Tales from the Turf

by Robin Oakley

  The animal rights activists were in full cry again in 2011 when two horses, Ornais and Dooney’s Gate, perished and several horses finished temporarily distressed on an unusually warm day. It did not help racing’s image that winning jockey Jason Maguire received a five-day ban for excessive use of the whip on winner Ballabriggs.

  After that the one thing we racing lovers were praying for in the 2012 contest was an incident-free race with every horse coming home safe. That we were denied. Not only did According to Pete have to be put down after being brought down by another horse when running loose after a fall, so did Synchronised, the most high-profile horse in the race since he had won that year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, was ridden by the champion jockey Tony McCoy, was owned by the multi-millionaire punter J.P. McManus and trained by the National Hunt hero Jonjo O’Neill.

  Phone-ins hummed for days with the opinions of the emotional and the ignorant, only every now and then including that rarity, the genuinely informed. Animal rights activists, ranging from those truly concerned with horse welfare to the crudest of class warriors, had their say and once again racing played on the back foot. The RSPCA, which had often in the past worked sensibly with racing’s authorities to maximise safety, came out all guns blazing in 2012, labelling Becher’s Brook a ‘killer fence’ and demanding its scrapping.

  I entered the debate with a question: had anybody suggested because the Italian footballer Piermario Morosini had collapsed and died during an Italian Serie B football game or because Fabrice Muamba had suffered a cardiac arrest while playing for Bolton Wanderers that top-level football should therefore be abandoned?

  I accept it had its limitations as a parallel. Footballers, those with brain cells anyway, make their own decisions; horses do not. But the key point is that we cannot eliminate risk from sport, or from life.

  As for that year’s Grand National, I tried to emphasise a few facts. Synchronised was not injured because he was driven beyond his limits: he was put down because he broke his leg, not in the fall where he lost his jockey, nor even jumping another fence when running loose; the accident happened, to the enormous regret of owner, trainer and jockey, on the Flat. He took a false step and shattered his leg.

  It was at Becher’s that According to Pete broke his off-fore when ‘falling’ but in fact he jumped the fence well: he simply had nowhere to go then because another horse, On His Own, had fallen ahead of him. The irony was that ‘improvements’ to Becher’s following past protests probably did for According to Pete. What the professionals tell you is that easing Becher’s in previous modifications has made jockeys less fearful of the fence. Instead of fanning out across the course to tackle it they now go faster and crowd in. That, it seems, is what unsighted On His Own and caused him to fall.

  It is doubtful if changing any regulation could have prevented either death but on went the furore: scrap the National, scrap horseracing, let horses run free in fields, the animal rights campaigners were urging. But the week before, Great Endeavour, a quality chaser, was in a field owned by jockey Timmy Murphy, starting his summer holiday. No race was involved, there was no fence to jump, but he too broke a leg and died. Should we ban keeping horses in fields? Accidents happen and horses, because a broken leg in their case almost always means that life is unbearable or unsustainable, are especially vulnerable.

  Fences are the problem, say the campaigners, for now. End jump racing. Keep it to the Flat. But three horses died in a night’s racing at 2012’s Dubai World Cup, where no horse has ever been asked to jump a single obstacle.

  To listen to the campaigners, you would think there was constant carnage. Every death is sad, as those of us who spend time with jockeys, trainers or stable staff are especially aware. But that year horses participated in jumping races on 94,776 occasions. From that number, 181 horses received injuries which led to their deaths, a rate of 0.19 per cent. Not a bad comparison with your chances crossing the road.

  It was little wonder that one racecourse chief told me before the 2013 contest, ‘This year we’ll all be watching from behind the sofa.’ In fact, after the 2012 race three more ‘drop’ fences had their landing areas levelled out, and to calm the cavalry charge of 40 horses to the first fence the start was moved 90 yards closer to it, taking jockeys and horses away from the adrenalin-inducing hubbub from the stands. In the 2013 race, won by Aurora’s Encore, that seemed to help, with jockeys taking the early stages less recklessly. Also since 2012, six-year-olds have not been allowed to run in the National and participants must previously have finished fourth or better in a three-mile chase.

