form book 1 - instinct & inspiration - nil

​After a long period of agonisingly fraught debate with myself and after many thousands of words, mainly comprising utter tripe, as things turned out, this year’s Grand National returned a large deficit in my bank balance. My only saving grace, and to provide proof I would have to research my recent writings, which I have neither the will nor the time to conduct, I did, either on this site or to a correspondence, make the statement that Corach Rambler should win, though I thought it unlikely that the otherwise magical combination of Derek Fox and Lucinda Russell could achieve two Grand National successes during their careers. The form book gave me good advice and I rejected it in favour of instinctive reaction. Sod it!
Far for it for me to criticise people more skilled at their craft than I am in anything, yet even during the early stages of the race, which brought more fallers than in either of the other two races over the Grand National fences at the meeting, I didn’t understand why all 39 jockeys took the middle to inner route, with no one keeping to the right over the first three or four fences.
After the race, and this might seem a bit of a mad idea, but with safety in mind, the idea came me that perhaps a muddled sort of draw should be made on the day of the race stipulating that jockeys ‘drawn’ one to twenty (in any order, not necessarily one-to-twenty) line-up left to middle and stay on that divide of the course until after the third fence, with the other jockeys lining up middle to right and staying on that course in similar fashion, rather like a 400-metres athletics race on an indoor track. This rather off-centre idea would allow horses a clearer view of fences that are out of either their recent or life experience. As with everyone, especially anyone watching the race for the first time, I hate seeing horses falling and being brought down. It is an ugly scene, even to the experienced enthusiast. I will forward this suggestion to the clerk of the course at Aintree and report back.
I haven’t yet read my on-line Sunday copy of the Racing Post, so I cannot report with any accuracy if all horses survived their part in racing history yesterday. I hope all 39-horses returned safely to their home stables, with more than one receiving the praise of returning heroes. I thought Vanillier, Noble Yeats and Mr. Coffey deserve special recognition for their gallant efforts. I am sure the head lads of the trainers involved in yesterday’s race will be busy this morning tending to cuts, bruises and other, hopefully, minor injuries to the stable’s Grand National runners. We should never lose sight of the fact that the Grand National is as much a battle with cruel fate as it is a sporting institution. It is also a battle with the sport’s enemies as witnessed by the idiot protestors who unsuccessfully tried to force their will on the sixty or more thousand people at Aintree, the millions watching at home and the many millions watching world-wide.
On this topic, I have another suggestion. Give the animal rights lobby a platform every year to express, in moderation, their beliefs. I am 100% an animal lover and it hurts me on so many levels when made aware of animal cruelty and if I thought for one-moment any form of cruelty was involved in horse racing or the care of horses in general, I would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the protestors. All I have ever seen within horse racing is love of the horse and concern for their well-being.
But rather than have annual repeats of what happened yesterday, why not allow them, for free, an advertising board where they can express their objections to our sport. I also wouldn’t be opposed to I.T.V. inviting a spokesperson for their views to Aintree for a discussion with people like A.P., Ruby or Alice Plunkett. If we engage with these people perhaps a form of conciliation might emerge. After all, it would be animal lovers engaging with animal lovers. The two opposing factions have so much in common, if only the protestors could understand that.
Although we did not get a controversy-free Grand National that would appear on national news for all the wrong reasons, we did get a worthy winner in Corach Rambler, the easiest winner in many years. A British, if Scottish, trained winner. Praise be! The Irish advance has finally been halted.