​I hope Aintree and the B.H.A. have plans in place in the event the Grand National is prevented from being staged this coming Saturday due to waterlogging. Clerk of the Course Suleka Varma is confident the soil composition and drainage system at Aintree will cope with any amount of rain thrown at it, and I am sure we all hope she is correct.
Anyone who is a sucker, as I am, for re-runs of past Grand Nationals, especially pre-television coverage, will have seen footage of the 1955 race won by Pat Taaffe and Quare Times when due to waterlogging the water jump was omitted, the only time, I believe, this has ever happened, with puddles the length of a horsebox on the landing side of the first fence. I suspect the course had no drainage back then and the horses galloped through the water seemingly without incident, though it did not look rather amateurish and it cannot be envisaged a similar scenario would be allowed in this day and age.
Heavy going, as far as the Grand National is concerned, is not necessarily a bad turn-of-events, as it slows the race down and as long as riders of tired horses pull-up a fence early rather than a fence too late, casualties in the way of fallers will be kept to very small numbers. What we can expect this weekend is very few finishers, perhaps as few as four or five, with Nassalam the most obvious beneficiary of rain rain and more rain, though he still has to jump the fences.
When Red Marauder won in 2001 in similar conditions to what we can expect this Saturday, there were calls after the event, especially by one of the Grand National’s most vocal champions, Alastair Down, that it was a mad decision to go ahead with the race, a rare occasion when Alastair’s sense of humour failed him. The 2001 renewal, to use one of Alastair’s favourite phrases, was run in conditions that resembled ‘the Battle of the Somme’, though at Aintree there were no fatalities, unlike in 1916. The only unlucky combination, apart from Mark Pitman and the gallant Smartie, were Carl Llewellyn and Beau, taken out of the race neither by the conditions nor by falling but by the reins ending-up on the same side of Beau’s neck after a great recovery by the jockey when Beau all but fell. With no steering, Llewellyn struggled on before being unseated two-fences later. He looked the likely winner until calamity struck. It was all good fun, though, do you not think?
Excess speed is Aintree’s enemy as horses get taken out of their comfort zone while at the same time having to cope with unfamiliar fences and racecourse topography. Firm ground, as when Mr.Frisk broke Red Rum’s course record in 1990, will never occur again at Aintree as artificial watering is now employed so that the ground is at least good if not good-to-soft. I might be overly pessimistic in forecasting a low number of finishers as the fences are less foreboding than in 2001, with Becher’s rendered a neutered pussy-cat compared to the days when the ghosts of the long-dead used trip-wire to bring down horses and invisible hands dragged jockeys out-of-the-saddle. 
I am sure it will weigh heavily on the mind and conscience of the clerk-of-the-course if a decision must be made on Saturday morning to go-ahead or not to go-ahead if there were fatalities in either the Foxhunters or the Topham. The sport, as with Aintree, needs the revenue that the Grand National generates and she will be pressured, I am sure, to declare the ground safe to race; the sport, though, cannot be faced with another fiasco. In 2001 we did not walk on egg-shells, the wolf that is animal rights activists, was not howling at our door. The term ‘social licence’ was also not bandied about in 2001. 2001 was a life-time ago. 2001 was another country. In 2001, the country and the world were less corrupted.
The Grand National must be run but not at the cost of the sport’s reputation. Postponing for a week might interfere with the racing schedule, make life difficult for I.T.V. and the satellite channels. But if postponing is what must be done, let it be done. Crossed-fingers the B.H.A. have a plan set-aside to reschedule, not just abandon as they decided back in the humiliating year of two false starts and egg stains on the face of the sport that still smell to this day.

​Pat Taaffe in his autobiography ‘My Life and Arkle’s wrote of Foinavon ‘Now I think if you asked me to pick a horse in that race to find a way through, I would have chosen Foinavon. The others might panic, but not this one’. Later, he wrote. ‘I was glad to see him win, because I had quite a soft spot for this droll little horse’.
As a young horse Foinavon was owned by the Duchess of Westminster and trained by Tom Dreaper. He ran 23-times from Greenogue, winning 3 races of little significance. To return to Pat Taaffe’s wonderful, if all too brief, autobiography. ‘On a day at Baldoyle, we fell heavily. We parted company in mid-air and after I bounced, I looked around, half expecting to see Foinavon in trouble. And there he was lying down … eating grass, cool as you please, just taking time out for a snack.’
It is my contention that Foinavon never receives the credit he deserves for being the only horse to negotiate the fence that now bears his name, the only one to ignore the mayhem of horses going any which way but over the fence, with jockeys on the wrong-side of the fence, with some stranded on the fence. And Foinavon was not the only horse out of camera shot as the field approached the one after Bechers. He was, though, the only one brave enough to avoid fate’s snipers and get to the other side.
At the moment of perhaps the most madcap episode in the history of the race, what was most remarkable was the number of horses still running and without the debacle at the twenty-third fence, the 1967 Grand National might be recorded with the greatest number of finishers. 44 set-off on April 8th and even with pandemonium at fence 23, 18 still managed to pass the winning post, with the majority of jockeys believing themselves to be unlucky not to have won.
