3-MILES, PLEASE, NEWTON ABBOT ON A HIGH & THE SHIPWRECKED GRAND NATIONAL WINNER.

Nicky Henderson is teasing us again. You may be firmly in the camp that believes Jonbon is not a 3-mile chaser and running him over that distance at Aintree this week will be to waste an arrow given Jonbon is entering the latter stages of his illustrious career. I believe he will stay 3-miles but that is not the point. Apart from the possibility of Jonbon finishing out of the first two for the first time in his life, there is no downside, I contend, for giving 3-miles a go. If he doesn't stay, he doesn't stay. But at least going into next season Nicky will have that data to hand when plotting which races to go for. Come next Boxing Day, Jonbon will be a week away from rising eleven. Next season might be his last active season. If Jonbon should prove he does stay 3-miles then the King George at Kempton Park becomes an obvious race to run in. Although Nicky hates the race more than I do, the Betfair could also come into consideration. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Cheltenham Gold Cup might become a temptation. Running Jonbon over 3-miles at Aintree this week will provide all the evidence Nicky, Frank and J.P. require to formulate a race programme for next season. I suspect if the decision is left to Nicky, even though Jango Baie is also entered, 3-miles would be given a go. Whether Frank and J.P. want to go in that direction is another matter. Nicky himmed and ha-ad whether to try Shiskin over 3-miles and eventually he bit the bullet. Let's hope J.P. and the weather allows Nicky to bite another bullet.

Newton Abbot was rammed yesterday, with the largest attendance for over 25-years, apparently. Having suffered so many abandoned meetings over the past few years, it brings joy to my heart to see Newton Abbot's fortunes on the rise again. What should open the eyes of the B.H.A. and those plotting a future for British racing that is pro elitism and down on the smaller racecourses, is that Saturday's meeting, though competitive, was just an ordinary day with ordinary fare. Yes, the Racing Post's Lee Mottershead was on duty there, and though you might not think him a celebratory, I for one would appreciate shaking his hand and telling him much I admire his work, but overall it was just an Easter fixture like any over the past two decades. The place to begin the revival of interest in our sport is not neccesarily at Ascot, Newmarket or Cheltenham but at such racecourses as Newton Abbot, Sedgefield and Redcar. Get local people regularly attending their local racecourses and then the newbies might then graduate towards the higher end of racing's pyramid. Build from the ground up; not from the roof down.

I have read that it is contended that Moifaa was not shipwrecked and forced to swim ashore, where he was discovered by local fisherman. Some say that Moifaa's asssociation with the sea had more to do with a minor incident in New Zealand, the country of his birth, than a shipwreck off the coast of Ireland. What is uncontended is that Moifaa was the first, and perhaps only, Colonial winner of the Grand National. Ben Nevis and Jay Trump do not count as the U.S. long ago wrestled its way free of the British embrace.

Moifaa could not be described as handsome. He was tall, ungainly and a hard-puller. He had won 9-tines from 13 starts as a four-year-old back home in New Zealand and furthered his reputation by winning a 3-mile 4-furlong chase carrying no less than 13-stone. Why his connections, though, took on the arduous sea journey from New Zealand to England, even if Moifaa disembarked off the coast of Ireland, is not recorded, though amidst the joy of victory the owner, trainer or jockey must have fleshed out the whys and wherefores of the adventure to journalists from the varied sporting papers in existence at the time. He won, though, that is what really matters, leading all the way from the fourth fence to the winning line.

The King's horse, the winner in 1900, Ambush, the favourite fell at the third fence, with the winner in 1905, Kirkland, finishing 2nd on this occasion. Back in eighth was undoubtedly one of the greatest of all Grand National horses, Manifesto, a horse still memorialised by a race at the Aintree National meeting to this day. He was 16 in 1904 and was ridden by Ernie Piggott, grandfather of Lester, also a winning jockey under National Hunt rules.

To return to Moifaa: the Grand National was the only race he won in Britain. The following year he was bought by the King but unfortunately he was beset by breathing issues and eventually became the King's favourite hack and appeared at all state occasions that required the King to be mounted. At King Edward VII's funeral in 2010, Moifaa carried his master's boots, reversed in the stirrups, in the cortege behind the gun carriage carrying the coffin. Moifaa's last royal engagement was as the mount of Lord Kitchener at the Coronation of King George V.