​If you were to peruse the archive of this website, and please do as amongst the less illuminating ramblings of my mind there are gems of wisdom to be found, you will no doubt form an opinion of me as someone who likes a good moan, someone who is somewhere between hard and difficult to please, someone with a nostalgic inclination toward a time that he has only experienced as historical record. All of which maybe true. Personally, though, and I know myself better than most, I believe myself to be honest and true to who I am, and if my jumbled ramblings reflect a brain that could not be sold for pennies as spare parts on e-bay then so be it.
But there is one heartfelt view I hold that I hope everyone who visits horseracingmatters.com can agree with me about: that our sport has no value if the horse is not held in the highest regard and that throughout its life it is accorded respect for both its magnificent athleticism and for the joy it brings to the lives of us, the lesser of the two beings.
This respect should not be mere lip-service. The public should have no lingering doubt as to the sincerity of those who derive a living from working with racehorses that they have only its best interests at heart. We should not, though, publicly sugar-coat the lives of racehorses or those who care for them. We should not distribute a sanitised version of the day-to-day life of the racing yard. As someone far more eloquent than I shall ever be once said: horse racing is not Hollywood. Horses can be recalcitrant, stubborn and temperamental. It takes great patience and skill at times to persuade them to behave as we have want of them.
But our dealings with them should always be tempered with the respect due to sentient beings as without their obedience and co-operation the industry they front would have no means of existing. We are their masters, yes; but we are their servants, too.
An issue that pulls my chain with greater frequency than any other is the naming of horses. The ‘Racehorse Names’ page on this website is a clear illustration of my obsession with the subject. Let me be clear, though; it is not that I wish to have every horse from now to eternity given a name unique to itself. I only wish to have the names of horses who have either won important races, not necessarily classics, or horses who have achieved remarkable feats, to have their names placed on a cherished list, to never be used again. It is about respect and memory, which is why I also abhor the use of gobbledegook, words that runs a carriage and four through proper English and names that are either just undignified or plain insulting to such a magnificent animal.
I will take one horse as an example of what I mean. Persian Punch. He was a greatly loved racehorse. It was said that no horse graced flat racing like him, that he reached out and touched the hearts of the public. Yet his name could reappear on race-cards any day soon. He died, amazingly, fifteen years ago and during his long career he did not win one of the races that would have disallowed his name to be re-used for all eternity.
I said I would only use one horse as an example but the same can be said of Brown Jack and many other ‘equine heroes’ of our sport.
I am told it is difficult to name a racehorse. I doubt if this is true. In fact, I reckon if you wrote on playing cards every word in the English dictionary and stacked them face-to-face they would extend the circumference of Chester racecourse. If you added combinations of those words, only eighteen digits allowed, combined with the single words, you could go around Cheltenham’s New course. If you translated the English words into French, Italian, Spanish and all the other suitable languages and made up words using the twenty-six letters of the English language, you might fill both courses at Cheltenham and possibly the cross-country course as well. The possible names are literally without end. There should be no need to give a young horse the same name as a Lincoln winner, Ascot Stakes winner, Hennessey winner or any horse that during its career won the hearts of the race-going public.
It is about respect in life and in death. And very often, it should be remembered, as with Persian Punch, horses give up their lives in pursuit of our entertainment. To my mind, and I realise this is equally if not more controversial, use of the whip should be restricted to a bare minimum, with hand and heel races phased in for professional jockeys, not only to placate members of the public made uneasy by the striking of horses but also as a mark of respect to the horses who think nothing of always giving 100%.
This sport will only survive long into the future if the public believe that the human element of horse racing has respect for the horse as its core value. Every avenue should be pursued to this aim, including, I propose, a B.H.B. approved and funded facility for the euthanasia of horses. Respect should start at birth and not necessarily end with death.
Call me sentimental, if you wish. But racehorses are not the stock of farms. They are not bred for slaughter, for meat. Racehorses co-exist alongside the human, the lucky ones for the entirety of their lives. We put some horses on pedestals. Red Rum, Desert Orchid, Frankel to name but three. We construct statues in their likeness. We adorn races with their names. When asked to name the 2017 Derby winner we do not name the jockey or the trainer but the horse, Wings of Eagles. The horse comes first and that principle should apply in all instances, to every horse. The public should never doubt where lies the heart of the racing man and woman.

​One of my main criticisms of British racing is the lack of imagination and foresight involved in planning the fixture list and the way it has been allowed to spiral into a free-for-all.
While it may be convenient to a jockey to be able to ride at Southwell on an afternoon and Wolverhampton on an evening, allowing a short drive to take in two meetings in one day, it is highly inconvenient to owners, trainers and jockeys based in the far north or south-west if there is no meeting in their area for days on end. There was a time, in a glorious past when the weather was more clement and coups were thought of as romantic, when race meetings were allocated to a regular pattern – one meeting in the south, one in the north and if there were a third meeting it would be in a part of the country between the two. Indeed, given a melodious voice the fixture list of olden days would read like a good poem or a more interesting variation on the shipping forecast. But now the fixtures list has the cadence of repetition about it, resembling a peppered target board, the splats overlapping, with Wolverhampton regularly clashing with Southwell, Kempton obscuring the view of Lingfield or Hexham getting in the way of Carlisle or Chepstow competing with Bath for racegoers as if there are thousands of such people to be bartered for on a daily basis. If we are to improve attendances day-to-day two racecourses should not be expected to share catchment areas.
