​I have no doubt, irrespective of official ratings, that Altior is the top horse trained in this country. I seriously doubt if Cyrname will ever again put up a performance to warrant his current inflated rating. Indeed with Altior set to be campaigned over longer distances during the coming season I would not be at all surprised if Paul Nicholls attempts to fill the vacuum left by Altior’s absence from the 2-mile division by running Cyrname in the Tingle Creek and the other Grade 1’s over that trip if he should succeed in the first, ensuring, that like with Altior, there is no opposition strong enough to boost his rating any further than where it currently sits.
Altior is mighty, though quite where he stands in the pantheon of 2-mile chasers is not easy to benchmark. Nineteen straight wins represents quantity; it does not necessarily represent quality. That in no way is angled to suggest that Altior is not quality from the tip of his muzzle to the hairs in his tail. To win three or four in a row can sometimes be down to luck or circumstance. To win nineteen in a row is to rule out every governing factor except class. And Altior has a bucket-load of class.
But is he better than Sprinter Sacre in his pomp? Or Badsworth Boy? Moscow Flyer? Or Dunkirk?
It is a subjective debate. Definitively we shall never know. No algorithm would be capable of solving the question. Recently the Racing Post concluded that Sprinter Sacre stands at the top of the all-time 2-mile chasers. I tend to agree. At the height of his powers, before his heart problem, obviously, he not only looked unbeatable in the division but he also possessed the potential to become one of the best steeplechasers of all-time, to be talked about in the same sentence as Arkle, Desert Orchid and Kauto Star. He was truly awesome. A black and magnificent aeroplane. It is a bizarre and almost cruel coincidence that a heart condition should render two of the great horses trained by two of the great trainers a shade of their brilliant best. If Denman had also not suffered a heart problem, I am convinced he would have won three Gold Cups and his name would be mentioned in that sentence that included Arkle and Desert Orchid. Altior/Sprinter Sacre. Kauto Star/Denman.
Altior might yet follow the trail of Kauto and win a King George (or two) and a Gold Cup. Then, without any debate, Altior will become as legendary as Arkle and co.
But is he a truly great 2-mile chaser? Can a horse be authentically described as a ‘great’ without beating a horse within a pound or two of his own rating? When Sprinter Sacre won his first 2-mile champion chase he beat Sizing Europe by a long way without ever being asked a serious question by Barry Geraghty. Oh, by the way, the connections of Sprinter Sacre and every enthusiast of our sport owe Geraghty a huge debt of gratitude for having the experience and foresight to pull-up Sprinter that day at Kempton. To have persevered would have caused ever-lasting harm to the horse and there is no way he would have risen from the ashes to claim a second and more astonishing 2-mile crown. Incidentally on that occasion defeating the following season’s 2-mile champion chaser and the Ryanair winner.
Has Altior beaten a similar quality of chaser? I do not believe he has. Of course, by this time next year we might be asking how he won so many races over 2-miles when he is inexorably better over 3-miles and he will be elevated in all our estimations because of his exploits over shorter distances.
In the same way that I believe a horse should not be given a humungous rating on the basis of one race, I do not accept that a long unbeaten sequence is a defining factor in describing a horse as ‘one of the greats of the sport’. Altior is certainly unique. He is most definitely a crowd-pleaser. And he warrants the accolade of best horse currently in training. As I write, and I am prepared to be discredited by results come this time next year, I can’t have him mentioned in the same breath as the legends – Arkle, Desert Orchid, Golden Miller, Red Rum, Kauto Star.
But by God aren’t we fortunate to have him to dream about, to wonder at what heights he might yet achieve?

​Evening racing is a mixed blessing, I tend to think. For the racegoers, especially I think the casual racegoer, no sporting event quite compares with an evening’s racing situated close to a river. Worcester, I have always found, to be as pleasant a way to spend an evening as any sporting pursuit of my experience. Windsor, too, is a place to visit before you die, I am told.
There is a different atmosphere to an evening meeting. An afternoon meeting during the summer can become a bit of trial if the racecourse is crowded and the temperature hot and the air still. Whereas during the day the heat rises through the afternoon, in the evening the reverse is true and it is always worth taking, even if it is an encumbrance to begin with, a jacket or cardigan to hide goose-bumps. And although the races are as evenly spread throughout the meeting as the afternoon, there seems an easier pace to proceedings as dusk beckons, as if the horses and jockeys are provided as arms-reach entertainment while you drink with your mates or to still the kids for a few minutes. The racecourse is a green lung in an urban landscape, a park with a beer garden and a kid’s area. Every evening meeting should be a family fun day.