  I thoroughly approve of one change we saw in the 2013 race. Those big Aintree fences are now being built around plastic cores rather than timber posts, which can prove a fearsome obstacle on the second circuit when first-round fencers have kicked the spruce off them. That should probably have happened sooner and the fact is that serious, organised, well-informed campaigners have won some improvements over the years. Racing in the old days was too careless of the risks. But over recent years Aintree in particular and the horseracing authorities have responded to informed criticism with many changes designed to improve safety. We may even have gone too far: making the fences easier, some jockeys are warning, is making horses go faster and increasing, not diminishing, the injury risks. What we need now is a pause for the changes to bed in. What we seem to be forgetting, in an age when firemen are forbidden to wade into five-feet-deep ponds on health and safety grounds, is that the Grand National is not supposed to be like every other race: it is a unique sporting spectacle which engages the nation like no other and wins a TV audience far beyond any other race. It holds that position precisely because its fences are special, because at four miles plus it is longer than other races and because more horses take part than in other races.

  We are now at a turning point. Yes, let us have careful statistical surveys and annual reviews. If practical steps can be taken to reduce falls and injuries by, for example, eliminating more drop fences where the landing point is lower than the take-off, let us implement them. But we cannot eliminate all risk or all casualties from a sport which involves half a ton of horse jumping obstacles at speed. Muck about much more with the Grand National and it won’t any longer be grand or national, it will be just another lengthy steeplechase that there is no point in anybody tuning in to watch. And then how many of the horses who race over jumps today will even exist?

  What many now forget is that in the 1970s the race did nearly die. Property developer Bill Davies had bought the course from Muriel Topham and tripled admission prices, with the result that when Red Rum beat L’Escargot in 1975 it was in front of the smallest crowd in living memory. So thank heavens for Ladbrokes who rescued the race in dark times before handing it on to the Jockey Club. Thank heavens too for handicapper Phil Smith who has set the weights for the National since 1999 and compressed the handicap to bring much better quality horses into the top end of the National field. For example he reduced the top weight from the crushing 12 stone to 11st 12lb

  For many years large sections of the National field were running ‘out of the handicap’. Because there is a minimum weight carried in the race of 10st 0lb (to ensure there are enough jockeys available) many horses which would have been given weights below 10 stone in terms of their ability were running carrying excess weight and with little chance. But with Martell and then John Smith’s raising the prize money, better horses were attracted. Thanks to that and the higher achievement levels required from would-be participants, we do now get a better quality of race, even if the likes of Mon Mome at 100-1 and Aurora’s Encore at 66-1 still give the bookies an occasional bonanza day in the biggest betting race of the year. Now almost every year the horses running in the National are doing so carrying the weight appropriate to their rating. It has become a proper handicap.

  I talked to Phil Smith one year about how he made his assessments and he replied that he normally weighted horses on the
ir form over three miles on tracks like Haydock or Kempton but he took into account the fact that Aintree was different and the race was much longer:

  For the higher weighted horses I try to reduce the amount of weight they carry, bearing in mind that the further they travel the more likely the weight is to have an effect. You and I might be able to run a hundred metres carrying a bag of sugar under each arm but if we have to run two hundred metres with the same burden we are going to notice it more.

  Even handicappers can get things wrong of course. When Monty’s Pass landed a huge £1 million-plus gamble by winning the National in 2003, Phil Smith was so confident of his handicapping that he had promised to jump off the roof of the stands if anything won by more than seven lengths. At the line there was twelve lengths between Monty’s Pass and the second.

  When Phil Smith took over, no horse carrying more than 11 stone had won since Jenny Pitman’s Corbiere won in 1983. Not until 2005 when Hedgehunter won with 11st 1lb was that statistic overturned. By 2009 all the first four home carried 11 stone or more.

