feet, clapping.

A brief stinging sensation as the taut tape pulled sharply tight across the bare thrust-forward breasts, then parted with a snap. Her nipples tugged hard, her breasts flattened tight against her chest by the drawing reins and her body seemed weightless as Gregor hauled back on the reins, leaned back in the car to lift the shafts and slow his racing pony. Flame felt the belly strap tug lightly on her clitoris, a gesture of kindness from her trusting driver and a reminder that there was still a show to put on. She bounced her knees high, her thighs wide, showing again the tightly sealed, gold studded sex slit as she slowed and drew to a standstill.

She had won.