Back when organised horse racing was in its infancy race meetings were wonderful diversions from the toil of ordinary life and were attended by everyone from monarchy and aristocracy to the hoi-polloi and plain villainous. After the two wars, when horse racing was allowed once more, racecourses were packed to the gunnel or gunwale, even if thanks to the literary efforts of Graham Greene certain racecourses were earmarked as the recreational areas of razor gangs, especially Pinkie, the evil main character from ‘Brighton Rock’. The racing media make a big deal out of falling attendance on both the racecourse and t.v. coverage. Yet today there is an overload of entertainment available to people that simply did not exist back in the twenties, thirties and into the 1970’s, and today crowds at football grounds are equally down on the halcyon days of Sir Stanley Matthews and Danny Blanchflower. Cinema and theatre audiences, too, I suspect have declined dramatically.
I have long argued, especially during the summer months, that the smaller racecourses should embrace the idea of festivals, marrying local fairs to all the fun of the local racecourse, making horse racing a central pivot of the merrymaking. All round the country fairs and markets were once the highpoint of the year and more and more these events are being restored to the local calendar.  It is easy to imagine, for instance, a medieval jousting tournament taking place at a racecourse before, during or after a race-meeting. Country fairs, too.
Brighton has its White Hawk Fair and I would propose the racecourse would make, when the sea frets allow, a spectacular venue for a three-day evening festival. Brighton is so much like Epsom it is unbelievable that the Brighton Derby Trial was allowed to lapse, but then the powers-that-be do not exactly go out of their way to help the smaller racecourses thrive or indeed even survive. The Irish race programme through the summer months is one festival meeting after another – Tralee, Ballinrobe, Galway etc.
It should not be about securing television coverage or huge sponsorship deals but the availability of dates in the calendar so that the smaller racecourses can advertise their presence to the local population, to create a festive environment to draw people to the racecourse that might not ordinarily think to attend and who might attend for reasons outside of the racing. Brighton has the facilities, the scenic location, the downs, to lead the way in summer racing festivals at the smaller racecourse. In the 1920’s the place used to be full to bursting. It already has a Ladies Day and 21 meetings annually and though the watering system is somewhat basic the racecourse always looks green in any photographs I have seen. One major race, a good quality seller (Brighton has a reputation for its sellers) and good competitive handicaps for lower end horses is all that is required. Tralee and Ballinrobe hardly ever attract a horse of great merit yet those festival meetings go from strength to strength.
Too many of our racecourses have been allowed to perish down the decades and I fear the powers-that-be are not wholly dedicated to protecting the racecourses that remain, especially the smaller racecourse. The race programme is too affixed to encouraging the success of all-weather racing, even in the summer months. This is short-sighted. It is the Brightons, Nottinghams, Warwicks etc that should be supported during the high days of the tourist season. The all-weather courses do a splendid job for racing through the dark days of winter but for the sport to exist in the decades to come we must not lose those racecourses who cater for the majority of horses in training. It is all very well increasing prize money at the top end of the sport to levels the general public might think obscene but a similar amount of support should also be afforded those at the lower end of the sport. And a good place to start would be allotting convenient dates for summer festivals.

​I have in my small yet surprisingly sprawling library of racing books a small tome celebrating fifty years of racing at Chepstow. Since its publication Chepstow has enjoyed a further forty-two years as the heartbeat of Welsh racing and come 2025 it will be celebrating its hundredth anniversary. I hope they have something grand planned for the party.
Two facts that may be argued about but which I believe to be true are: the town of Chepstow is in Monmouthshire, yet for long periods of its history Chepstow was regarded as an English town and some inhabitants wish it were today. Also, during the 2nd World War, as a training exercise, the American Army volunteered to level the infield of the racecourse but were refused permission. I wonder how often that decision was regretted during the passing years?
Once upon a time Wales could boast racecourses at Brecon, Usk, Monmouth, Cardiff, Caerleon, Abergavenny and Tenby. Interestingly, in regard to my comment about whether Chepstow is truly Welsh or a little bit English, a Master of the Monmouthshire Hounds, Reggie Herbert, wrote. ‘the racing at Monmouth was a good deal better class than at the Welsh gatherings..’
In those days Cardiff was the supreme racecourse in Wales and it is where the Welsh Grand National was inaugurated, beginning life in 1877 as a Hunters Steeplechase before transforming into the Grand National Hunt Steeplechase in 1889, carrying the not insignificant prize fund of four-hundred and fifty sovereigns.
What is surprising about racing today at Chepstow is that the name of Walter Smedley is not celebrated in the manner of a founding father. Without him it is more than possible that Chepstow would not exist as without his unfailing enthusiasm the racecourse, than called St.Arvans, would not have been constructed. Smedley’s love of horse racing could not be contained at solely at St.Arvans and he went on to be responsible for racecourses coming into existence at Bromyard, Devon & Exeter, Hereford and Carmarthen to name but a few.