What is never mentioned about the 1967 Grand National is that in completing the course in 9-minutes 49-seconds, Foinavon’s time was faster than Kilmore in 1962, Well To Do in 1972, Rubstic in 1979 and Ben Nevis, admittedly in heavy ground, in 1980 and only 2-seconds slower than Aldaniti in1981 and Corbiere in 1983. And Foinavon doddled round, going no faster when alone in front as he was when he was out-of-contention, with John Buckingham’s only ambition to get round safely. The time maybe nowhere close to what Red Rum, and later Mr.Frisk, achieved, yet it is a respectable time.
The sad part about what happened at the twenty-third was that it might have cost that grand old horse Freddie his final opportunity to win the race, having been second the previous two-years. Honey End, ridden by Josh Gifford won the race for second, with Red Alligator and Brian Flecther third, the combination that ‘righted the wrong’ the following year, running away to win by twenty-length.
Also, and this fact continues to escape me, the winner of the 2-year-old selling race at Aintree the day before Foinavon became a Grand National hero, was to become the sport’s greatest equine hero, the horse rightfully credited with saving the Grand National from the developer’s heavy plant machinery. Red Rum, of course, a horse of a completely different hue to Foinavon.
Reg Green, in his mighty tome, ‘A Race Apart’, a history of the great race, did at least praise Foinavon with being ‘worthy winner’, even if at odds of 444/1 on the Tote very few punters would have been of the same opinion. And he was a worthy, if fortunate winner, as he achieved what no other horse in the race achieved, in a sport where obstacles are to be jumped, he successfully negotiated all 30-fences and was the first past the winning post. He may not have ordinarily cared much for extending himself on the racecourse but on the day it truly mattered, he rose to the challenge. The following year, ridden by Phil Harvey, as Buckingham was claimed by his employer, Edward Courage, Foinavon was showing a little more plunk and according to his jockey was travelling okay when he was brought down at the Chair by Bassnet, one of the favourites.
Overall, though, Foinavon cared as little for winning races after he became a household name as he did before, though in 1968, on his favoured firm ground, he managed to win races at Devon & Exeter and Uttoxeter.
For all the critics will claim him the luckiest winner in the history of the race, his name will live in perpetuity and only the precious few achieve such status. As Reg Green wrote, he was a worthy winner and should be remembered as such.

​I think for the first eight or nine-years of my life, might be ten, though I doubt it as the names of all the runners in the 1964 renewal are as fresh in my mind as if it were ‘only yesterday’, not that I can recall everything I did yesterday. I digress. 
Anyway, in my early years I lived happily in ignorance of the Grand National, yet since my awakening to the great race, it has dominated my life and focused my attention from publication of entries to every dearly-loved second of the build-up and the race itself. That steadfast engagement has withered this time around, as if I am suffering from a rare illness. Perhaps it is the first stages of ‘getting old syndrome’. But it just does not feel like we are ten-days away from the next instalment of the Grand National.
As an aside, back in the days of young life, aged ten and onwards, for some reason I collected all the cards that in those days came in cigarette packets and, was it, cereal packets, and when I ran short of actual cards – they had fish and birds on them, if I recall – I cut cereal packets into the same size as the cards, writing the names of horses on them. That is why Purple Silk, Peacetown, Eternal, Pontin-Go, April Rose, Pappageno’s Cottage, Supersweet and others that ran in 1964 remain in my memory, whereas the names of more recent runners elude me. Could not remember Latenightpass a few days ago, for instance.
I dare say my lack of child-like excitement is caused by my belief that the Grand National is in the throes of being ‘run-down’, the policy of death by a thousand-cuts a signal that the end is nigh. I am not suggesting that a race bearing the name Grand National will not exist twenty or thirty-years down the line but it will be a facsimile of the real thing, as it already has become in many ways. Watch a recording of the 1964 race, won by Team Spirit at his fifth attempt, followed by a recording of last year’s race. Chalk and cheese. Yes, a race in the guise of the Grand National will exist as long as National Hunt continues as it is a cash-cow for Aintree and bookmakers.
But ask yourself this: does winning the Grand National change lives these days. It elevated Rachael Blackmore from a star of horse racing and into world-wide recognition and boosted her financial income, no doubt. But she is an outlier, for all she was already at the top bough of our sport.
When Tim Norman won on Anglo in 1966, he was practically an unknown and though he never went on to hit the heights Rachael Blackmore has achieved, winning the world’s greatest horse race boosted his career and until injuries stalled his progress, he was making money at the game. The same with John Buckingham the following year, his fifteen-minutes of fame extenuated by the pile-up at the fence now named after Foinavon.
Brian Fletcher made his name winning two Grand Nationals on the immortal Red Rum but when he won the race in 1968 on Red Alligator he was hardly known outside of the north of England.
In 1979, who had heard of Maurice Barnes or John Leadbetter, jockey and trainer of Rubstic? And when you go through the list of winning owners, you understand that winning the race was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. The little man could achieve glory; lives were changed because of winning the Grand National. It was a dream, back then, for every jockey, to win the Grand National and a privilege just to get a ride in the race. The odds were, of course, 100/1 that a journeyman jockey would win the race back then, sadly, those odds are a whole lot longer these days.
