​My life and my love of horse racing runs in sync with the televising of the sport by the B.B.C.. Perhaps if television and horse racing had not formed its indelible partnership all those decades ago my life might have taken an all too different route.
I think 1961, the year Nicholas Silver won, ridden by Bobby Beasley and trained by Fred Rimell, was my first Grand National. I have no memory of Merryman winning in 1960, the first Grand National ever live broadcast of the race, with the same being the case in 1962 when Kilmore won under Fred Winter. Which makes it unlikely I watched, or indeed we had a television at the time, the 1961 race, especially as the race was run as early as March 25th and I would not have been 7-years-of-age until 3-weeks later. Yet my childhood hero, or at least the first jockey I favoured, was Bobby Beasley and I can only think this idolatry could not have come about if I had not been subject to his win on Nicholas Silver.
I think with any certainty, though with my memory certainty hardly exists, it was the 1964 renewal that came live into the living room of my Bristol home. The names do roll off the tongue as if embedded through ritual: Team Spirit, Purple Silk (looked all over the winner jumping the last) Peacetown, Eternal, Pontin-Go, Springbok, April Rose, Baxier, Crobeg, Pappageno’s Cottage, John O’Groats, Supersweet, Claymore, Out and About, Sea Knight. Incidentally, not a well-known fact, Pontin-Go had finished fourth in the 1962 Grand National under the name Gay Navaree. As you might guess, the horse was bought by holiday park owner Fred Pontin to achieve nation-wide attention for his business. He certainly succeeded.
The Aintree Grand National has been the central pivot of my year since Team Spirit’s victory. It has remained without question my favourite sporting event and its loss to hoax bomb threats, starter incompetence and government restrictions stretch my emotions to breaking point. To my mind Grand National Day should be a sporting national holiday. But that’s my enthusiasm getting the better of me. What should occur, and infinitely more doable if the big bookmakers would play ball, is that the Grand National should be linked to the raising of funds for animal and especially equine charities.
In those early televised years, the Grand National had a spine of romance running through the race. If it was not the Duke of Alberquerque trying every year just to get round and invariably ending-up in one of the local hospitals, it might be the presence of Hollywood film actor Gregory Peck hoping to lead into the winner’s enclosure one of his horses – Owen’s Sedge was seventh in 63 or Different Class that after a couple of abortive attempts finished third in 1968. Then there were the plucky Russian horses in 61, the Japanese horse Fujino-O in 1966, the galloping grandfather Tim Durant, the plucky re-mounters etc. Another world, back then. Little or no romance in the race these days.
Then, as now, my heart ruled my head. The best result for me in 2021 would be for one of the three female riders to win the race, not for any personal reasons, except that I harbour the hope to witness a female jockey win the race in my lifetime as I believe it would be the best result for the sport as it would promote the gender equality of horse racing. I absolutely loved Foinavon winning, even if I had backed Honey End that year, as it was a victory for a brave underdog, and Foinavon was brave to pick his way through the mayhem and keep galloping and jumping out on his own, as well as adding another great storyline to the roll-call of the Grand National. I wasn’t best pleased by the successes of either Jay Trump or Anglo (formerly known as Flag of Convenience), as by that time the horses had become my focal point of the sport and Freddie, runner-up to both, was the apple of my eye.
The greatest Grand National of all-time, and will always be recorded as such, I believe, was the 1973 race. Before March 31st, Crisp was not a great favourite of mine – at the time, and for a long time afterwards, Spanish Steps was my favourite horse and he finished an honourable fourth in 73 – but after 9-mins and 1.9 seconds from the start of the race Crisp nestled fondly in my heart. Crisp took hold of the fearsome black fences and had them surrender to the majesty of his performance. I know he didn’t win and at the time we couldn’t know that he had come within a whisker of achieving the impossible but as with the Stanley Matthews cup final, a game in which Stan Mortensen scored a hat-trick, the 1973 Grand National was Crisp’s Grand National. Of course, no horse ever born could have given Red Rum 23Ibs in a Grand National and beat him, yet Crisp so very nearly achieved the true impossible. It was a course record at the time; indeed, the first four home broke the old record, and the third and fourth were none other than the dual Gold Cup winner L’Escargot and the mighty Spanish Steps.