Surprisingly – at least it was a surprise to me as I thought it a more recent development – the first evening meeting in this country was held in 1947, at Hamilton, on 18th July. It is a date Hamilton should commemorate in some way. The clerk of the course, W.H.Robertson-Aikman was a smart fellow as July 18th was the first day of the Glasgow Fair Holiday and 18,000 people attended. If only such crowds regularly supported a day’s racing now. At Hamilton or anywhere.
I remember reading that York held a night meeting in the late 1700’s, with the later races run in the dark. One can only imagine what shenanigans the jockeys got up to in darkness considering what they could get away with in daylight. The fifth race was apparently run in the fastest time of the day, which suggests the starter couldn’t see what was going on and one horse got a flyer – remember back in the day races were started by flag as the barrier was not invented till the mid eighteen-hundreds.
The problem with evening racing is the toll it takes on those whose jobs depend on providing the sport, especially the grooms who will have doubtless have risen from their beds before the crack of dawn, will have mucked out, perhaps ridden one or two lots, before readying their horses for the drive to whichever racecourse they are racing at. And against Employment Law, I suspect, they will be expected to report for duty at a similar time the following day.
Jockeys seem to see evening racing as an opportunity to boost their income by riding at two meetings in a day. Personally, I think this is regrettable and perhaps another breach of Employment Law. Yes, jockeys are self-employed and undertake the double shift willingly and it can be argued that to prevent them from riding at two meetings would be a restriction on their right to ply their trade as they feel fit. But should they be encouraged to endure such long working days for days and months on end? A lorry-driver is restricted to a set number of hours behind the steering wheel before he or she must take a break, and it again can be argued that jockeys can share long journeys, allowing them to take turns to sleep during the journey.
Of course, jockeys are restricted, I believe, to riding at two meetings in a day four times a week, which is sensible, though no restriction is placed on mileage, with no attention paid to where the jockey lives. It is not unusual for a jockey who lives in Newmarket to ride at Leicester in the afternoon before going to Haydock or Carlisle for an evening meeting, perhaps only having one ride at either meeting. The return journey will be from the North-East of the country to East Anglia, a tedious journey on any account.
As someone who for more years than I care to remember has advocated journeyman jockeys being given opportunities to put some jam on the table – they too will have a wife, family and mortgage to support – perhaps restricting the occasional evening meeting to the lesser lights of the weighing room would put extra money in their pockets and give their betters, whether they would welcome it or not, an evening at home with their feet up. If this was achieved only once a week the time-rich will receive a boost in salary and the money-rich will have rest forced upon them. Win-win, I would have thought.
It always seems to me a bit greedy of the top flat jockeys to be dashing off after Royal Ascot or Glorious Goodwood, for example, to ride at an evening meeting, even if they do so to honour the fat retainer they are paid. But isn’t that what second-jockeys are paid for, to ride the lesser horses so the top man can concentrate on the better horses?
Everyone seems to agree that there is too much racing in this country. The easiest way of reducing the calendar overload would be to cut down the number of evening meetings. Have a free evening once a week, as well as Sundays. Or alternate between jumps and flat during high summer or a Northern meeting one day and Southern meeting the next. Less is more, as the saying goes. The tail shouldn’t be wagging the dog.

​We take so much for granted in life, don’t we? Double glazing is a great necessity of our modern lives but do we appreciate the draft-free benefits those two panes of glass bring us? The toilet, too, we take for granted. It might seem a grand adventure to travel back in time, to visit King Henry the 8th or to be in the stands when Golden Miller won the Grand National, though I expect the lasting impression if the return journey were possible would be the sanitary (or unsanitary) arrangements of one’s do-do’s.
Taking stuff for granted was brought home to me by an extract I read over the weekend from the July 8th 1896 edition of the ‘Racing Illustrated’, a newspaper of sorts that I wish were still around today, if only to take away the Racing Post’s monopoly and to drive down its cover price. The previous year a new-fangled device was exhibited in the paddock at Sandown Park that its inventor suggested ensured an end to ragged starts. It was referred to as a ‘starting machine’.
We think today of a machine as something with an engine or motor, though back in 1896 a machine was any mechanical apparatus by which motive power was applied or any mechanism, simple or compound, for applying direct force. An elastic band could be considered the mechanical power behind the firing of a spit-ball, for instance. In the case of the ‘starting machine’ the force applied was for the flipping up and away of the spring-loaded single strand of wire that horses were required to stand behind at the commencement of a race.
The look of the starting machine at Sandown frightened owners and trainers alike. It was not of British origin, which obviously got their backs up from the get-go. It was also from, of all places, Australia! Experts thought it ungainly and too fearsome looking for the sensitive souls of two-year-olds. Most of the criticism was of the ‘shock of the new’ kind, though some quoted tales heard from on-the-spot observers in Australia that there were often long delays at the starting post and that the starting machine used at Flemington did not always give satisfaction.
