​When a young man is madly in love with a girl who shows no sign of even knowing of his existence, or even if the unrequited passion is as ephemeral as a passing crush ignited by a pretty face on a 99 bus, the heart demands strategy, to give hope a chance to flower into something of substance. To sit still and to do nothing is vetoed by the pang of heart’s desire. The ‘unrequited suitor’ must buy bouquets out-of-keeping as a gift from a stranger, write love poems, secretly scroll the name of his ‘beloved’ on desk tops, in the margin of library books, on the palm of his hand.
This is the point of horseracingmatters; why I write thousand-word articles that drift unread, seemingly, amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the virtual reality. I write because to not write is to risk my sanity. This is my strategy, my love tokens to a sport that has held me in its thrall since I was too young to know any better.
My feelings for this sport are as sensitive as any young man’s love for a girl who is only real to him in his dreams and fantasies. Without the fillip to my soul of writing about horse racing, of my concerns and admiration for the sport and the brave and wonderful people who mastermind its day-to-day carousel of mystery and wonder, I would suffer even greater mental debilitation than my apparent uselessness as a human being affords me on a regular basis.
Horse racing is, and always has been, the great love of my life.
As much as the Grand National is my favourite ten or so minutes of the whole year, as I in anticipation wait for the tapes to go up, I will be as nervous as any parent watching their first-born take part in its first play, it’s first rugby match, it’s first solo car journey on a motorway. I am, I confess, a confirmed atheist yet at the moment of the ‘off’ I will pray to a deity I do not believe in to allow every jockey and especially every horse to come to no harm during the race, making the pledge as I do every year that I would prefer the safe return of every horse and jockey to backing the winner. It is a pledge that is true and honestly made. I would forego backing a 50/1 winner if it meant every horse returned to its home stable and every jockey to his or her own bed.
Of course where I only witness sporting and equine majesty, especially over the first line of six fences, others, people of ignorance who cannot and will not understand that the thoroughbred has no purpose in the world if it’s ability cannot be tested in the sporting arena and that injury and death, though either may be only statistics to those who oppose our sport, are in reality cutting tragedies that any one of us would sell our souls to prevent from every happening.
The Grand National, to me, is the pinnacle of the sporting year, every renewal of the race representing the only anniversary worth celebrating and I fear for the longevity of the sport if the ignorant minority should in any way emasculate and kill the spirit of the race, for in doing so the very foundations of our sport will be irreversibly undermined.
I desire wholeheartedly for my sport to thrive, for its inherent goodness to be appreciated by one and all. I want to have it respected and understood, to have it returned to the vitality of the days when the Derby was so relevant to society Parliament recessed so that Members could travel to Epsom to watch the race, when the Grand National stopped a country as it is claimed the Melbourne Cup still achieves. If I seem to criticise too often then it must be understood that the unease on the page is a mirror-image of the unease at my heart. Decisions by the B.H.A. of late, to give an example, have trampled across my heart, leaving furrows of concern and doubt on their adequacy to govern and lead our sport. If I had no outlet for my concerns, I would die deaths of despair at regular intervals. I am neither a journalist nor a writer. I write because I must. I write to be heard, and as with any writer, amateur or amateurish, I have a need to be read. Even taken to task. How else can any writer know he or she is being read if the reader is not roused to respond in indignation or praise?
Even if the B.H.A. is banging the gong on horse welfare too loudly for our own good and without any indication of exactly knowing what they are doing, the sport is finally waking up to the stark reality of the change in society, where animals are recognised as having thoughts, feelings and most importantly, rights. Finally, the horse is being placed at the vanguard of importance. One day someone will tally-up what we all owe the horse for its sacrifice and servitude down the centuries and the debt will out-score the national debt. We owe the horse everything. We owe our sport to its existence.
It doesn’t really matter what horse, jockey and trainer wins the Grand National on Saturday as long as the race itself is not tarnished.
This is why horseracingmatters.com exists. Without it my love of the sport would be still, as unhealthy as ditch water, kept unspoken and undeclared at the darker depths where despair for a love unreturned can fester. I may be a lone, quiet voice speaking from the dark of beyond but at least the chance remains that one day one of my ideas will come to fruition, perhaps even my fantastical idea of a 40-runner Lincoln started from a barrier, as in the good old days, to give the flat a race of jeopardy, will at least be debated.