It is not so much that an Irish-trained horse is most likely to win the race, with very few English-based jockeys getting a ride this year, it is because the horses that the journeyman jockey rides through the season, even if they are reliable jumpers with an excess of stamina, will not have a high enough rating even to be entered in the race.
The Grand National has become a race for the elite of the sport and it should not be an exclusive club, and for the public that will become a turn-off. The romance of the race has all but been beaten out of it by the incessant tweaking and tinkering, the madcap desire to sanitise the race for woke public consumption. Becher’s Brook is just a landmark nowadays, nothing to be feared, no change in riding style required. The first ditch is lowered this year, removing its notoriety, the relief removed of your horse clearing the first of the ‘danger’ fences and showing hope that it has taken to the fences.
The odds are short that Gordon Elliott or Willie Mullins will win the race again as they could easily turn-out half the field by themselves, after all. Even if Lucinda Russell won the race with Corach Rambler it would be a case of winning the race again ….
Perhaps I am old; perhaps child-like enthusiasm is beyond me now; perhaps, God forbid! I have wearied of the race. Perhaps, and again, God forbid! the policy of death by a thousand cuts is not a work of fiction conjured from my mind but a real possibility, the real line of travel? If they keep cutting and lessening, people will not notice, will not remember the history, the immortal days of Red Rum, and, as with the lobster not knowing it is being boiled alive, the race is being purposefully guided towards a ‘natural death’?

​Red Rum is undoubtedly the greatest Aintree horse in racing history. I doubt if his achievement of three-wins will ever be surpassed. Indeed, I would argue he is one of the greatest racehorses of all-time, if not the greatest (arguably Desert Orchid might top him) for the impact he had on the sport. I would not dispute the suggestion that if it were not for Red Rum, the Grand National might not exist today.
If numbers or ratings were applied to the question ‘who is the greatest steeplechaser to run in the Grand National’, the answer would be Golden Miller, the only horse to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Aintree spectacular in the same season.
When racing journalists list their top ten steeplechasers of all-time, due to the curveball of recency, many will include Best Mate and perhaps Captain Christy, and yet leave out Golden Miller, the winner of five Cheltenham Gold Cups. It is argued that in his day, the Gold Cup was nothing more than a trial or prep-race for the Grand National and that is not exactly true. If you read Basil Briscoe’s dreadful book – if you took out all the repetitions the book would be even shorter than it is - ‘The Life of Golden Miller’, he makes no bones about The Miller’s reputation as the greatest steeplechaser of his era was founded at Cheltenham, not Aintree.
At Aintree, Golden Miller was no Red Rum. Rummy loved the place; The Miller came to loathe the place. To my surprise, when Golden Miller won the Grand National in 1934, he received 2Ibs from Thomond, beating him into third by 5-lengths and the same. Golden Miller did not even start favourite, that honour falling to Really True who had finished second the previous year. Incidentally, Golden Miller won the Grand National as a 7-year-old, first running in the race as a 6-year-old, having already won 3 Cheltenham Gold Cups. As when Red Rum won his first Grand National, Golden Miller broke the track record carrying the welter burden of 12st 2Ibs.
Golden Miller’s c.v. is unlike any of the horses that might appear on lists of ‘greatest horses’. He was bred, if you do not already know, by Barry Geraghty’s grandfather, who was given his dam to look after by a local army man who was leaving home to re-enlist in the army. He never came back to reclaim his mare. The great horse was originally sold as a yearling for 100 guineas.
Golden Miller won in total 29-races and due to carrying the wrong weight was disqualified in another. His first appearance on a racecourse was at Southwell as a 3-year-old over hurdles, where he was unplaced. His first victory was in his third race later in January 1931 at Leicester, picking up 83-guineas for his then owner Mr.Carr. 3-weeks later he won again at Nottingham. In Golden Miller’s era, remember, horses often travelled to the races by train and racecourses close to railway stations were favoured by trainers.
The following season he won first-time out in a hurdle race at Chelmsford. He won again at Chelmsford in November before winning his first steeplechase at Newbury, though he was disqualified at the previous Newbury meeting in the less-than-gloriously-named Moderate Chase. He finished his first season as a chaser by winning his first Gold Cup, on his fourth race over fences, and then running unplaced in a flat race and finally finishing unplaced in the Lancashire Chase at Manchester. It was the following season that saw a by now fully-furnished Golden Miller soar to the heights that he remains remembered by. Winning 5-races, including the Gold Cup, before running unplaced in the Grand National.
The following season he was campaigned with only the Grand National in mind, winning a second Gold Cup on his way to winning the Grand National, a fete still to be surpassed by any horse.
He won chases at Wolverhampton, Leicester, Derby and Sandown before completing his Gold Cup hat-trick, though he unseated early on the Grand National, was turned-out the following day and unseated again in the Champion Chase. His dislike of Aintree was becoming noticeable.
In the year of his fifth Gold Cup triumph, he only won one other race, the Andover Chase at Newbury, being beaten first-time out in a National Hunt flat race at Sandown and prior to Cheltenham ran out five fences from home, in the Newbury Chase at, unsurprisingly, Newbury. His final attempt at adding to his Aintree laurels came in 1936 where he brought down in a melee at the first fence, was remounted only to refuse at the open ditch after Valentines.