Anyway, as the more enlightened commented, it would take a change to the rules of racing before the starting machine could replace the tried and tested method for starting races that was the starter and his flag, an invention of Admiral Rous no less.
Australia adopted Alexander Gray’s starting machine in 1894, with the first race at Canterbury Park, New South Wales, in February, of the same year. In the 1920’s the single strand was upgraded to a five-strand tape. Of course, in Natural Hunt racing the single strand is still in use, though with races starting so far back from the starter nowadays it can only be a matter of time before it will be replaced by a chalk line, which alongside the flag was part of Admiral Rous’s radical starting procedure back in 1896.
It was an American ex-jockey called Clay Puett who thought the starting gate could be improved upon and in 1939 at Exhibition Park, Vancouver, the first race was started by an electronic starting gate. It was so successful and so impressed the Jockey Club that in 1967 they decreed British racing should also adopt the electronic starting gate, with the first race of the bright new modern age at Newmarket, 8th July.
We take starting gates, and the excellent work of the loading crew, for granted as we have nothing to compare them to, apart from a race at Glorious Goodwood every year that is started behind a single strand tape. There was jeopardy to every race before the introduction of starting gates, with many races lost at the start and many races won by jockeys getting a flying start. Gordon Richards, in particular, was a great exponent of the flying start.
It is why, alone and without anyone coming out in agreement with the idea, I propose the Lincoln Handicap should revert to the old days and become a 40-runner (there were 57 runners one year) race started from a barrier. What the start of the flat lacks is oomph, a Lincoln as I propose it would give the flat a race of jeopardy, an equivalent, in some respects, to National Hunt’s Grand National. Certainly, anyone who loses their money at the start when their horse whips around as the tapes go up or whose jockey falls off in the general excitement of the cavalry charge will never again take the fairness and convenience of starting stalls in vain again.

​When Tiger Roll won the Grand National, indeed before he past the winning post, as he came to the Elbow still full of running, the thought crossed my mind that the ‘Horse of the Year’ award was as good as on its way to Giggingstown. Yet when the nominations were announced in the Racing Post the other day something unusual occurred, at least for me, someone who takes decision by instinct and occasionally whimsy – I gave the matter consideration.
It took me ten seconds, I will admit, to whittle the five worthy candidates down to two and through the rest of the morning I swung this way and that in favour of Tiger Roll – how can anyone vote against a two-time Grand National winner – and Frodon.
I rejected Altior, as special as he is, on the grounds that he won the races expected of him and without any sort of meaningful opposition. Next season will be different, of course, as his opposition will be meaningful to the point of spillage. Next season we will really discover, God-willing, if you believe in deities, how mighty Altior truly is.
I rejected Paisley Park as his story concerns his owner more than the horse he owns. That may be belittling Paisley Park, and though it is doubtless damning him with faint praise I would put him third in this contest above Altior.
Cyrname was brilliant on occasions, though not so much for me to rate him above the other four nominations, and his rating as the best chaser in the country is plainly ridiculous and only adds weight to my belief that ratings are ‘silly’. In a previous piece I described ratings as ‘bollocks’ though I have since promised myself not to be so vulgar next time I write scathingly on the subject.
What won me to Frodon’s corner was remembering Bryony, on pulling up after the Ryanair, saying, ‘this is for him, chaps’ and proceeding to give one of the greatest victory orations in the history of sport. Bryony told everyone with ears that her success was due almost entirely to the horses she had the honour of partnering, and though The Times and other newspapers cropped Frodon out of the pictures that appeared on either the front page or inside pages, completely ignoring the message Bryony was putting across to the world, it was the horse who had put our sport on those pages.
It is to be expected that the Grand National winner will receive media coverage the following day but what Frodon achieved was refreshing and exhilarating as it was unexpected. He kicked off what will forever be dubbed ‘the golden hour’. Brough Scott described the Ryanair as the most memorable horse race of his lifetime. Some accolade. Frodon created history on behalf of his rider, while the magnificent Tiger Roll only equalled an historic event. The story as last season was the journey Frodon took Bryony Frost on. She was already the burgeoning star of our sport, Black Corton, Present Man and Milansbar were responsible for bringing her to everyone’s attention, but it was Frodon who elevated her to the position she now holds as the most loved jockey of the modern era. Without Frodon, and of course his loyal owner and brilliant trainer, Bryony would not have achieved her place in National Hunt history as the first female to win a Grade 1 at the Cheltenham Festival. It is why I believe he deserves to be crowned ‘Horse of the Year’.
Having cast my vote in Frodon’s favour, I don’t expect him to win the trophy for his owner and I will not begrudge or complain when Tiger Roll is announced as the winner next weekend. He is truly a horse of a lifetime– a horse that deserves to be compared to the equine icon that is Red Rum, and I never thought for a moment I would ever be able to say that about any horse.