In 1891 Smedley had the good fortune to marry Mabel Williams and as a wedding present Henry Clay, owner of the land that now comprises Chepstow racecourse, gave the couple as a wedding present a house, Oakgrove, and the surrounding parkland. Colin Davies, trainer of three-time Champion Hurdler, Persian War, trained from Oakgrove during the time of Chepstow’s fifty-year anniversary. Smedley immediately recognised the potential of the land surrounding his new home and with Henry Clay’s permission and support began to lay down the racecourse, the precursor of Chepstow.
Yet for all of Smedley’s life, and beyond the end of the 1st World War, St.Arvans was second-best to Cardiff, a situation only righted when Henry Hastings Clay, son of the man who gifted Oakgrove to Smedley, formed with other local dignitaries, the Chepstow Racecourse Company. Surprisingly, though not so surprising to any historian, Chepstow was not a rip-roaring success from the get-go despite the enthusiasm of the Board of Directors for the project. Chepstow was a long way from any of the training centres, a long way from anywhere substantial, and there was no easy access across the Severn in those days, added to which the racecourse was proposed at a period of financial decline which resulted in a poor take-up of shares and the Board of Directors were forced to prove their optimism by taking up the slack.
If the grass grows well on the racecourse today it might be due to the sweat from the brows of those seventy or so men who dug out the course by hand during that hot summer of 1925, the only mechanical devise given to the gangs of men being an old steam navvy which ran on rails and removed the soil hacked out with picks and shovels.
Although Chepstow is more synonymous with National Hunt than flat racing it can be argued that its most significant contribution to racing was that it was the venue for Sir Gordon Richards breaking the world record for a jockey when he won twelve consecutive races over a two-day meeting. He was only beaten narrowly in the final race, so the record might have been thirteen, and Doug Smith, responsible for the heinous crime, his bus-ride to the railway station the most harrowing journey he ever undertook, apparently.
Over the years some of National Hunt’s best horses have won races at Chepstow – Pendil, Killiney, Persian War, Bula, Comedy of Errors, to name but five – and the Welsh Grand National remains a highlight of both the season and the Christmas festivities. Yet to my mind Chepstow is an under-used and under-valued racecourse. It is as good a racecourse as we have in this country and should stage better quality racing than it is allowed. It is in a beautiful location for a sport born and bred in rural settings and could and should stage more evening racing during the summer months. It should also be a Saturday racecourse and be seen more than once a year on terrestrial television. And to commemorate the soon-to-be hundredth anniversary perhaps they should revive races like the Welsh Derby, Welsh Cesarewitch and Monmouthshire Handicap and Stewards Cup and have a mini Welsh Royal Ascot and stage a good quality race in memory of Walter Smedley, its founding father.

​With few exceptions the Grand National is not won by great steeplechasers. Golden Miller, of course, won the race in 1934 and L’Escargot, in receipt of 11lbs it must be remembered, triumphed over Red Rum in 1975. Others will dispute my opinion but apart from Red Rum, king supreme around Aintree, no other Grand National winner can come near to the five-time and two-time Gold Cup winners. As much as I would like to see genuine Gold Cup horses in the Grand National I cannot ever see it happening due to the lucrative races run at Aintree on its Mildmay course and at Punchestown.
For the huge investment he makes to National Hunt racing no one should begrudge Michael O’Leary his good fortune in winning two Grand Nationals in three years. But since its inception the Grand National been considered a great leveller, allowing anyone with the ability to train a racehorse the opportunity to win the historic race. In short, the race is increasingly losing the bloom of romance that was once its byword. Tiger Roll maybe ‘a rat of a thing, with the heart of a lion’ but he is not a pony trained by a farmer in a part of Dartmoor unseen by civilisation for a hundred years. He is owned by a billionaire and trained by the most successful trainer in either Ireland or Britain. Such combinations should win the world’s greatest horse race but there is a danger with the conditions of the race now favouring the better-class handicapper that the big battalions will dominate for evermore and the unknown faces with dour stayers and brilliant jumpers in their stable will become excluded from even chancing their arm in the race.
On Saturday Milansbar was a gallant and very respectable fifth, the first British trained horse to finish. Yet when the weights were published his connections thought it highly unlikely his lowly rating would allow him into the race and they consequently ran him in two 4-mile chases since his effortless win at Warwick, a preparation unlikely to be repeated next season. The horse looked like a natural Aintree horse on Saturday, whereas one or two higher rated horses did not. The same might be said of other horses whose rating disallowed them entry into the race, with Vintage Clouds an obvious example. The Grand National should have the right horses participating and not necessarily the highest rated, especially when those ratings are achieved on park courses and over much shorter distances to the Grand National.
I am firmly of the opinion that Aintree should stage a race over the National fences at every meeting so that horses who would not normally get in the big race can show themselves as ‘National types’ and boost their rating. Perhaps there is a case for staging a race at the ‘Old Roan’ meeting for horses who failed to get in the previous season’s Grand National. Or such a race could be open to all horses within a rating band but with preference given to those horses that failed to get in the previous year’s race.