Amazingly, at least by today’s standards, that was not the end of Golden Miller’s season as he turned out less than 3-weeks later in the Welsh Grand National at Cardiff, finishing a gallant third.
Again, by the standards of today, the 1937 Gold Cup was abandoned due to flooding and was not reopened, which, perhaps, displays its significance back then, with the Grand National the only National Hunt race with any prestige value. Before refusing once again in the Grand National, he had won four races, 2 at Wincanton, I at Gatwick and, according to Basil Briscoe’s, as I now understand, unreliable resume of the Miller’s career, a race at Birmingham, the Optional (S) Chase. The s could not stand for selling, could it?
Golden Miller did not contest the Grand National in 1938, though he did attempt a sixth triumph in the Gold Cup, failing with his usual display of courage to Morse Code. He did, though, add, two more victories to his career total, including that Optional (S) Chase at Birmingham.
Golden Miller was a great horse and would have achieved similar levels of success in any era of the sport, I believe. He was, not, though a hero of Aintree, taking the opinion that to win the race once was enough for any horse.

​Usually at this time of year, post Cheltenham, pre classic trials, my thoughts are focused 100% on Aintree and the Grand National. Not so much this year. Since a young child, the Grand National has been the centre of my racing world, with no other race coming within touching distance in terms of fascination and awe. Since Suleka Varma’s appointment as clerk of the course, my fascination with the great race has become evermore tinged with sadness for what is being lost to her unthinking approach of ‘death by a thousand cuts’, the needless and pointless tinkering in an effort to transform spectacle, derring-do, romance and adventure into an impression of what used to be. In short, Miss Varma and her advisors are in search of a miracle cure for ever-present risk, to make a dangerous pursuit safe and effective for the purpose of protecting the cash-cow that is the Grand National.
I always worry that the dark cloud of fate will descend on the race, to shroud it as a bad-news story. The glory of conquering Aintree’s unique fences and topography is always tainted when it is announced that a horse has suffered a fatal injury during the race. In loving the sport, I must accept that injuries and fatalities to both horse and rider are an unforgiving factor, as it is of every minute, hour and day for horse and man alike in every walk and department of life. As it is for those who love and document war. Up and including the 1st World War as many horses would be killed in battle, or simply slaughtered for meat rations, as soldiers. We live in different times.
There was a time when I tried to have Aintree erect a memorial plaque to horses that had died taking part in the great race. I also asked for a horse cemetery at Aintree, so the fallen, in the military sense, would never be forgotten. Both ideas were batted-away as ‘undoable’, the official policy cynical, ‘better to sweep such things under the carpet and not talk about them’. Now, the policy is to persuade the ignorant public that the focus is on safety and welfare. The death of a horse nowadays, under the leadership of Miss Varma, will doubtless result in more tinkering, more shedding-away of the tradition and uniqueness that has made the Grand National the greatest horse race in the world. I fear in short-time the race will be reduced to twenty-runners, with the fences looking more like the old Mildmay course, the Canal Turn euthanised and replaced by a smooth bend, the Chair no more testing than a child’s stool, the distance reduced to 3-miles.
I have used the names of Merryman, Freddie and Grittar in the title of this piece, as they represent the romance and adventure no longer thought necessary by the custodians of the race. Because of the ever-rising minimum rating required to achieve the opportunity of making the start for the Grand National, what is being lost is the romance of the hunter-chaser, owned, trained and perhaps ridden by rock-solid point-to-point people who through good fortune and skill had stumbled-upon a ‘National horse’.
Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott or Paul Nicholls winning the race will never attract the attention of the outside media, not in the same way as when Grittar won for Frank Coton and Dick Saunders. The little man, barely known to punters and racing enthusiasts alike, triumphing on the biggest stage in racing, putting one over on the mega-stables, the big-hitters.
Merryman won the Aintree Foxhunters the year before he triumphed in the Grand National in 1960. Freddie was everyone’s hope for both the 1965 and 1966 Grand Nationals, finishing runner-up to Jay Trump and then Anglo, Reg Tweedie, owner/trainer defeated both times by Fred Winter, perhaps the best known man in racing at the time, a legend of the sport.
Spartan Missile, ridden by owner, breeder and trainer, Mr. John Thorne was an unlucky loser in 1981 when the fateful gods allowed the sport to bask in the glory of cancer-survivor Bob Champion virtually rising from the dead to win on Aldiniti.
And sporting glory is not only achieved by the victors. Does anyone remember Rosemary Henderson’s mighty performance in finishing fifth on her own horse Fiddler’s Pike in 1994? There were others who came from the point-to-point field to go to Aintree with favourite’s chance or as a good long-shot. Double Silk comes to mind and Forest Gunner, if my memory serves me correctly. And many more if you go back into the 1920’s and through to the 1990’s.
My fear, you see, even if I do not live to witness it, is that the Grand National will stop being the ‘peoples’ race’ and all that the tinkering in pursuit of an impossible miracle is achieving is to destroy all or part of what has made the race the institution it is within the sporting calendar. Change for change’s sake always goes pear-shaped. A yellow carrot may still be a carrot but it sure does not look right, and that is the path Miss Varma is taking.
