should the 2001 grand national taken place?

​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.