Yet do you remember Frodon’s leap at the open ditch at Cheltenham, the way he rallied between the last two fences and drew away up the hill to the winning post? 

​When he worked for B.B.C. television as racing correspondent, a job he held for over thirty years, he was not, I have to admit, a favourite of mine. It is only in death that I have come to appreciate him as both a man, though I wouldn’t have been as keen on him when he was younger, and as a racing journalist.
It’s strange how some books that you look forward to reading ultimately disappoint your expectations of them, whilst books that came as part of a job-lot and are repeatedly placed on the back-burner turn-out to be jolly good reads. ‘Some You Win’ has proved such a book, the autobiography of Julian Wilson.
This is not so much a racing book as a book about a racing man through and through. Much of Wilson’s story is about the people he socialised with, people his life’s journey brought him into contact with, and those he shared holidays with. Rather skin-creepingly, there are large passages dedicated to revealing to his readers the extent of his sexual conquests. And he rarely left these young women unnamed, which I couldn’t help thinking would cause no end of embarrassment to the men who eventually married his cast-offs. It requires a stretch of the imagination to think of Julian Wilson as a ladies’ man, a sixties roué, but that, according to his own testimony, was what he undoubtedly was. At least until he married, which he committed to twice.
Most biographies of racehorse trainers are made wearisome by chapters dedicated to the war years, whilst autobiographies of racing men, and this applies to ‘Some You Win’, dwell too long in the years prior to racing becoming the central feature of their life. Yet, rather like ‘Eastenders’ or ‘Coronation Street’, Wilson’s easy narrative and style drew me in, enticing me to read two chapters before sleep rather my usual one. How he found time for five hours with his nose in the form-book is hard to fathom, especially on those days when he was working in the North of England during the afternoon and had to be in London for a swanky ball or coming-out party in the evening. His social circle was wide and encompassing, his name seemingly near the top of every guest list. And in opposition to the rather stuffed-shirt appearance he offered when in front of the camera, he was a man who liked to dance until dawn when partying.
What impressed and surprised me about his autobiography was how adept Wilson was at relating anecdotes that displayed him in a poor light and how he could get things as easily wrong as well as right. He was a man of opinions and was not shy at letting people know them. He wanted Peter O’Sullevan’s job, and gave up the opportunity of commentating for I.T.V. in expectation of getting it, and when the great man reached the retirement age of 65 expected to succeed in his ambition. But when he had asked O’Sullevan when he expected to retire, he had got the wrong end of the stick, with O’Sullevan thinking the discussion was about when he would give up working for newspapers. In the end they both retired within a few months of one another, O’Sullevan to a greater fanfare than Wilson. For what it’s worth, I thought him a better commentator than O’Sullevan and certainly a better commentator than presenter.
Julian Wilson was a man who set standards for himself. He was always smartly dressed when on duty and had a deep and abiding love of the sport, even if, as with myself, he became increasingly disillusioned with its governing body. He was appalled by the introduction of Sunday racing and everything he predicted for it whilst writing his autobiography in 1998 has come to pass. It is disconcerting to realise that back then, 21 years ago, he was critical of a racing calendar created more with the betting industry in mind than those at the cliff-face of the sport. He was particularly angered and depressed by the tactics employed by Jenny Pitman to defeat Carvill’s Hill in the Gold Cup, believing that the ‘Spirit of Cheltenham’ had been compromised. He made his views known on camera after the race and again later, with Jenny Pitman threatening his legal action if he did not withdraw his comments. He did not and legally the matter did not progress.
To Wilson, and I must admit I admire his stance, horse racing was a serious business, not an entertainment in need of dumbing down to attract a younger audience. Channel 4’s presentation of the sport was not his cup of tea. His gambling, too, was a serious business and he made a good second living from it, proving that long hours with your nose in the form book has its own rewards.
He died in 2014 of cancer.
If you find his book, as I did, in a charity shop, I heartily recommend you give it a chance. Just don’t keep passing it over for another book as I did for so long. It is certainly the best racing book I have read since the New Year.
 

​Amongst racing folk, the subject matter of this piece cannot be discussed too many times. Racehorse welfare, though, to my mind, should be kept, as far as is possible, in-house, as to discuss it publicly with those ignorant of the nuances of the sport is to invite opinions and ideas that are impossible to implement.
Sadly, the debate has much in common with the debate on fox-hunting, insomuch as both sides of the divide are preoccupied with animal welfare, even if the ‘anti’s’ have a large section of its community who are overtly political in their idealism, their aim in life to bring down the ruling classes recreation by recreation.