  We all have Nationals we remember more vividly than others. I once worked on the Sunday Express alongside ex-jockey Dick Francis and like millions I have never forgotten his mount Devon Loch’s collapse on the run-in in 1956, replayed so many times on grainy old newsreels. Nor will I ever forget the gallant effort by the top weight Crisp when Red Rum won for the first time in 1973. Crisp was carrying the maximum 12 stone, Red Rum 23lbs less and the only time Red Rum was in front was in the last ten yards. Crisp’s rider Richard Pitman is one of the nicest guys on the National Hunt scene and unfairly blames himself for his mugging at the finish by Ginger McCain’s charge. Trainer Fred Winter had intended Richard on Crisp to make the running and slow the pace from the front but there was no way the big black Crisp, an Australian import, was going to settle for that. The moment he had jumped one fence he wanted to attack the next and at one stage must have been forty lengths ahead of his field. Unfortunately he could not quite last home as Red Rum came after him but even coming second was for Richard, who had won races like the King George, the Hennessy and the Champion Hurdle, the most exhilarating ride of his life.

  The greatest recovery I ever saw was Brendan Powell’s success in 1988 on Rhyme n’ Reason. Jumping Becher’s the first time round, the horse lost his legs on landing and slithered many yards on his belly. By the time the pair set off again they were last of the 33 still standing. Gradually Brendan picked off the rest of the field and came with a great burst of speed after the last to beat Durham Edition and Monamore.

  Others perhaps would choose the success by Josh Gifford’s ex-invalid Aldaniti, ridden by cancer sufferer Bob Champion to win in 1981, as the ultimate fairy story turned into reality but for me Amberleigh House’s success in 2004 was special. At Aintree I never missed the chance of a few words with Ginger McCain when I could get them, even if all he was in the mood for was the bluest of blue jokes, and I wrote that weekend:

  Beside the parade ring as the wind sent the petals from the flowering cherries swirling around Philip Blacker’s bronze of Red Rum, three times the winner of the Grand National and twice second in the big race, groups congregated for family photos. Somebody had placed a bunch of red roses between the old boy’s forelegs. Inside the track, hundreds passed Red Rum’s daffodil-bedecked grave in the shadow of the winning post. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that the Grand National has lost, or ever could lose, its magic.

  Trainer Ginger McCain, who won Saturday’s race with Amberleigh House 27 years after his endeavours with Red Rum, does not forget it, declaring, ‘You can have your Gold Cups at Ascot with those toffee-nosed people, you can have your Cheltenham Festival with all your county set types and tweeds. But this is the people’s race.’

  He recalled when he first came to Aintree in 1938 or 1939 watching the race from the embankment on the canal: ‘We never saw a horse. Heard the crack of the fences, saw some caps go by but it was all part and parcel of the magic of this game. The turf is torn, the spruce from the fences has been kicked all over the course … in those days there would be three jockeys coming back on one horse or a jockey who’d pulled up coming back leading another faller.’

  Winning owner John Halewood is a Merseysider too. These days he has his own box but he remembers coming with his father, who died soon afterwards, early in the 1980s. They went round to the Canal Turn because they could not afford the Members Enclosure and his father said to him, ‘One day you might own a horse.’

  As for Ginger, ruddy of face, forthright in his opinions, with a twinkle in his eye and so appreciative at 73 of the skimpily wrapped curves on offer at Aintree that he claimed to have been off looking for some little blue pills, he is part of what racing is all about. Trainer Mick O’Toole once declared, ‘Racing is a game of make believe. If people didn’t think they had horses that were better than they really were, National Hunt racing would collapse.’

  You have to have that dream, as John Halewood did when he paid 90,000 punts for his National winner. But Ginger, now based in Cheshire, did have doubts when Amberleigh House arrived in his yard. ‘It was three o’clock in the morning, teeming with rain and I was in dressing gown and slippers. The horsebox driver let down the ramp and there was this tiny horse shivering in the corner of the box, no rug, no head collar, and I said, “That’s not him, that’s not the Amberleigh House I saw win at Punchestown.” You know how the Irish like to stitch up us English trainers. But what a grand little horse he’s been.’