If the National fences are, as seems the case to the layman, fairer and more inviting, I cannot see why, except for the cost implication, they cannot be used more often. An Aintree meeting without the National fences always comes across as a little Ant without Dec, Ruby without A.P.. We have a Cheltenham Trials Day, why not a Grand National Trials Day? If the powers-that-be are sincere in wanting to engage more people with our sport surely the best tactic is to attract them with the most alluring of our attractions. I would keep the Becher Chase as it is but move the Grand Sefton to another day and have alongside it a new race over the Becher Chase distance, plus my idea of a consolation National race run at its first meeting of the season.
There was a time when the powers-that-be gave the Grand National little or no consideration. Now, thankfully, they appreciate it as the brightest gem in racing’s crown. The Grand National and Aintree racecourse must be safeguarded as if they are twinned with Stonehenge, St.Paul’s Cathedral or the Pyramids of Giza and not be allowed to return to the bad old days of Mirabel Topham, Bill Davies, the High Court and the proposal to build an housing estate on the sport’s most hallowed ground. To horse racing Aintree is of similar significance to sites of antiquity. It is the founding father of our sport. It is sacred ground. No stone should be left unturned in the upkeep of the Grand National’s importance and image and to this effect I urge the guardians of the race to do all they can to ensure the right horses line up at the start of the race.
I am of an age when the onset of arthritis and the other maladies of six score years can only be close by. Yet the Grand National remains as much a fascination as it was when Merryman triumphed for Gerry Scott and Neville Crump back in the days of black and white television. I just hope there were six-year-olds watching the race on Saturday for whom the Grand National will remain a spectacle of wonder as it does with me.
Long live the National!

​Phew!
If there can be any criticism of I.T.V.’s excellent coverage of the Grand National it is that they rush the re-run and analysis of the race. It is not entirely their fault as with the race being run at 5.15 in the afternoon they are given little time to wrap up proceedings in an unrushed and orderly manner. I would like more interviews with the jockeys to get their take on how the race went for them and as I write I am not aware of why Bechers was doled off second time round, especially as it seems, and I pray it is correct, that no horse was badly injured during the race. The ‘assessment’ of Saint Are is though concerning as it might be a shoulder injury.
On a lighter and more general note it would make informative viewing if an analysis of the experts’ views were conducted. We, as either viewers or punters, hang on their every word and it would be good to know which of the experts proves more correct in her of his opinions and predictions. Tiger Roll was thought by most I.T.V.’s experts to be unlikely to take to the Aintree Fences. Ruby Walsh could not see how Pleasant Company could stay when he didn’t last year. Matt Chapman thought Milansbar the least likely of the three horses ridden by females to run well.
The race itself was a triumph for the race organisers, though I am beginning to become concerned about the compulsive need for jockeys to cram into the corner of the Canal Turn, tactic that seems to begin at the Foinavon fence, making the fence an accident waiting to happen. I don’t know the answer. Or if the threat to safety is more perceived than real. But twenty or thirty horses funnelling into a space no more than three horses wide is a situation ripe for disaster. Surely for self-preservation reasons alone jockeys would be better off losing a few lengths by jumping more toward the centre of the fence than risk falling or being brought down by scrambling for the corner. One half of the Canal Turn never gets jumped and Aintree could save themselves money and time if it were reduced by half in width. Indeed, perhaps if the Canal Turn was to be halved in width jockeys would fan out more and the concertina effect would be reduced.
Tiger Roll is not your typical Grand National winner in form or conformation. Triumph Hurdle winners never go on to win Grand Nationals, though Commanche Court went on to win an Irish National and 2-mile hurdlers rarely go on to find the stamina to win the National Hunt Chase and the Cross-Country at the Cheltenham Festival. Tiger Roll is both the exception to the rule and an exceptional racehorse. A book, I predict, will be written about him and his name will become the go-to reference when experts debate the chances of a horse in a race that his or her breeding, form or conformation, should by all reasoning preclude them from winning.
And it would have been an injustice if Davy Russell had retired having not chalked up a Grand National success and equalled the achievement of his Irish equals Geraghty, McCoy, Carberry, Power, Walsh etc. Davy Russell is Davy Russell, there is something unique about him and I have formed the impression that he has deep love and understanding of horses that perhaps runs alongside his love of family and of people in general. When Tiger Roll’s energy reserves ran out in the last hundred yards he did not resort to the whip and seemed to accept he would either hang on or he wouldn’t. He did not give the impression that he was going to abuse his brave partner by whacking him with his whip.
It must have been galling for Willie Mullins to be denied by Gordon Elliot in the Grand National as he was in the Irish National, though I suspect he was one of the first to congratulate the man who is fast becoming his nemesis. Though Elliot, deservedly, will be lauded for winning this year’s Grand National it was as much an example of his ability that Bless The Wings, a thirteen-year-old, ran on with great zest to snatch third place. It is relatively easy winning races with horses of the ability of Samcro but not so easy to pick up an exposed handicapped for a snip and then win, win and win with it, before finishing third at thirteen in a fiercely competitive Grand National.