I should make clear that I am opposed to the killing of foxes for sport and for entertainment, although I am 100% in favour of people on horseback gathering with hounds to gallop and jump their way across country. Indeed, I believe it to be an animal welfare issue to keep a non-violent version of hunting as a mainstay of country life. ‘Hunting’ provides a second career for retired racehorses, as well as an irreplaceable stamping ground for the education of young horses and young riders. To lose ‘hunting’ would in itself be an animal welfare issue, a fact the antis find hard to understand.
I was recently informed by an article in the Racing Post that during what I consider to be the ‘infamous’ debate in parliament last year on the welfare of racehorses and the idea that it should be removed from the control of the B.H.A. and into the hands of an independent body – we all know where the agenda for that would lead – one female M.P. was of the opinion that starting stalls were inherently dangerous and should be banned from use. Insomuch that starting stalls do occasionally cause injury to both horse and jockey, she has a point, doesn’t she? But in the overall debate starting stalls are but a minor consequence. But it clearly displays that those who wish to cause horse racing harm will look under every stone to find instances of maltreatment.
One of the main speakers during the debate was Luke Pollard, a Labour M.P. quite local to where I live. Belatedly last week I got around to e-mailing him to put my point of view to him, to defend my sport. Thus far he is yet to reply. Perhaps in his Easter break he will lend some time to catching-up on his correspondence. To give him his due he made it clear in the debate that he did not think there was any cruelty involved with horse racing and I commended him for making this clear to his colleagues. He is, though, strident in his wish to see fatalities reduced to a percentage that even God could not deliver. I asked him why he wished to have equine fatalities reduced to a tiny percentage, fatalities that are mourned throughout the sport as the tragedies they are, that everyone involved in the sport would give ‘worlds’ not to happen, yet he is unprepared to lobby for a ban on all motor vehicles even though an obscenely high number of animals are killed yearly on our roads?
I am not a new recruit to the debate. I was making the point twenty-five years ago that if the governing body of the sport instigated rules that put human influence above horse welfare, as when it was proposed all horses should be ridden out to the finishing post and when the punishment for giving a horse ‘an easy’ is far greater than for a jockey who is found guilty of overuse of the whip, then the sport will be placed under close scrutiny. This has come to pass.
As with all moral debates, the majority of society will not give a fig either way. I am very much working-class. I have no connection to high society or the rich and fabulously wealthy. The misconception throughout the non-racing world is that our sport is elitist. It is not. If anything, it is a sport of the working-class that is underpinned and financially made viable by the rich and fabulously wealthy. What links everyone from the likes of myself at the humblest end of the sport through every strata of society to Her Majesty, Coolmore, Godolphin, Gigginstown, J.P. McManus etc, is love of the horse and concern for its welfare. Our sport will only become untenable if every horse is not honoured, cared-for and respected in small payment for all the joy it helps to bring to so many humans.
What is not required in the battle to win hearts and minds is window-dressing. Window-dressing is easily seen through for what it is and unfortunately this has thus far been the opening gambit of the B.H.A. To have every horse inspected prior to racing by vets at Cheltenham and Aintree but to not to do the same at every race meeting is a clear example of playing to the gallery.
A good example of welfare concern would be if the B.H.A. funded the change from orange padding and take-off boards (a study confirmed that horses do not have orange in its colour spectrum) to whatever colour is more easily seen by horses and not leave the financing of this proper animal welfare advance to individual racecourses. The same must be said of padded hurdles, the introduction of which remains sporadic.
It would be convenient to the sport if this issue would quietly go away, though as M.P.’s are now involved we must assume that is most unlikely. Which is why the racing media and all of racing’s ‘stakeholders’ must continue to discuss how the sport can be made as safe as possible for the one constituent we cannot do without – the magnificent horse.

​This time of year for anyone who as with me has had a life-long love affair with National Hunt racing and for whom the months from October to April are a time of consummation and romance, whilst the flat for the remainder of the year provides a similar level of entertainment as a pen-pal who you once lusted after as a teenager but who now lives happily in New Zealand with her All-Black lock-forward husband and her ‘wonderful’ children, one of which is a product of his previous marriage. I used to love the flat; not so much now, unfortunately.
There is a predictability about flat racing that chills my natural inclination toward romantic interpretation. It is only question of how many of the classics and Group 1’s fall to Coolmore, Godolphin or John Gosden. They may not carve-up all the top races but you can bet your bottom dollar that the majority will head in their collective direction. And if another trainer does muscle into the cartel it will be someone who we are all familiar with, the horse or horses owned by someone who is a powerhouse of the sport. Perhaps it has always been so, but back then I was callow, even more naïve than I am now, without the experience of a life lived as an under-achiever and eternal underdog.
It will be the same with the jockeys: Dettori, Murphy, Doyle, Moore etc; all brilliant jockeys, of course, but wouldn’t it be nice if someone unsung got in on the act, someone equally as talented in the saddle but who until now has not had the opportunities to prove their mettle at the top table, that when a good spare becomes available trainers and owners do not look to France or a foreign jockey but to someone closer at hand.