​The 1953 F.A. Cup Final resulted in a 4-3 win for Blackpool over Bolton Wanderers, and even though Stan Mortensen scored a hattrick for Blackpool the game to this day is referred to as ‘the Matthews Final’, the day Stanley Matthews finally got his due reward.
I believe the 1973 Grand National, the first of three wins for Red Rum, should be known as ‘the Crisp National’, even though, unlike the legend that was and remains Stanley Matthews, the great Australian horse did not receive the reward his monumental effort in trying to achieve the impossible deserved.
During each and every flat season we are told that such-and-such a horse is one of the all-time greats when in fact they are only ever the best of their generation. This is a repeated argument of mine and on this occasion, for the sake of brevity, I will leave it alone. The so-called great flat horses only ever win races their superiority demands of them. Classic winning three-year-olds will only ever win either level weight races or when in receipt of an age allowance if competing against older horses and although I totally agree with the established belief that Frankel was one of the best of all-time, and as he was kept in training as a four-year-old he had to give weight to younger horses, part of the criteria I put forward for acceptance as ‘a great horse’, it must be said, as impressive as he was at times, he only ever won races his superiority demanded of him. He never achieved the impossible, even in his 2,000 Guineas, a classic that was poor in every respect other than the winning margin.
Winx, for instance, even if the quality of the opposition is questionable, has now won 32 races in a row, the sort of invincibility unknown on these shores since before the 1st World War. It would be hard to conceive of any horse winning 32 races in a row at any standard, let alone the number of Group 1’s racked-up by Winx. An almost impossible feat, I would suggest.
Yet in 1973 the impossible was so very nearly achieved. Of course, at the time, even if we were bowled-over by his superlative jumping, the magnificence of failing so narrowly to give Red Rum 24lbs was lost on us all. By the way, third that day was none other than the dual Gold Cup winner L’Escargot, beaten 25-lengths and fourth was the legendary Spanish Steps. The second and third both carried 12st and the fourth 11st 13lbs. When was the last time these sorts of weights were carried into unsaddling enclosures at Aintree? And it took the greatest Aintree horse of all-time to defeat them, even if he were receiving weight from them. In its long history, 1973 Grand National must be the greatest ever run, surely?
Think about what Crisp actually achieved. At Bechers second time round Julien Wilson in his commentary observed that he had never seen a horse so far in front at that stage of the race. He was still 15-lengths clear at the last. He was foot perfect at every fence, and this was back when the fences were still big, black and with the bite of a Kamodo Dragon. If Brian Fletcher had delayed his move another ten yards, he would not have caught Crisp. He was the only jockey brave enough to think Crisp would not come back to the field, that he would have to go after him. Richard Pitman was brave, too, of course, in allowing Crisp to bowl along, to sit as quiet as a mouse, as Bryony Frost does today.
In his first season after coming from Australia Crisp won the 2-mile Champion Chase at Cheltenham. He had won over 3-miles but the considered opinion was that he would not stay the Gold Cup trip. Why would he stay 4-miles 4-furlongs, jumping the biggest fences in the country? I wonder if either Richard Pitman or Fred Winter truly believed he would see out the distance?
I have watched the 1973 Grand National many many times and still, from the elbow to the shadow of the winning post as the stamina did finally run dry, my heart wants him to hold on, for Red Rum to falter. Not that Red Rum ever faltered, as we know.
Of course, though his record of three Grand National victories will stand for eternity, Red Rum was beaten in two Grand Nationals, though it took L’Escargot, receiving weight, by the way, from Red Rum, and a well-handicapped Rag Trade to beat him. Nobody, though, believes either of those two horses could have beaten him giving 24lbs away. It is extremely doubtful if any horse, even the mighty Arkle, could give Red Rum that sort of weight and beat him around Aintree.
Yet Crisp almost did beat him, giving away 24lbs. If the race in 1973 were started where this year’s race will be started from, he would have won, no doubt about it. Red Rum not only beat Crisp that day but he also beat the record time that had stood since Reynoldstown won in 1935. Crisp, too, was inside the record, with 24lbs more on his back.