Because I backed Milansbar each-way and he was the only horse I backed to give me a hope of success (by the by, I though Alpha Des Obeaux was enjoying himself and he should be remembered for next year) I followed his progress more closely than any other and believe Bryony Frost gave him an absolute peach of a ride. That girl is a brilliant horsewoman. Why she is not riding three or four horses a day is a mystery. She is a female Ruby Walsh and given time and experience should become a household name. With the win at Warwick and finishing fifth in the Grand National Neil King has the option of training Milansbar specifically for next year’s race knowing his rating should ensure he gets in. He’ll be twelve next year; conceivably it will be his last chance to win the race and given soft-to-heavy ground, though he lost ground during the softest part of the course and then ran on, and a lighter campaign – he certainly looked a National horse – he might surprise and shock Matt Chapman again.
A good Grand National. Can’t wait for next year. Have that ‘what’s there to live for now’ feeling but it will pass. How can any man die during the summer when it is possible that Samcro might yet turn out to be the next Arkle? Or not knowing if Presenting Percy will be his nemesis.

​The day has come to us at last. It seems a life-time ago that One For Arthur thrilled us with his, seemingly, last to first run for glory and immortality. Today, though, is the day when the history of the sport may be rewritten. This might, just might, if fate unfolds in our favour, when a female first experiences the head-in-the-clouds and life-affirming sensation of winning the greatest horse race in the world. Maybe, just maybe. As long as one of those thirty-seven male jockeys doesn’t spoil the day, which, of course, they will do their damnedest to achieve.
Of course, if those virtual reality geeks have it right then the ladies Blackmore, Frost and Walsh will not get so much as a sniff of Aintree glory as their quirky animated prediction suggests Tiger Roll will win from Chase The Spud. But then in their idea of a race of champions over the Grand National fences they concluded that Red Rum was not the greatest of the greatest around Aintree as we were all quite certain he was and is but L’Escargot, a wonderful horse with two Gold Cups to his name, though in winning his Grand National he was receiving eleven pounds from Red Rum. And for some bizarre reason the algorithms and computer wizards concluded that against all the evidence Richard Pitman would be capable of holding on to Crisp for the whole length of the race when in reality Crisp was twenty lengths clear at Bechers and until Red Rum hauled him in at the shadow of the winning post the race was very much a one-horse affair. That day Crisp put up the greatest performance over those mighty fences and that was not reflected in virtual reality.
Today, though, is real life. Computers and wizards play only a very insignificant part in the lives of racehorses. If horses are fed, watered and generally loved and cared-for a horse tends to be happy with life. They are even happy when displaying grumpiness and displeasure at the oddness of the ways people think horses should look, as with clipping and mane-pulling, because they know that when pull-comes-to-shove the horse usually has the upper hand or hoof. If Milansbar or Tiger Roll decide that Aintree is really not their thing neither Bryony Frost nor Davy Russell will be able to muster any magic to right the situation. In reality Aintree is a purveyor of dreams and nightmares in equal measure.
The media will have you believe that the Grand National is all about backing the winner but it is as far from a spectacle mounted on financial aspiration as joy of creation is from an air strike on a capital city. Aintree is many aspects of life that in general have disappeared from both urban and rural life. It is a step back in time to the day when danger stalked the shadow of all men, women and children. In and around the Grand National real danger lies. The danger cannot be eliminated. For the horse and jockey the danger may in truth be no greater than a Monday at Plumpton or a Tuesday at Southwell but in the perception of a public that has no knowledge equine or racing the danger is as magnified as the sending of an astronaut to Mars. They do not fully understand the danger but they know it lurks at every fence, with Bechers, the Canal Turn, Valentines and the mighty Chair as dangerous as a minefield. They cannot see the joy at the heart of combatants who perhaps in simply being there are achieving a life’s ambition. Winning is not everything when it comes to the Grand National. It should be a lesson to us all.
Guy Disney said after finishing nearly last in the Foxhunters. ‘If there is one thing you could do every day of your life that would be it.’ Not finishing last, of course, but riding around the Grand National course. To fully and adequately explain Aintree you have to have experienced its dangers and its ever-lasting beauty, though I doubt even Ruby Walsh could do they place justice. I have never experienced Aintree and never will. I do not possess the backbone to appreciate the danger, the thrill even of riding into and over those big green fences. I do though possess the heart and imagination to appreciate raw beauty, the beauty, almost of wild and unexplored nature, the primordial thrill of just being there, a small insignificant part, perhaps, but knowing for that day, those brief nine or ten minutes when so much is unfolding it is impossible for the brain to compute all the invariables, I am at one with the people I most admire in the world. I am part of horse racing. I am part of the Grand National.
Finding the winner or getting my stake back is okay but it is a puff of wind compared to the hurricane of relief when the news come through that ever horse will return to their stables that night. I would rather the wait goes on for a female jockey to win the Grand National than have tears shed for the loss of a brave horse.
That, in essence, is what the Grand National is about, or should be. Caring deeply and passionately about the glory and personal ambition but caring more for the welfare of the animal that makes the fruition of all the dreams come true.