Also, does no one in flat racing, trainer or owner, give any thought about the boost the sport would receive through the summer months if a female jockey was given the opportunity to compete in, let alone have a chance of winning, the important races, the classics and Group 1’s. Do they not watch National Hunt? Do they not recognise the impact Bryony Frost, Racheal Blackmore and Lizzie Kelly has had on the winter game, winning high-profile races and taking the sport from the back pages to the front pages? If only the likes of Nicola Currie, Hollie Doyle, Hayley Turner and Josephine Gordon were given similar opportunities? Dream on, eh? It is why I have championed the idea of a big money race confined to professional female jockeys at somewhere like Goodwood or Newmarket.
And wouldn’t the flat season start with more oomph if the Lincoln reverted to being what is was in its heyday, a 40-runner race started from a barrier. This radical, some would say mad, idea would give the flat a race of jeopardy, a flat (not quite) equivalent to the Grand National, and would give present day jockeys an idea of what race riding was like before the appearance of starting stalls.
 
This time of year, when we seem to gallop frantically to Sandown and the last day of the season, is too chock-a-block, to my mind, with staying handicap chases. In a short space of time there is the Midland National, the Grand National, the Scottish National, the Irish National and whatever the race known as the Whitbread has become. It is odd race-planning, especially as the season begins with a succession of top-level 2-mile 4-furlong chase and I have always thought it would be more appropriate if the ex-Whitbread was run over this distance.
 
Someone, it might have been the official handicapper or someone who holds a similar job with the Racing Post, suggested that this year’s Grand National was the ‘classiest ever’. Was he not around in 1973? 1st Red Rum. 2nd Crisp. 3rd L’Escargot. 4th Spanish Steps. The last three carried 12st, 12st and 11st 13lbs respectively. The following year Red Rum carried 12st to victory, beating L’Escargot, 11st 13lbs, by 7-lengths. Carrying 11st 9lb, Spanish Steps was fourth. That is class. It is by the standard of such races that the magnificent Tiger Roll must be judged.
Incidentally, and I am as enamoured by Tiger Roll, as anyone, but I would argue he did not create history last Saturday but equalled an historic racing event. At the moment Red Rum continues to have the edge. He may have carried a good few less pounds than Tiger Roll when he first won the Grand National but he carried 12st in his second, beating far classier horses than were in Saturday’s race. Such statistics, though, will pale into insignificance if The Tiger wins a third consecutive Grand National, which given the relative ease of Saturday’s victory is far more likely than not. 

​I am a sucker for biographies and autobiographies of trainers and jockeys, especially those written many years ago. These days such biographies seem to follow a template, with a prologue that whets the readers appetite with a glimpse of what was to become the defining moment of whoever’s life-story is being recounted, followed by sequential canter through the triumphs and the heartbreaks of a racing life. I have a good number of these biographies and autobiographies in my collection, with my two favourite trainers ‘books being Ginger McCain’s ‘My Colourful Life’ and Richard Pitman’s book in association with and about Martin Pipe. Of the books on jockeys I would nominate Ruby Walsh’s autobiography and Pat Taaffe’s ‘My Life and Arkle’s’, a gem of a book every collector of racing books should possess.
If I had to choose a book for potential biographers to read so they might learn how not to write a biography I must put forward Tim Fitzgeorge-Parker’s biography of Neville Crump, ‘Ever Loyal’. Now, there are many different ways to write a biography, as Ami Rao and Declan Murphy proved with ‘Centaur’, which is innovative and I suspect far more brilliant than I grasped when reading it a few months ago, and the reader is rarely told the story of the actual compilation of the book. It may be the biographer and his subject fell-out at some point or the publisher demanded a final copy before the author had finished the manuscript and had to cobble and chop. And I dare say I am doing Fitzgeorge-Parker a disservice by criticising ‘Ever Loyal’. He was, I know, a very respected journalist in his day, and a trainer himself before switching to the written word. It is just there wasn’t enough of Neville Crump within the chapters to justify this book being labelled ‘a racing book’, the biography of a great racehorse trainer.
The problems, for me, with the book begin with the dust jacket. It is a lovely dust jacket, by the way, with Neville Crump looking kindly and knowledgably at the head of a gorgeous chestnut horse as it looks out over a red stable door. Gerry Cranham took the photograph, which is why it is such a splendid cover picture. But what I wanted to know was the name of the horse! So annoying when no one at the publishing house thinks to put a name to the horse nominated to help move the book off the shelves of book-shops. It is truly a lovely picture. It would grace any study wall.