Of course, Gina Andrews and Latenightpass may gallop to victory in two-weeks-time and I will have egg all over me. And I sincerely hope Gina and her husband do succeed as it will provide the good-news story the race has lacked, apart from Rachael Blackmore, of course, for too many years. And perhaps will never achieve again.

​The 1965 Grand National, the first of many ‘last’ Grand Nationals, provided as its star act a horse and rider the like of which I doubt we will ever see again at Aintree. In attempting to make the perilous safe and effective, the romance and adventure of the race has been stripped away.
Horses from afar never venture to Aintree any more. Steeplechase enthusiasts in the U.S. no longer, seemingly, dream of Aintree. Nor the French. No more the hapless or hopeless long-shot from Russia, the Czeck Republic or Japan, their riders startled and no doubt a little chilled by the sight in real life of Aintree’s character-defining fences, fences that these days are more unusual than huge and daunting as they were in the times when foreigners came to sample the thrill and buzz of the truly unique.
Jay Trump was a horse saved from, and saved is not too strong a word, believe me, the outback of a minor dirt track in Pennsylvania. When asked about Jay Sensenich, the trainer of Jay Trump when a 2-year-old, an official praised the man for his integrity and dedication to his horses before adding. ‘He trains the walking wounded, the halt and the blind, rakes, rogues and misfits, others have given-up on and sold for dog meat’.
Back then, perhaps less so now, drugs were freely administered to keep the lame sound and racing.
A more unlikely winner of 3 Maryland Hunt Cups, the third after his triumph at Aintree, there has never been nor perhaps likely will be. Jay Trump’s owner, Mrs Stephenson, had dared to dream and her jockey, Tommy Smith embraced the challenge, dedicating his life to the horse by uprooting himself from his home in the U.S. and living in England for the period required to get Jay Trump qualified to run at Aintree and being with him every step of the way.
Fred Winter had twice won the Grand National and he was entrusted to give Jay Trump and his amateur rider the best chance possible of achieving the dream, without ever, I contend, believing it remotely possible.
47 went to post on the 27th of March, of which 14 finished. Mill House was one of the original 112 entries and it would have been interesting to see how he might have fared as he would perhaps have been the best chaser to face the challenge since Golden Miller in the 1930’s. He was allotted top-weight and when taken out of the race the work of the handicapper was turned upside down, with the weights raised to the point where the bottom weights carried 10st 13Ibs, with Freddie topping the handicap on 11st 10Ibs. Jay Trump ended-up carrying 11st 5Ibs.
Jay Trump was no forlorn hope, having won three-times since coming to England. Groomsman, though, was a long-shot, one of many attempts by the Duque de Alburquerque to finish the race. In 1965 he took a heavy fall at Valentine’s first-time round.
Rondetto was the unlucky horse in the race, capitulating at the 26th fence when seemingly travelling the best, certainly better than in subsequent attempts.
Freddie, trained by a Scottish permit-holder, was favourite, something else we are never likely to see in a Grand National ever again, and was the horse most people wanted to see win. He was valiant in defeat, as he was to be the following year when denied by another Fred Winter trained horse, Anglo, who he took on due to the Jockey Club unfairly taking away Captain Ryan Price’s trainers’ licence. There was ¾ of a length at the winning post, those 5Ibs perhaps the difference between winning and losing, with 25-lengths back to the third. The following year Freddie conceded 21Ibs to his conqueror.
Jay Trump jumped well all the way round and was a deserving winner, with Tommy Crompton Smith becoming the first amateur to win since Captain Bobby Petre in 1946 who triumphed on Lovely Cottage. Jay Trump and Tommy Smith returned to the U.S. feted as conquering heroes. In 1966, having already won 2 Maryland Hunt Cups, he shot for the stars again by attempting an unprecedented third triumph. During his time in England, his crown had passed to Mountain Dew and perhaps for the first time 2 twice-time winners of the race clashed and was was a cause of great excitement and Mrs.Stephenson persuaded Fred Winter to travel over to witness both the clash of champions but also Jay Trump’s final race.
At Aintree, the peoples’ horse was Freddie, at Maryland that role fell to Jay Trump, though the majority thought the younger Mountain Dew would prevail. But as at Aintree, Jay Trump rose to the occasion, easily outpowering his younger rival. He was ten-years-old and had achieved every goal his owner had set for him; it was time for a life of leisure.
Jay Trump lived a happy retirement. Fate, though, was not so kind to Tommy Smith who suffered a life-altering injury that put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

​I was 10-years old in 1964 and only a few years before I had found what was to become the love of my life. For me, discovering the Grand National must have been similar to when Howard Carter opened up the intact burial site of the Pharoah Tutankhamun and his eyes fell upon treasures beyond his imagination. The Grand National, to me, then, was a wonder to behold, a sight for the eyes, an inspiration for life ever-after. My first dream, I suspect, was in one capacity or another was winning the Grand National.
How I became informed of Mirabel Topham’s – I would have had no idea who she was and what her association with the race could be – intention to sell Aintree racecourse to Capital and Counties Property Limited and that the last ever Grand National run at Aintree would be in 1965, I cannot remember. Perhaps my father told me, perhaps I read a headline in a newspaper. I suspect I cried.
