to me, its not all about winning.

​Honestly. As long as all the horses and jockeys come back safely, without any incidents that might thrust the race and the sport into the daily newspaper for all the wrong reasons, whether any of my bets bring me any return is immaterial. If betting shops were not forcibly closed last year, I would have backed Minella Times. I had him marked down as a possible winner back when the weights were announced, yet did it cause me sleepless nights that he won without any financial involvement from me? No. The result was everything. It was the result horse racing, sport and gender equality needed. Racheal Blackmore not only made racing history, she evolved the world towards a better place by a smidge, too.
The importance to horse racing in this country and Ireland, and perhaps beyond in countries we have no direct insight to, is incalculable. Nearly sixty-years ago – I think it was 1964 – I have vague memories of watching Team Spirit win the Grand National. I was eight, I think (I have a very dodgy memory) and though I had very poor knowledge of every aspect of the sport at the time, the impact of all that sensory overload, the magical technology that brought an event hundreds of miles away into our small living room, the spinning of names that I am far more aware of now than back then, the horses, fences with names and history – its effect has resonated with me all my life, guiding my path through life. Without that first vision of sporting sorcery, the uproar of barely controlled bedlam, I almost certainly would be in my grave by now.
The day-to-day love of my sport has prevented my suspect mind from falling into the spiral of blackness that conflicts reality with hope for a better life another time.
‘Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six-hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said; Into the valley of Death Rode the six-hundred.’
Tennyson might have had the Grand National in mind when he penned those immortal lines of poetry. When the starter calls the jockeys to make a line and the crowd roars in anticipation, it is akin to ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, a call to charge for the first fence as if that was the first gun in need of silencing. To me, the race is a blur until the warning that ‘Bechers is next’ and then the formation begins to make sense and I get a clear picture of where ‘my horses’ are, whether they are taking charge of the situation they must face.
And I take no pleasure if any of the most fancied horses fall and my heart skips beats when a horse takes a bad fall and I, an atheist, prays for it to speedily rise to its feet and gallop away in pursuit of its jockeyed brethren. And I do not hold my breath for nine or ten minutes just to experience thrills and spills. I want no fallers, only the drama of sporting history unfolding before my spellbound eyes.
Yes, I was opposed to the emasculation of the fences as I feared carnage on a regular basis because of excessive pace and yet now I am pleased the greater judgement of others prevailed. The Grand National is not better for it, yet also it is none the worse for it. It is still the Grand National. It is still enchantment.
The Melling Road is such an iconic section of the Grand National that one forgets outside of race-days it is ordinary road, used minute by minute by cars, lorries and cyclists, a district of Liverpool that the Grand National does bring a halt. 
The Canal Turn is made hazardous by a canal twenty or thirty yards from the fence. Bechers is named after an army officer who fell into the ditch when the race was in its infancy. Valentines is named after a horse that made a mighty leap after changing its mind about refusing to go on. The Chair did once have a judge’s chair as part of its structure, the judge demanding jockeys pull-up if they were ‘a distance’ in arrears.
The stone wall is gone. The plough is gone. The two hurdles that were once the last two obstacles are gone. Where once decrepit stands maligned the racecourse, there is now, for me, the most iconic stadia of modern sport, forming the backdrop to the start of the annual charge towards eternal fame and glory.
I love the Grand National. Its existence gives me life. Now, every year might be my last Grand National and I try to embrace and live it as if it is my last taste of it.
As always, I pray to a God I do not believe exists, to allow safe passage to every horse and every jockey. In truth, its all I every want from the race.