What is also annoying about this biography is that the author wallows in the war years as if they were the best years of His life. Indeed, half the chapters are taken up not only with Crump’s war experiences but also those several other people who in later life had but a scant influence on Crump’s career. The author also breaks the flow of the narrative by recounting stories about himself, as if aware that he would never get the opportunity to publish his own life-story. And when Fitzgeorge-Parker finally gets to recounting the early career of Neville Crump, a champion National Hunt trainer in his time, a man who won the Grand National three times, he uses half a chapter to peruse the family lineage of the Peacock family, the famous flat racing dynasty that trained from Warwick House, Middleham, prior to Crump turning it into one of the most respected National Hunt establishments in the country.
There are anecdotes a’plenty, though the humour implied dries on the page if you weren’t present at the time Crump said this or Crump did that. The most interesting chapter from my point of view is where Fitzgeorge-Parker makes use of a diary kept while John Penney worked for Crump detailing the little gems that are the principles of a trainer’s stable husbandry. Such advice as: if a horse goes off his food it may be in want of a good gallop. And: a bit is correctly set when it is possible to lay a finger on the bit in the corner of the mouth with ease. But as this was a biography of Neville Crump it would have been more authoritative if Crump had offered up his thoughts on stable husbandry himself, offering examples of how his principles became set in stone.
My disappointment with this book is probably mirrored by how much I had looked forward to reading it. Books can both disappoint and surprise. I had Harry Llewellyn’s autobiography ‘Passports To Life’ in my collection for around five years before I read it and was surprised by how informative and interesting it was, while Sid Barnes book ‘The Persian War Story’ was just plain awful. Crump trained some of the best chasers of his era, Merryman, Rough Tweed, Teal, Springbok, Even Melody, and the list goes on. Not that you will find Crump’s horses in the index. Other peoples’ horses, yes. Which just about tops and bottoms my criticism of this book.
 

​‘The Tiger’, as he will forever be known, doesn’t play by the rules, does he? Tell him Grand National winners should forever go into decline and he pokes out his tongue and rolls his eyes, his expression one of ‘humans, what do you know? I am the Tiger. I invent my own rules.’
In the same manner Red Rum’s had unorthodoxy stamped all over him – trained on the sands of Southport by a part-time car salesman – Tiger Roll’s path to immortality is unorthodox, too. He may be trained by a Goliath of the training profession and owned by a man with one of the largest strings of horses in the history of the sport but as with Red Rum he was bred for a different branch of racing, his preparation for Aintree gained through the rather looked-down-upon cross-country races held not in Ireland, where they are more revered than criticised, but at Cheltenham, the home of champions.
It just goes to show how over-priced young National Hunt stock have become when ‘little Gods’ like Tiger Roll can be bought for £80,000.
For 3-miles 6-furlongs, the distance of the Cheltenham Cross-Country race, Tiger Roll tanked along, almost whistling a merry tune as he galloped and jumped, and for a similar distance at Aintree yesterday he was pulling Davy Russell’s arms from their socket, only consenting ‘to takes things a little more seriously’ when it came to putting the absolutely marvellous ‘Magic of Light’ in her place.
Incidentally I had a dream a month or so ago that a mare won the Grand National and had planned to back Ms Parfois because she seemed the likely candidate. I would have been gutted if Magic of Light had won, and not only because she would have denied The Tiger his place in sporting and racing history.
As things stand, we will perhaps never know how good a horse, at least in the grand scheme of things, Tiger Roll actually is. Red Rum was never tried in Gold Cups and unless their hand is forced by circumstance into running Tiger Roll in a Gold Cup trial to have him ready for the Glenfarclas next year, we shall always have to judge Tiger Roll by his official rating. Not that it matters if he could be placed in a Gold Cup or win a Ladbrokes Trophy. He is now Tiger Roll, back-to-back Grand National winner, truly a horse of a lifetime.
On a day that was historic for the sport and when 19 horses finished the race and with few actual fallers, it was sad for both the race and especially the luckless Wylies that Up For Review lost his life yesterday. Vintage Clouds fell behind Up For Review and without really knowing for sure it might be he was brought down rather than fell himself. How he attained his injury may seem unimportant compared to his death. I just hope the inquest, as it should be described rather than inquiry, exonerates the fence, though when a horse dies when in servitude to man’s entertainment we, both the participant and viewer, are always held partially to blame.
Although I remain half-hearted in my approval of the change to the National fences, even I cannot deny the spectacle remains just as glorious as in the days of Red Rum and to have virtually all the field jumping the Chair without incident and heading off on a second circuit is clearly both beneficial to the race and to the sport but justifies the wisdom of the alterations.
Of course, photographers will now only rarely achieve pictures of jockeys flying through the air and horse’s upside down in ditches. That, though, is all to the good. The danger to horse and jockey is now similar to the day-to-day risks the sport imposes on participants, which is also to the good.