It was beyond belief that an event as magical as the Grand National could be allowed to die! Something had to be done and thankfully, and May God preserve his Soul, Lord Sefton came to the rescue by seeking an injunction to stop Mirabel Topham committing a sporting atrocity unbeknown in the world of sport. When Lord Sefton, fifteen-years before, had sold the racecourse to Topham Limited, he had the foresight to include a codicil in the contract preventing the racecourse being used for anything other than horse racing or agricultural.
In October 1964, Lord Justice Stamp ruled in favour of Lord Sefton.
Joy unlimited! The Grand National was saved for all eternity! No houses would be built on the sacred soil!
But no, there was a sting in the tail of Lord Justice Stamp’s ruling; weeks before announcing her intention to sell Aintree Racecourse, Mirabel Topham had obtained copyright to the title ‘Grand National Steeplechase’. The final Grand National, she confirmed, would be in 1965. In the High Court she had argued that it was perfectly possible for the race to be staged at another racecourse, though, of course, under a different title.
As it turned out, 1965 was the first of many ‘last Grand Nationals’, a state of affairs that continued for years to come. The 1966 renewal would be, according to a frustrated Mrs. Topham, positively the last held at Liverpool. The 1966 race, incidentally, included the first and last ever runner from Japan, Fujino-O. The legal battle entered the House of Lords in 1967 where Lord Sefton’s injunction was reversed, with costs awarded to Mrs.Topham.
All of this, I suspect, occurred outside of my awareness, even if one of the B.B.C.’s commentators doubtless declared each succeeding renewal ‘the last Grand National’. Of course, if to add spice to the legal farce, 1967 was the year every horse fell and jockeys comically went hither and thither, except the brave Foinavon and his fortunate jockey, John Buckingham.
1968 was again ‘positively the final Grand National’.
In 1972 optimism that the Grand National had, against the odds, a secure future, was added-to by the race securing a sponsor for the first time, B.P. Limited. Optimism was soon deflated by the news that negotiations between Mrs. Topham and Lancashire County and Liverpool City Councils had broken down and the 1972 race was to be ‘emphatically the final Grand National’.
In the run-up to the 1973 race, Mrs.Topham revealed to Julian Wilson that she had a buyer for the racecourse and she hoped the sell would allow the race to remain at Aintree.
Of course, the 1973 Grand National was to not only become the greatest in the long history of the race but undoubtedly the greatest race ever run on a British racecourse. Also, it might have provided the tipping point in favour of the optimists. Four horses broke the track record on March 31st, Spanish Steps, L’Escargot, Crisp and the immortal Red Rum. Crisp put-up, to my mind, the greatest performance on a racecourse, attempting to give the 2-years younger and to become the greatest ever horse over the Aintree fences, 23Ibs and humping 12st and failing to achieve the impossible by only ¾ of a length.
Red Rum’s name appeared for the first time on the County Stand roll of honour, under which were the ominous words – The End Of An Era. In November, Mrs. Topham sold Aintree to Mr. Bill Davies for £3-million.
In 1975 Bill Davies announced he was selling the racecourse to an Irish Property Developer, Patrick McCrea. The deal fell through. Ladbrokes then came to the rescue, bidding £1.5-million. Then the Jockey Club gave Davies a month to come to some sort of agreement or the race would be transferred to Doncaster. In December, three-days before Christmas, Ladbrokes secured an agreement to manage the race until 1978. 
1977 saw Charlotte Brew become the first female rider in the race. Was it really that long ago!
Ladbrokes continued their administration of Aintree until 1982. The Jockey Club had shamelessly dragged their feet throughout the whole sorry saga and finally were shamed into action and through its subsidiary Racecourse Holdings Trust entered into a legal agreement with Bill Davies to buy Aintree for £7-million. As if to prove its apathy, the Jockey Club reasoned that if the man in the street wanted so desperately to preserve the race, it must pay and the Aintree Grand National Appeal was launched. I remember buying two sweatshirts with ‘Save The National’ on the front. A deadline of only 7-months was given to raise the funds.
The appeal failed. The Jockey Club presented Bill Davies with a second proposal. £4-million. A new contract was drawn-up. A new appeal was launched, with May 1st 1983 the day of reckoning.
To bring a long and sorry episode in racing’s history to its conclusion, with the intervention of Seagram and its British chairman Ivan Straker, Bill Davies eventually agreed to sell for £3.4-million. After 20-years of legal wrangling, the Grand National was safe. The first non-last-ever-Grand National was won by Hallo Dandy.
The present custodians of the race, especially Suleka Varma, the present clerk of the course, would do well to study the infamous 20-years when every year was the final year and take on board the effort so many people put in over such a long period of time to save the Grand National and all that the race means to the racing community. She should also read Reg Green’s wonderful book ‘A Race Apart’; as I consulted his mighty tome for all the facts contained in this article. 

​The problem of small-sized fields and non-competitiveness that beleaguers National Hunt at the moment will soon be visiting flat racing in this country. National Hunt has its stronghold in Ireland and Britain, and to a lesser extent in France, especially the provinces. In most other racing jurisdictions jump racing is, at best, a minority equestrian sport and non-existent in most other countries.