When I close my eyes for the last time on this Earth, I expect the image on my retina or mind’s eye will be that heart-breaking finish to the 1973 Grand National. I care nothing for a human heaven but I hope there is an equine heaven and that Crisp rules as king of all he surveys.

​After reading the article last week in the Racing Post on the controversial running of the 2001 Grand National, what with my memory being more foggy than blue sky, I felt I had to revisit the race. Alastair Down was scathing the following week, commenting that ‘the mud may wash off the breaches but the stain will always remain to racing’s reputation’ or something to that effect. I believe Alastair to be the best racing correspondent of my lifetime, though the annoyingly talented Patrick Mullins may in time run him close if he so chooses. (Top amateur rider of all-time, eligible bachelor (I have nothing to contradict his eligibility, anyway) heir to the Closutton academy of great racehorses and now a highly original and talented writer. As I said, annoying he has all the talents and privileges while I have none. 
Having just re-run the 2001 race, I have to admit it is not a spectacle I would wish to see repeated. But was it as staining on racing’s reputation as the Post implied?
As far as I am aware, no horse or jockey was injured. There was as many unseats as actual fallers. The riderless Paddy’s Return took-out thirteen of the runners by running across the front of the Canal Turn. Beau fell, when obviously travelling best of all, because at a previous fence the reins had flipped across his neck so that both were on the off-side of the horse which made it close to impossible that Carl Llewellyn could keep the partnership intact when the horse made a bad error two fences later. Also Blowing Wind and Papillon were baulked by a loose horse. None of the aforementioned could be blamed on either the atrocious weather or the very heavy ground.
Also, and I thought at the time, as I still do, the 2001 Grand National added to the mystique of the history of the race. In 1928 only two finished from a field of 42. In 1980 only four finished. And then there was the debacle of 1967, the year Foinavon won. And was the 2001 race any more of a stain on the reputation of racing than ‘the race that never was’; a day of incompetence that showed racing up to the world as ‘amateurish’, if not something far worse? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!
My fear, if I remember correctly, on the day, as talk of abandonment was taken more and more seriously, was whether the race would be run at all. The Jockey Club was not the most flexible of institutions and I feared there would be no provision for rescheduling the race. I seem to think on reflection that the Aintree stewards and the clerk of the course were prepared to run the race on the day come what may. I dare say the B.B.C. put pressure on Aintree as it would have messed-up their schedule of programmes if they had to lever a day’s racing in a week or a fortnight later. And then there was the use of a satellite to beam the race around the world.
I for one thought it was a brave call to go ahead, a call that the gods decided to deride by having Paddy’s Return skittle thirteen horses at the Canal Turn, the main reason why only two completed the course without falling.
Thankfully these days, and yes, I am tempting fate, there are fewer fallers early on, meaning there are less loose horses to cause calamity. In fact, the greatest cause for concern for Saturday, at least to my mind, is that the drying ground will tempt a fast pace and it is speed at Aintree that will cause more horses to over-jump and fall than heavy ground will ever do.
Whatever fate has in store for the 2021 Grand National, it will add to the history and mystique of the race simply because there will be no one in attendance except owners, trainers, stable staff and those employed by Aintree. I would take the circumstances of 2001 any day of the week over empty grandstands. Heroes equine and human should be applauded and praised, cheered to the echo. But not under government restrictions.
For the only time I can recollect, I disagree with Alastair Down’s stance on the 2001 Grand National. The only time I think Alastair was ever wrong.