The day, though, belonged to Tiger Roll and Davy Russell, a jockey whose career will now be defined not by a long and successful career but by the name of one horse, as it was for Brian Fletcher and Tommy Stack, two successful jockeys known for nothing else but Red Rum. The similarities between Red Rum and Tiger Roll are remarkable. Both are flat-bred, relatively cheaply bought, - Red Rum cost £6000 guineas, the equivalent of £60,000 in today’s money - were both aged eight and nine when they won their first two Grand Nationals, and though Red Rum carried 12-stone when he won his second National, the combined weight of their two wins would be very close to equal. And neither of their trainers were born either with a silver spoon in their mouths or into families with close ties to the sport.
I hope Michael O’Leary will not remain obstinate in his declaration that he will retire Tiger Roll after next year’s Cheltenham Cross-Country race as he now owns the only horse of all our lifetimes who might win 3 consecutive Grand Nationals. Wow! Didn’t ever think I might live to see Red Rum’s achievements not only emulated but surpassed!
Now that is a dream I would totally dismiss as too far-fetched.

​As anyone kind enough or simply curious and with time on their hands will already be aware if they have read the articles squirrelled away in the archive of this site, I get deeply irritated by the ease in which sponsors are allowed to kidnap races for their own personal use. Today, for instance, the iconic word ‘Melling’, as of the Melling Road, is not to be seen in the race title of the race traditionally known as the Melling Chase. In the past the name ‘Topham’, was removed in favour of whatever beer and lager producer was favouring the sport at the time with its sponsorship money.
Apart from when my ideas for the sport are radical, as with my suggestion for the Lincoln to be restored to a 40-runner race started from a barrier, allowing flat racing a race of jeopardy, as it is with the Grand National, I am a devoted traditionalist. And although I would deplore the return of nudge and jostling races and riding with spurs and many other nasty things that were common in the nineteenth century, I believe we should not forget those people, and indeed horses, responsible for the creation of our sport.
One such person who is conspicuous by his absence at every Aintree meeting is William Lynn, the mine host of Waterloo Hotel back in the 1820’s.
Lynn was also a bit of an entrepreneur, knowing that the more people he could attract to Liverpool the more profit there would be for his business. Though it is frowned upon nowadays, and is long gone from sporting calendar, much to Sir Mark Prescott’s chagrin, Lynn originated hare-coursing’s Waterloo Cup. The success of the event prompted Lynn to stage a similar sporting event and taking inspiration from the Crosby Bell, a popular Ascension Day horse-racing event he leased 800 acres of land from Lord Sefton to stage flat-racing at the course we now know and love as Aintree. He invested £20,000 in the project, building a grandstand, stables, a hotel and, the necessity of the time, cockpits.
Up the road at Maghull, John Formby was also organising flat racing and to make his racing more noteworthy Lynn experimented with hurdle racing. The first such race was won by none other than Captain Martin Becher. At this time the most notable steeplechase in the country was staged at St.Albans, the Great St.Albans Steeplechase. Lynn thought he could do better and got together with Becher and Tom Coleman, the organiser of the St.Albans race, deciding upon the Great Liverpool Steeplechase.
This first venture into what was to become known as The Grand Nation and then The Grand National was not staged at Aintree but Maghull and with £100 donated by the Alderman of Liverpool the prize went to ‘The Duke’, ridden by the outstanding rider of his day, Henry Potts.
The race was soon a roaring success and gained the attention of the Lords Derby, Sefton, Eglinton & Wilton, George Bentinck, Stanley and Lord Robert Grosvenor, and Lynn worked long and hard to promote the event all around the country. Without William Lynn, I would argue, we might not have our beloved Grand National, our sport’s jewel in the crown.
So why is there no race named in Lynn’s memory? No monument to record his sterling work in not only promoting the race but as its creator, also? Captain Becher fell off, rolled into a ditch and his life is honoured by the naming of the most famous steeplechase fence in the world. Hardly fair, is it. The inventor consigned to obscurity, whilst the gallant captain will be remembered forever and a day.
William Lynn was a good and noble man. He was a charitable man and is known to have provided for 160 people saved from the burning emigrant ship the ‘Ocean Monarch’ and made a collection from local dignitaries on their behalf.
A brief summary of the early history of the Grand National suggests that the Lords muscled in on Lynn’s endeavours as he quickly faded from the Grand National picture. Though the truth may have been that his devoted efforts to make the race the success it was to become weakened his health and in his last days he was cared-for by relatives. He died on October 11th, 1870.
We should all be grateful he ever lived. Without him our lives would be so much poorer. Aintree should acknowledge his contribution to both steeplechasing and the city of Liverpool by commemorating his name and life in some way.