Flat racing, though, thrives throughout Europe, the U.S. and Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and latterly it is being used to boost the leisure industries of Dubai, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. And that is, if it is not already, a problem waiting to impinge on the competitiveness of racing here as more and more owners go in search of the mad money on offer for even the most modest of races run at the racecourses of those latter three aforementioned countries.
Britain and Ireland have the history and tradition, the rest of the world has the prize money.
Anyone researching the history of flat racing in Britain during the 1920’s through to the 1990’s will see a sport much different to now. The classic races thrived, of course, as did Royal Ascot, with for much of that 70-years the major race of the Royal meeting being the Ascot Gold Cup, a race that has become almost a novelty in this day and age. The City and Suburban run at Epsom was an important race, as was the Jubilee at Kempton, with the Lincoln a race every trainer and jockey aspired to win. The major races, races which might be reported on the front pages of the national newspapers, shone bright in the calendar. And that is the problem British racing has established for itself. Too much racing has swamped the calendar, with our prized gems hidden from the view of unbiased observers.
The Lincoln Handicap, for example, has become a nondescript handicap, the winner forgotten about in the headlong rush to get to the first classics of the season.
In the past, trainers of classic winners, for instance, were rarely asked about future plans as the racing calendar set in stone the route from Newmarket to Epsom and then Ascot, Goodwood and Doncaster. Now, as with the plans for City of Troy, after Epsom any port of call around the world is mooted, with Aidan O’Brien already talking about sending his latest superstar to Saratoga after winning the Epsom Derby, with even the Irish Derby not given a mention as a possibility.
I have argued the point for many years, and doubtless will do so until my final breath, but ‘we’ have allowed the Doncaster St. Leger to become irrelevant, almost a consolation race for three-year-olds that have failed to bag a big race throughout the season, yet it has the prestige of being the oldest classic in the world. And as far as modern breeders are concerned, the English St. Leger is an irrelevance and yet the B.H.A. and Doncaster bask in its reflective glory, ignoring the fact that in reality Britain only has four classics worthy of the status as a classic horserace.
If I had a voice to be heard or influence to promote change, I would upgrade the Eclipse at Sandown to classic status and, of course, restrict the race to three-year-olds only. The Doncaster St. Leger should then have money thrown at it, run over the same distance of 1-mile 6, a great selling point to my mind, so that it becomes an English Arc. If it were run a few weeks earlier than the Arc there is no reason why the two races should clash.
If the St.Leger meeting was to be held earlier than has been tradition, the whole of the racing calendar would need to be altered, and that is no bad thing. The flat season could easily be made into three parts, with the first part framed around the five classic races, the middle part the summer festivals and the major Grade 1’s and the final part framed around the big two-year-old races, with major handicaps bolstering the whole. And I would advise getting rid of a swathe of the Group 2’s and 3’ as they take-up a whole lot of prize-money and provide little in the way of competitiveness and betting revenue. They exist solely for the benefit of breeders and to make life easier for trainers.
The B.H.A. should bite the bullet and strip the calendar of summer all-weather racing and rein it back to what all-weather racing was intended-for – to be there when the weather forced abandonments in winter and spring. People bury their heads when talking about prize-money. It is a problem exacerbated by the explosion in all-weather racing. For nine-months of the year, all-weather tracks are unnecessary. 
Premierisation, I have come to believe, is a good idea being wasted. I would fight to the death to preserve our small racecourses and I believe with all my heart that the B.H.A. have a duty to ensure they not only survive but thrive. But they are not premier racecourses and premiership should be focused on our premier races and premier race-days. Royal Ascot will be five-days of premier racing; you cannot compare a day at Musselburgh or Plumpton with what is on offer at the Royal Meeting. You cannot have premier racing every weekend, the same as you cannot have Liverpool versus Manchester City every Sunday.
We need to go back in time and study the race programme for the 1930’s, the 1950’s and 1970’s. Strip out the unnecessary, shine a bright light on the best we have to offer and instigate a ‘for now’ policy and build from the ground up and not from the top-down. The past, I believe, is where the answers to most of our problems are to be found.

​I will not dwell on the awful realisation that the new flat season begins at the weekend and the Racing Post will be dominated by enthusiasts of the levellers for the next 9-months. Personally, I do not get into flat racing until Royal Ascot when I can write about all that is wrong about the silly hat wearing festival and flat racing in general.
But for now, I remain thought-filled about the Cheltenham Festival, even if its annual dose of magic moments was rather lacking this year.
The ground was somewhere between soft and heavy all-week, yet the horses were not finishing legless and in need of the oxygen bottle, with some of the winners looking as fresh as the autumn dew in the winners’ enclosure. Slow ground, though, equals less fallers and less horses reaching the winning post.
For all that Willie Mullins has Galopin Des Champs, State Man, Fact To File, Lossiemouth and Ballyburn, to name but a few, in his stable, I think the horse with the greatest amount of ability could well be Gaelic Warrior, a horse that manages to combine the eccentricities of the wonderful Goshen with a pleasing-on-the-eye style of Irish dancing.