​To review the 2001 Grand National, the sad, mad and bad National as Alastair Down coined it, is to be reminded how times have changed. No matter how important the Grand National is to racing in general and the bookmakers in particular, I doubt if similar conditions were to prevail in any future Grand National that the race would be postponed to another day. The ground was not merely soft-to-heavy in 2001 but river-bed muddy. There were puddles on the course, with lakes forming on the inside of the track.
The 2001 National was a throwback to the days when single digit finishers were the norm. In some ways the race was comic, though it was gratifying, and perhaps fortunate, that no horse was seriously injured despite some pretty awful falls. But did it deserve Alastair Down’s swingeing criticism? It was, at times, an unedifying sight, it has to be admitted, but did it deserve Alastair’s judgement? It is sad when the National becomes eligible for ridicule and complaint, and it was bad for the image of both the sport and the race. But I will contend that it was not in the least sad.
There were good aspects to come from the race, not the least being the good sportsmanship exercised by unnamed jockey who pulled Norman Williamson clear of the prostrate Village King at the Canal Turn, and the sensible riding of all the jockeys. I doubt if the whip was brandished once by any jockey in the entire race.
It was the fences and the riderless horses that caused the mayhem, rather than the ground conditions. Seven had fallen before Bechers first time round. Two more capitulated at the Foinavon fence. At the Canal Turn the riderless Paddy’s Return ran across the fence ensuring a melee erupted, with eight horses coming to grief, with one unseating its rider without help from Paddy’s Return or any other horse.
Crossing the Melling Road only thirteen remained, with Noble Lord falling at the first in the home straight, whilst three others, including Richard Johnson on the front running Edmund, came to grief at the Chair and Listen Timmy unseating at the water jump.
Only seven remained going out on the second circuit and with any luck all seven should have made it to the finishing line. Yet fate had more farce up its sleeve. Beau stumbled at the first in the back straight, resulting in both reins ending up on one side of its neck and despite measured and slightly frantic efforts to retrieve them Carl Llewellyn was forced to sit tight, his fingers in the neck-strap over the next two fences before succumbing to gravity at the next. ( The sight of Carl Llewellyn running at full pelt after Beau was like something from a Buster Keaton silent movie) If that was not tragedy and comedy enough a loose horse then managed to take out four out of the other six runners, including Tony McCoy who in flying through the air with the majesty of a trapeze artist managed to get closer to the fence than his horse.
Fate, though, was still not finished mocking the race. Lance Armstrong was the first to be remounted but he thought poorly of the idea and refused once more, and then going to the Canal Turn second time round a loose horse (it couldn’t be Paddy’s Return, could it, in wait to perform his party trick a second time?) ran between Red Marauder and Smarty as they approached the fence. I think by this time God had woken from his nap and decided enough was enough and space opened up between the two horses to allow the loose horse safe passage to wherever he was heading.
Although the site of two mud-spattered jockeys and two tired horses from Valentines to the finish made for uneasy viewing in case another calamity awaited us, it did give the television viewer a good insight into how hard a jockey must work and concentrate to keep a tired horse galloping and jumping. Indeed it couldn’t be said that Red Marauder won the race through his tidy jumping as at times it seemed odd-on his name would be added to the list of non-finishers and though Richard Guest was known for being a stylish jockey the 2001 National demonstrated he was also a capable horseman, too.
The race is remembered for the battlefield condition it was run over. But it should also be remembered for the lucky and unlucky heroes. Strangely, Red Marauder who usually required oxygen after a race did not on this occasion. He, of course, was the real hero, though Smarty, too, should never be forgotten. And how many unlucky losers were there? Beau and Carl Llewellyn were truly unlucky. How much further he would have got under top weight we will never know. He jumped for fun and at the time of the partnership coming apart looked the most likely winner. A.P. says that this National was the one that got away from him as Blowing Wind was simply being nursed round when the loose horse intervened. And Papillon, too, was only being hacked around by Ruby Walsh when he too was wiped out. And, of course, had either McCoy or Walsh made the decision to come down the nearside where Red Marauder was and not the far side where Smarty was the outcome could have been a whole lot different. But that’s a case of if, what and maybe.
Let’s hope the 2018 renewal of the race is recorded in history as an event of joy and sporting spectacle and that Alastair has no reason to either complain or to defend.

​Back in February when the weights for this year’s Grand National were published I picked eight horses that initially took my fancy. Of the eight only four remain – Raz de Maree, Vieux Lion Rouge, Alpha Des Obeaux and Blaklion. I have lost Silsol, A Genie In Abottle (sadly), Cause of Causes (now retired) and Abolitionist. Over time I have come to like the chances of Milansbar and since Cheltenham Shantou Flyer has won favour with me.
When finishing a close second at the Festival Shantou Flyer looked to me like a dour stayer that might do well in the National. I then watched a recording of last year’s race and was disappointed to be reminded that he pulled up not long after the Canal Turn second time round and I began to go off his chances. Since then I have visited Richard Hobson’s website and discovered that he was almost knocked over last year and pulled up accordingly. He was trained by Rebecca Curtis last season and things have not been right in her stables for a good while and most of the horses sold out of her yard have seemingly had a resurgence in form. So Shantou Flyer remains on my list of possible winners.