​As with everyone ‘not in know’, I was caught by surprise at Richard Johnson’s decision to retire. Announcing the end of his career at Newton Abbot rather than at Cheltenham or Aintree I can understand. He is a man of great modesty; fanfares are not his style. But prior to Cheltenham, when commenting on Thyme Hill’s late withdrawal from the Stayers’ Hurdle through a minor injury, he said he still had to him look forward to in novice chases. I was expecting him to carry on for at least another season. In fact, it would not have surprised me if he had rode until he was fifty; if only to beat McCoy’s record number of winners.
Whether he will figure fifty-years down the line as one of the greatest National Hunt jockeys of all-time is not for any of us to comment upon. We cannot predict the future; there may be a whole host of budding genius riders who at the moment are riding in pony races and wishing their schooldays away. But if John Randall or others were to compile their top twenty jump jockeys of the last hundred-years, Richard Johnson must be a contender for the top ten. His record in the major races will compare favourably with the great jockeys of the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties, even if it pales in comparison to the achievements of Ruby Walsh, Barry Geraghty and A.P. McCoy. And he rode more winners than every jockey to have held a licence except the force of nature that was McCoy.
John Randall famously wrote than high numbers are a description of quantity not quality, or words to that effect, but if McCoy had not been around at the same time as Johnson it is conceivable that instead of being best of the rest sixteen-times, seventeen if you include finishing second to Brian Hughes last season, Johnson might have won the jockeys’ title twenty-times, the same number as his adversary and friend McCoy. And we do not disparage McCoy’s reputation based on high number of wins and not so many major successes as Walsh and Geraghty, do we?
I make the last point as someone on the dear old internet, that mystical forum for rank ignorance and prejudice, replied to my comment that Johnson was a great jockey and a better human being, with ‘he’ll never be as great a jockey as Walsh, Geraghty or McCoy’, except he couldn’t be bothered to reach for the caps lock so his wisdom was conveyed in lower case, which is where I registered his opinion – in the lower case, out of sight.
Of course, he has a right to his opinion but he could have framed it in a kinder, more cogent manner, praising his achievements and longevity, the faultless way in which he conducted himself, the esteem in which he will always be held by the racing public. Not that Richard Johnson will lose any sleep over the prejudiced comments of a miserly fellow.
So how can true greatness be gauged? If high numbers do not cut-it, can greatness only be attributed by winning the major races? Johnson did win all the major races except the Grand National, a race that eluded a good number of the ‘greats’, though he was second twice, agonisingly on What’s Up Boys, for me as well as connections as I had backed him to win a nice amount of money. Ruby Walsh also won all the big races, including the Grand National twice, winning the Cheltenham championship races multiple times. But he had the advantage of riding a far higher class of horse year-on, year-in, than any jockey before and, with the exception of his successor Paul Townend, for doubtless long into the future. I once said, when McCoy was largely riding only Martin Pipe’s horses, that Ruby Walsh never rode a bad horse and McCoy never rode a good one. That changed when McCoy became J.P.’s retained rider but who can say that if Richard Johnson was first jockey to Willie Mullins for twenty-years that he would not have equalled Ruby’s achievements?
And would Ruby have won the Stayers’ Hurdle on Anzum? Or the Gold Cup on Native River? Richard Johnson was never-say-die; he won races others would not have because he saw hard work as a privilege. He never flagged, never waved the white flag, a hundred-per-cent was the minimal amount of effort he was prepared to bring to the job. To my mind, he was the exemplar of what a jockey should be. If that is not the definition of greatness then a don’t have the answer. More importantly, though, and judging him solely as a man and not a sportsman, he was an exemplar of the human being. I hope his retirement is kind to him.
 

​The aforementioned title in the above is an excellent racing book; a book its author Paul Mathieu can rightly be proud of writing. I do not agree though that it is either ‘One of the finest racing books it has been my good fortune to read’, the Irish Independent’ opinion. Or, ‘One of the best racing books ever written. A True classic’, the Horse and Hound’s judgement. Over the top hyperbole is designed to snare the potential purchaser and 100% of the time will succeed. My objection to ‘over the top’ hyperbole by reviewers is that the public cannot know if their conclusion is heart-felt and truly honest or given as a result of a favour repaid or payment of some kind. I was born a sceptic and nothing in my long life has changed my natural-born inclination to look on the shady-side of life.
