can anyone have a favourite grand national?

​The other day I watched a ‘Sporting Life’ podcast. I think it was a podcast. It might have been a YouTube video. I’m not savvy enough about all this modern techno stuff to distinguish the difference. Stupid me, eh! It comes with travelling the road to senility.
Anyway, on this ‘podcast/video three blokes with regional accents, none of whom had travelled my lonely path before their appearance on my YouTube home-page, engaged in a short dialogue on ‘their favourite Grand National’. A perfectly reasonable topic given the time of year, though the question, at least to me, someone without offspring of my own, is akin to ‘who is your favourite child’? Every parent has one, apparently. Money played a part in the answers, as did childhood memories of watching the race with a family member.
One of the answers was based on the schoolboy of then backing the first four home, a great achievement in anyone’s life, I am sure you agree, filleted though by the memory that instead of winning thousands, the return from the bookmaker was only £25 and change. I have never got close to achieving the first four home in the Grand National, though I did have the 1,2,3, in the Derby when I, similarly, was a child. I was gifted of a functioning brain back then, whilst nowadays I have to make do with a brain with the functioning power of 68-year-old putty.
Yet this ‘favourite Grand National’ topic has fluttered around what remains of my cognitive powers, hindered by the poor quality of my memory, though aided by YouTube videos and Reg Green’s ‘A Race Apart’ and ‘Kings For A Day’.
Given he got me out of a financial quagmire, the 2012 (?) Grand National won by Neptune Collonge should be my all-time favourite. He was so far the best horse in the race I was dumbfounded when Ruby Walsh chose not to ride him. If I was brainier than I am, I would have suspected he knew something others didn’t. Of course, if Ruby was on board, Neptune would not have gone off a 25/1 shot. But I was dumb enough even in those days to ignore the silent advice of the greatest jumps jockey of all time. Well, that’s my opinion.
Yet as much as the debt I owe Neptune is, and my choice may be more to do with the impact it had on me at the time than a cherish memory as the result to this day causes me heartbreak, I cannot answer this question in any way than to say 1973, perhaps the most historic day in the long story of British jumps racing.
31st March. 38 starters. The wining time 9-mins 1.9 seconds, was, at the time, a record for the race. Years later, on fast ground, Mr.Frisk took the record apart and will remain for all-time the keeper of the fastest Grand National winner. He, though, did not carry 12-stone.
In 1973, the first four to finish broke the existing course record.
Of the 38 starters, 18 finished, a goodly total for the Grand National back then.
Obviously, at the winning line we were not yet aware the winner was to become the greatest legend the sport has ever produced, his name forever associated with Aintree and the Grand National, a name still recognised by the non-sporting public today.
The 1973 Grand National was not, on the day, only about Red Rum. It was all about the greatest loser in the whole of sport. Crisp did not give away the Grand National and though Richard Pitman blames himself for not sitting still once he got to the elbow, hoping to elicit one final surge from Crisp to ward off the relentless charge of Red Rum by feebly tapping the big horse on the rump and unbalancing him in the process. Fred Winter knew he was beaten jumping the last, turning to Sir Chester Manifold and warning him of imminent defeat.
I don’t believe Richard Pitman did anything wrong. In fact, in my opinion, he gave Crisp a magnificent ride. The fates were against him. It was written in the stars, wasn’t it? Red Rum was a super-hero sent from an equine celestial constellation to save the Grand National. As with the Stanley Matthews Cup Final when Stan Mortenson scored a hat-trick, 1973 was Crisp’s Grand National, even if it was to become the first leg of Aintree’s greatest horse achieving a hat-trick of wins.
And there were no hard-luck stories in the race as the best four horses finished in the first four places. Red Rum. Crisp. L’Escargot. Spanish Steps. Albeit, L’Escargot was 25-lengths adrift at the line.
As I get ever older, I find the race ever harder to watch. The fatal fall of Grey Sombrero at the Chair still tears at the heartstrings and no matter that the whole sporting world knows how the story will end, I still ache to have Crisp hold on, for Richard Pitman’s brave ride to be rewarded by glory.
On March 31st, 1973, Crisp was attempting, though we didn’t suspect it at the time, the impossible. No horse in racing history, not even Arkle, could have given Red Rum 23Ib around his beloved Aintree. Crisp nearly, oh so nearly, achieved the Herculean task, going down in the shadow of the winning post by ¾-length.
Next year, it will be, astonishingly, the fiftieth anniversary of this epic race. I hope the B.H.A. and Aintree have some kind of celebration planned. My ‘favourite’ Grand National, the greatest performance ever seen on a British racecourse, the day the fightback to save Grand National gained the momentum needed, the birth of a true equine legend.