I cannot get excited by any of the favourites except Blaklion. But will he stay? It was informative to read in his Racing Post column that Sam Twiston-Davies intends to ride Blaklion in a similar way to Noel Fehily in last year’s race, even though his father has said many times that the horse will be ridden more conservatively. Matt Chapman might get himself some interesting material if he lingers close to the father and son in the parade ring on Saturday.
Tom Scudamore is in the same predicament as Sam Twiston-Davies as Vieux Lion Rouge also seems to love Aintree but not the run from the Melling Road to the finishing post. He got closer last year and if the ground defeats the majority of the runners his jumping may get him home in front. I know sentiment is the friend of fools but I would love Tom Scudamore to emulate his grandfather but though I can see him finishing third or fourth I can’t envisage him winning.
I will condemn Raz de Maree by saying thirteen-year-olds do not win Grand Nationals, as they don’t also win Welsh Nationals. He was unlucky last year and will have his beloved soft ground and I would think Robbie Power can’t wait for Saturday to come around as with good luck he is almost certain of a good spin off the old horse.
Which leaves me with the horse I think will win the Grand National. Alpha Des Obeaux. If he does win the media furore will be like nothing we have ever seen before and I hope Rachael Blackmore, a modest young woman by all accounts, a jockey who allows her riding to do the talking, is prepared for the celebrity status that comes attached to a female jockey winning the National.
This, though, is my dilemma. The three horses I fancy the most are to be ridden by two women and a callow youth too young to drive. It’s just not possible, is it? I hold all three jockeys in the highest regard and would give half my spleen for one of the females to win as horse racing could not get a better story than Rachael Blackmore or Bryony Frost winning the Grand National. Or indeed Katie Walsh.
But back in February I fancied Alpha Des Obeaux without there ever being a hint that Blackmore would get the ride, so it would be cowardly of me now to back peddle as the horse has done nothing wrong in the meantime. Nor for that matter has the jockey. Alpha Des Obeaux has a similar profile to Rule The World who I fancied but ultimately rejected two years ago. A horse with good quality form who is just a wee bit high in the handicap for any race other than the Grand National. So I will remain faithful to Rachael Blackmore and hope luck plays its part and allows her name to become immortalised as the first female jockey to win the greatest horse race in the world.
And by the by: it may be fiction but Elisabeth Taylor did not win the Grand National on The Pie in National Velvet as the horse was disqualified because of an ineligible jockey.
On Saturday, all being well, I will go into my local bookie for my annual visit (unless I have winnings to draw, of course) and back Alpha Des Obeaux to win and Milansbar and Shantou Flyer for a place. Two women and a boy.  What would Fred Winter, Tim Brookshaw and other macho jockeys of their time have thought of such a prospect?
If I were you I would back Katie Walsh because with my luck Bryony and Rachael will doubtless fall at the first and ‘the boy’ will be too busy checking his e-mails to hear the starter call the jockeys to order.
 

​In ‘Sods I Have Cut On The Turf’, Jack Leach’s cleverly titled memoir of his career as a jockey, there is chapter titled Crooked Racing. I approached this chapter with the same mindset as I do when reading anything that might bring the sport into disrepute. I was cautious, fearful of what I might learn. Leach rode in the time of Gordon Richards, a time when security and the integrity of the sport was in its formative years, when perhaps in certain sectors it didn’t exist at all.
In reality it is but a short chapter, with little or no mud spread across the reputation of racing. He told of a ringer at Stockton where a two-year-old once trained by his farmer and who was known to be moderate won a good class two-year-old race by three lengths that turned out to be a four-year-old good enough to have run third in a valuable handicap at Newmarket. The perpetrator was caught and jailed and who claimed later to be a serial ringer of horses. But other that story, and one must remember the book was published in 1961, when the Jockey Club ruled with a rod of iron and it paid as a licensed trainer, as he was at the time, to tow the line, his narrative was one of debunking stories of crooked racing.
He did, though, focus for a paragraph or two on Bend Or, winner of the 1880 Epsom Derby. This was not a case of skulduggery but one of possible misidentification as it was claimed afterwards that Bend Or and another horse bred by the Duke of Westminster, Tadcaster, were ‘mixed-up’ when they were transferred from the breeder’s stud to Newmarket. The owners of the runner-up in the Derby, Robert The Devil’, formally lodged an objection with the Jockey Club and after lengthy deliberations Bend Or was allowed to keep the race. A few years later, it is said, one of the stewards who looked into the matter, James Lowther, came across information that suggested Bend Or and Tadcaster were misidentified at Newmarket, though by then there was little appetite to reconvene the inquiry.
I am sure similar ‘mix-ups’ must have occurred many times when racehorses were regularly shipped between stud and stable when the only means of transport were goods trains arriving at their destination late at night. Human error, though, is not the same thing as corruption, as it is when a jockey mistimes his run and, as was the case with Fred Archer in 1883, his horse finishes third to a horse trained by his brother. To some it was suspicious, though as Leach wrote, some horses do not come down the hill at Epsom as well as others and the form can easily be reversed when it comes to races later in the season at places like Ascot or Newmarket.