So, as I say; Crisp so very nearly achieved the impossible. It is why I will go to my grave believing Crisp’s performance that day was the greatest ever seen on a racecourse.

​I have heard the suggestion that there should be a ‘win and you are in the big race’ condition to the Becher Chase, no matter the handicap mark of the winner. This I instinctively feel is an idea of great merit and should be adopted without debate. I would extend the idea to any horse should also gain automatic entry to the Grand National, no matter its handicap mark on the day of the race, if it has both won over the National fences and proved its stamina by winning a chase of 3-miles or over. We need to ensure that the right type of horse runs in the race.
It is ridiculous that a horse with form figures that include two p’s and a ‘u’ is able to take part in our most prestigious race yet it is far from certain that last year’s third, Bless The Wings’, will get into the race. I might also take Gordon Elliott to task for allowing Blow By Blow to run as his form figures also contain two ‘p’s in his last three runs. Wouldn’t eleven runners be enough for him? As things stand, Gigginstown will have eight horses in the Grand National this year. Wouldn’t seven runners be adequate?
Until the last few days the connections of Walk In The Park, this season’s impressive Becher Chase winner, were no doubt fretting over whether their horse would creep into the race. He has, and will be quietly fancied by punters looking for a likely winner at long odds. The connections of Milansbar are less fortunate. He’ll certainly miss out this year. Perhaps the ground will be unsuitable for him, though that will be small comfort given how well he performed in last year’s race. Foolishly I thought his fifth-place last year coupled with his Warwick Classic win would have seen him given enough weight to get into the race this year.
It is my contention that the Grand National is not an ordinary horse race and the day-to-day handicap rules should not be applied to it. It is an extraordinary race, with no comparison throughout the season and the handicapper should seek to give proven Aintree horses every chance of making the cut by putting more emphasis on races run over the National fences and especially the big race itself. It would be justified if Milansbar, just to use him as an example, were given a rating for the National 5lb in excess of his rating for any other steeplechase.
Surely, if only for the public perception of horse welfare, it is better to have proven stayers and proven Aintree horses in the race rather than horses yet to win over 3-miles or indeed yet to win any steeplechase or a horse like Blow By Blow that has seemingly either lost his confidence over fences or is only running in the hope that either the fences or the Aintree atmosphere will spark renewed interest in him as it did in 1985 for Last Suspect.
As for what I will be backing this year, not that anyone should be overly interested given my poor record over the fifty or more years I have watched with awe and total fascination the spectacle I regard as the greatest sporting attraction in the world. At the unveiling of the weights back in February the two to catch my eye were Rock The Casbah and Ms Parfois. Unfortunately, the latter is a non-runner, leaving me with a horse carrying exactly the same weight that Tiger Roll carried last year. He is currently around 20/1, my sort of odds.
As with everyone else I find it almost impossible to look beyond Tiger Roll and in some small way I shall back him, probably to win. There has been no easier winner all season than Tiger Roll in the Cross-Country and if I am ever going to witness another back-to-back winner of the race it will be on Saturday. I feel it in my water that he’ll either win, go down fighting to a horse with 10st nothing on his back or he’ll get knocked over at the first or baulked at the Canal Turn. He does look, though, like the new Red Rum. Not that there could ever be another Red Rum as the Grand National of today is so far removed from the race it was in the mid-seventies as to make it a completely different steeplechase.
I am interested to find out which horse Ruby Walsh chooses. He rode Pleasant Company two seasons ago when the horse appeared not to stay, though he stayed on like a steam train running in need of the buffers last year. I suspect he is going to go for Rathlinden, which will make backing Pleasant Company far from easy. Ruby does get it wrong occasionally, though only occasionally.
My big outsider, and you will doubtless laugh out loud at the suggestion, is Valseur Lido. Until he faded in the last half mile, he ran a stormer last year, taking to the fences and running his best race in a long while. He’s in the Topham on Friday but I suspect 2mile-5-furlongs will be as too short as 4-mile 2 and a bit is too far. I hope Rachel Blackmore is on him – she is certainly not on any of the Elliott battalion – and I can see him finishing third or fourth behind Tiger Roll and Rock The Casbah.
Lastly, this is a poor renewal of the race, which is shameful given the £1-million prize money. Where o where are all the top-class horses we were promised when the race received its last make-over?