It was Yorkshire Television who made the series of his books called "The Racing Game". I met Dick Francis while I worked on this series.
The opening title shot was filmed at York Racecourse and we used a small stunt man to fall from his horse at a jump. The stunt man was to fall off the left side and the other jockies were to jump to the right to miss the stunt man but he fell off on the right and the director called to keep shooting. All the other horses avoided him completly, they seemed to know not to land on him, We had to stamp an artificial horses hoof in close up onto his hand to complete the shot. On the same title sequence we used a helicoptor to get a shot of the start of the race, the pilot chequed for overhead cables and found none, action was called and the starting gate went up and the chopper crashed straight into it.