More than wanting horse racing to be clean and straight, I need it for the sake of my conscience. I do not need every horse to be ridden as if lives would be lost if it were to be beaten and I must have horses ridden with compassion and a care for their well-being. I believe whips should never be drawn in two-year-old races and horses allowed to enjoy their first experience of the racecourse without jockeys being summoned to explain themselves. And I am appalled when jockeys are hauled over the coals by the media and stewards for making human errors and are berated by punters who believe themselves robbed when in truth they have only suffered misfortune.
I take it on trust that every jockey is as honest and reputable as A.P.McCoy and Ruby Walsh. I want our sport to be squeaky-clean and for everyone involved in the sport to take a pledge of responsibility and to report to the authorities anyone they believe to be intent on crooked behaviour, of bringing the sport into disrepute.
But I am inherently naïve. I also admit to being a bit of a hypocrite as I enjoy the stories of times past when a horse was pulled all season in order to land a massive coup in the Cambridgeshire or November Handicaps.
Is horse racing as straight and clean as I want it to be? Jack Leach’s message from racing’s historic past suggests, at least in this country, that it is.

​The topic of today’s lecture is a familiar one, hence the title. Given my views on this matter it must seem my aim is to make life difficult for those trainers who have the good fortune to train top-class horses, and no doubt if I were to be listened to by the powers-that-be life would become less straight-forward for messrs Henderson, Nicholls, Mullins and Elliot. Racing, though, would benefit, if the hurdles programme at Grade 1 & 2 level were to be less linear than it has become.
Horse racing is not a throwaway confection confined to the racing results of today. We are blessed that horse racing, rather like our country, was conceived by an aristocracy that had, in many instances, more money at their disposal than good sense and because they had little to occupy their time but to acquire ever greater riches the sport of horse racing, and of course betting on horse racing, flourished, and because, as today, the care of the horse was governed by those of lower rank, the sport became a fascination for all classes of society. To this day we take advantage of civil buildings large and small built on the largess of the aristocracy, with schools, museums and churches still in use.
Horse racing mingles with the history of our country.
My gripe is that the racing programme, as well as being largely disorganised on a daily basis, is designed, at the top level, to make rich men richer without taking into the account the historic narrative of the sport.
Let me try to explain my point of view. There is no argument, or at least there shouldn’t be, that Arkle is the greatest steeplechaser of all time, and perhaps will never be surpassed. The form book tells us that during his career no horse was capable of beating him at level weights or indeed when receiving two-stone or more. No horse in the history of steeplechasing was so dominant and if ill-luck had not stopped his career at such an early age he might have won Grand Nationals under big weights and surpassed Golden Miller’s record of five Cheltenham Gold Cups.
The hurdle division, though, is far mistier when it comes to assigning true greatness, with opinion based on visual inspection the only method that can be deployed as the form book down the ages is of little help.
It does not take a genius to declare Buveur D’air the top hurdler of this and last season. In my opinion he is, if such a category exists, an ordinary champion who could not as yet be considered alongside hurdlers such as Night Nurse, Sea Pigeon, Monksfield and the horses the columnists of today seem to forget about, Persian War and Sir Ken.
When Persian War won the Schweppes Handicap Hurdle the race was worth £6,751 to the winner, only a £1,000 short of what he received when winning the Champion Hurdle the following month. His opposition contained many of the top hurdlers in the country, yet today’s equivalent race will never see the likes of Buveur d’Air even entered let alone running. We now have a situation, because of the proliferation of graded hurdles, where the most valuable handicap hurdles are not won by top-class horses but horses of ‘potential, horses ‘ahead of the handicapper’, horses whose merit is a matter of interpretation. There should, of course, be races in the programme for such horses but not, I contend, the most important handicap hurdles.
To know the true merit of the generations we need the best hurdlers to be tested on a regular basis and not ‘saved’ for Cheltenham and the consolation of Aintree and Punchestown. The proliferation of graded hurdles does the sport no real good. Races like the Contenders Hurdle and the Kingwell do nothing to aid betting turnover, provide virtually no spectacle for the race-going public and are in no way informative as in the main they are only a paid alternative to a racecourse gallop closed to public view.
As opposed to the trainers of yesteryear who perhaps had only the basic of training facilities and needed to run their horses to have them 100% for the big days, modern day trainers have all-the-year-round training grounds with no reliance on grass gallops and consequently it is easier for them to send a horse to the races fully fit even on debut. Yet, seemingly, the best hurdlers must be trained as if fragile, with races framed so that they are never tested until the day that truly matters. This cottonwooling of our best horses is detrimental to the sport and the programme of graded races should be halved in order to encourage the top horses into the top handicaps so as to allow historians and the race-going public to gauge their true merit.
You may argue, and with justification, that it is the responsibility of a trainer to act in the best interests of his owners but I would contend that along with the honour of training great horses comes a responsibility to the sport, the race-going public and the history of the sport. And it is the responsibility of the powers-that-be to have a programme of races that bring about a combination of exciting races and a form book that informs the race-goers that follow us where the benchmark of greatness is to be found. As is the case with Arkle.