But let me repeat myself: ‘The Druid’s Lodge Confederacy’ by Paul Mathieu is an excellent edition to my racing shelves. I shall never regret its purchase.
I think if I came to this book with no knowledge of the accomplishments and legend of Druid’s Lodge and its architects who between them, amazingly, made racing pay, I may rate this book in accordance with its reviewers but through other sources most of what is in the book was known to me and so the element of surprise was lacking. But it is wonderfully and skilfully written.
Very often the main characters of such a book sit as quietly on the published page as they did when discovered and nudged into wakefulness in the archival research documents in which they had languished for many a long year. Yet at Mathieu’s command they walk and breath throughout the narrative and though you might not have got on with them in life, you find yourself at the conclusion of the book sympathetic to them and wishing they had lasted longer in the sport than they had. They were, it has to be admitted, a ruthless confederacy, as can be gauged by their policy of locking-up their stable staff at night and reading their post in case any of them let slip, wilfully or carelessly, any stable secrets. It wouldn’t happen these days, of course, health and safety would see to that. Pre-1st World War, though, anyone citing health and safety considerations would have been manhandled towards either the muck-heap or the nearest roadside ditch.
Hackler’s Pride, of course, the two-times Cambridgeshire winner, was known to me, what did come as an eye-opener was that Aboyeur, the winner, perhaps fortunate winner, of the Suffragette’s Derby, was owned come Derby Day by Percy Cunliffe, perhaps the only Derby winner to have gone through four hands. Bred by T.K.Laidlaw, Aboyeur was first bought by a James Daly who passed him on to Holmer Peard, Irish vet and manager of Cork Park racecourse and one of the five Druid’s Lodge confederates. Peard then sold him to Cunliffe and Wigan, two of his associates at Druid’s Lodge.
If asked, I would have said that the confederates gained their biggest betting coups via Hackler’s Pride, but though his associates couldn’t visualise the 100/1 shot covering himself in glory at Epsom, Cunliffe, though as surprised as any by the eventual result, thought Aboyeur could be placed and backed him throughout the preceding winter in small amounts, ‘fun bets’ as he described his interest. It is said Cunliffe scooped 2-million-pounds. 
All backed substantially, the confederates won four Cambridgeshires, two Jubilee Handicaps, the Eclipse, the Lincoln, Wokingham, the Hunt Cup and, of course, the Epsom Derby.
And yes, Cunliffe, the city financier, Purefoy, the West End impresario, Forester, the celebrated huntsman, Holmer Peard, the Irish vet and Wigan, the quietly-spoken man of independent means, did make racing and gambling pay. 

I have included in this piece ‘The World’s Best Horse’ by Lady Wentworth. A misjudged purchase on my part, I must admit.
I hoped, as it came to be with ‘Passports To Life’ by Harry Llewellyn, that it would stay on the shelf unread for several years and that when I got round to it I would be amazed what a wonderfully readable book it would be. And it may be, to the right reader. You see, despite a jacket illustration depicting the Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Mont Tremblant and on an inner page what I take to be a painting of Steve Donoghue on a rather excitable colt, ‘The World’s Best Horse’ is most certainly not a racing book. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
If you wish to know about Battle horses. Light Cavalry, the Modern Draught Horse, racing in Arabia or Egypt, Pintos, Hackneys, the Widge Beast, Norwegian, Rhum, Dales or Fell ponies, this is undoubtably the book for you. And it does have a chapter on the antecedents of the modern thoroughbred. One swallow, though, doth not a summer make!
There is, though, one photograph in the book that has to be seen to be believed. It is Palomino stallion with ‘abnormal mane and tail’. The description ‘abnormal’ does not do the length and thickness of the mane and tail justice. It is a wonder of nature. How the horse could walk without being tripped by its mane or tail is difficult to understand.