Rachael Blackmore may not be number 1 in the jockey ranks, though to the public she is head and shoulders the most popular, she is, though, perhaps, tactically the best, with some of her best rides last week coming on horses that beat everything but the Mullins superheroes.
In Salver, Gary Moore has a star in the making, with the Stayers Hurdle a possibility for next season. He ran on like a trooper late for parade in the Triumph and if fate is kind to him could easily be the horse that takes Gary Moore back into the winners’ enclosure at next year’s Festival.
Of course, crowd numbers were down. It was the most obvious odds-on favourite of the week, with television viewers going in the opposite direction the second-favourite. Costs for everything are high, with no racegoer but the solidly wealthy able to shrug off the cost of going to Cheltenham as if it were nothing more displeasing than a smidgeon of mud on the boot of the Roller.
Let children under 16 in for free and give concessions to both students and pensioners. Also, and here is an idea I offer for free, give reduced admission to anyone who has attended, outside of annual members, 3 or more meetings at Cheltenham during the season.
Customer satisfaction starts in the car-park, ask any business advisor. When wet, have plenty of tactors available to help car drivers onto tarmac. Sometimes it is the little things that mean the most.
I like Gordon Elliott, I just wish he would stop describing any horse he trains as ‘a horse of a lifetime, really’, as he is the man who trained Tiger Roll, the horse who is and will remain Gordon’s true ‘horse of a lifetime’.
On the subject of phrases or utterances which I wish people would stop saying. ‘He (or she) rides the horse every day’, Ed Chamberlain’s favourite line when describing a horse being led out on to the course or into the winners’ enclosure. It may be true, in part, though ‘most of the time’ would, I suggest, be more accurate. Pedantry, I agree, but journalists should always aim for accuracy in their reporting. Old concept, I agree, but then I am old and nostalgia lives next door to pedantic thought.
It was pleasing that the Foxhunters’ was won this year by a horse from the point-to-point field. If my proposal for a 3-day Spring Festival and a 2-day Winter Festival are to be ignored, which will be the case, I would like Cheltenham to change the conditions of the Foxhunters to exclude horses trained by public trainers so as to allow an annual dose of romance back to the Festival. And the National Hunt chase should be upgraded to a 4-mile Champion Chase and open to professional riders.

​There is a crusade, led mainly by the likes of Kevin Blake and Matt Chapman, to persuade the rest of us that wholesale alterations need to be put in place by both Cheltenham in regard to the National Hunt Festival and more generally by the B.H.A. to ‘level-up’ the playing field between Ireland and Britain. I now agree with those who pine for the days of the 3-day Festival, though only because it will improve competitiveness and stop trainers opting for the easier option rather than patronise the major races. Also, the 12-month racing programme in Britain is definitely in dire need of fixing. But neither of these radical improvements, if they should actually happen, will ‘level-up’ the playing field. We should stop fixating on the Prestbury Cup, the domination of Ireland at the Festival, as there is no domination. Ireland in general is not miles ahead of Britain. It is Willie Mullins who is miles ahead of everyone else, Irish trainers included. As Gordon Elliott said last week. ‘You only have to face him at Cheltenham, I have to take him on every day back home.’
A good example of the Willie Mullins domination is that not only he is home and hosed in the Irish trainers’ championship; as a result of the success of his raiding party last week, he now sits third in the British trainers’ championship and if he added the Grand National to his spoils there is a definite chance, if he put his mind to it, that he could end the season champion this year in both his homeland and in Britain. Incidentally, Gordon Elliott now lies 10th in the British championship and Henry de Bromhead 16th.
To return to Kevin Blake, who seems hellbent on becoming Ireland’s version of Matt Chapman, delighting in concocting controversy. He is right in his assertion that something needs to be done about some of the races at the Cheltenham Festival, accepting, seemingly, that a 4-day Festival is what the sport needs and deserves right now. Where he is miles off-course in his thinking is when he derides British trainers by saying they are not hungry enough to tackle and defeat the Irish invasion of our land. Dan Skelton, does he display signs of cowardice in the face of the enemy? Or Paul Nicholls? And does Ben Pauling have the look of a man cowering in fear of the green army banging at the door, a man who had a winner and 2 seconds last week from very few runners?
If Paul Nicholls trained Ballyburn would the result of the Gallaghers been different last week? If Dan Skelton had Fact or File would the result of the Brown Advisory been different? Does Willie Mullins possess a magic potion that would have allowed him to win those races with other horses in his stable, regardless if Ballyburn or Fact of File were in opposition?
Believe it or not, there was a time when Willie Mullins could not lay a glove on Paul Nicholls at the Festival or at any time throughout the season. In fact, Irish trainers were in fear of Paul Nicholls sending horses over to run in their major races. Remember Denman winning what is now the Savills at Leopardstown?
As the wise man that is Ruby Walsh has prophesied, the wheel turns. In ten-years we might be asking, what has gone wrong at Closutton? Perhaps. Not that I would want the Mullins empire to crumble. All we are asking and hoping for is that his counterparts in Ireland and Britain close the gap, for the top-class horses to be spread around evenly, for British owners to look beyond Closutton and to give the British trainers, especially the up and coming, the ammunition to do battle with the great man on terms a bit more equal than they are at present.