  Many thought Ginger, who has been insisting for three years that he had another potential National winner even when the horse was so lowly handicapped that he could not get into the race, reckoned he was dreaming a dream too far. He thought his best chance might have gone when Amberleigh House was third last year. But he is happy to take older horses to Aintree, reckoning that while they may be beaten by younger animals round some of the easier park courses, the challenge of the big Aintree fences revives them by making them think where impetuous younger horses blunder their chances away.

  I had in earlier days seen Ginger, who was by then based in Cheshire and enjoying the assistance of his canny and courteous son Donald [whose Ballabriggs was to continue family tradition by winning the 2011 National], exercising his horses on the Southport sands behind his used car salerooms. Ginger was old-school and proud of it in what we usually hoped was his tongue-in-cheek way: ‘As for no French-bred horse winning the National since 1909 – everyone goes on about the French-breds. You’d think there was something magical about buying them. But Ryan Price bought them, Eric Cousins used to buy them. They talk about them being taught to jump when they are two years old and all that but they don’t last. They’re not like a big store-bred four-year-old that you get and break in with no mileage on the clock. Horses are like cars: you’ve only got so much mileage in them and when that’s gone you’ve got nothing.’

  Ginger, who was clearly no Lib Dem voter, goes on: ‘They bring in this Yogi Breisner (the Scandinavian jumping guru much in demand with southern trainers and riders) – he’s not a bleeding Englishman, he’s not even an Irishman. Any trainer that has to bring in a foreigner to teach his horses how to jump should hand his bloody licence in because he’s not entitled to it.’

  That, I commented, should cause a few winces over Lambourn’s breakfast tables. And if such opinions brought Ginger within dangerous reach of the Race Relations Act, he had the Equal Opportunities people gasping the next year when trainer’s wife Carrie Ford, twice the leading woman jockey over jumps, was riding Forest Gunner in the National. She had been in the saddle for that horse’s victory in the Foxhunters Chase just ten weeks after giving birth to daughter Hannah but Ginger dismissed her chance in the big race, declaring ‘Carrie is a broodmare now and having kids doesn’t get you fit to ride.’

  But if Ginger was entitled to a little sounding-off after Amberleigh House’s victory, others too had played a notable part, notabl
y the horse himself who, said his jockey Graham Lee, was baulked so badly at Becher’s that he took it virtually from a standing start. Lee too deserves enormous credit for his coolness. So often, races are given away by premature moves, particularly on such a highly charged occasion as a Grand National. Graham and Donald McCain, the trainer’s son, had planned for him to ride a waiting race but the mayhem ahead of him had ensured that Amberleigh House was much further behind the leaders than they had hoped. When the horses came back into the straight with Amberleigh House still apparently out of contention, Lee did not rush to make up his ground as he felt a strong headwind. ‘When I felt I should have been going for him I thought, well, I’ll count to ten first because he’s only got one run.’ He let the others came back to him. As a result Amberleigh House’s run came just as Clan Royal and Lord Atterbury, punch drunk, were beginning to roll all over the course. [Hedgehunter had fallen at the last.] That was a ten-second delay that probably won a National.

  Whoever would have thought, as Graham Lee described the National victory as the best day of his life, that in 2012 he would return to the Flat racing career that had failed to take off before and ride a hundred winners that season.

  Another National was special for me because it was won by the best jockey I will ever see over jumps, Tony McCoy. It was special for AP too, not just because he landed the race at his fifteenth attempt (it took Frankie Dettori the same number of attempts to win his first Derby) but because I believe it was the moment when the iron man of racing truly learned how much the racing public adored him.

  Biblical scholars say five is the number of grace, three the number of perfection. ‘Fifteen therefore relates to acts wrought by divine grace.’ I don’t know if Tony McCoy was saying his prayers as his mount Don’t Push It cleared the last and headed round The Elbow for the Grand National finishing line but he deserved any divine intervention that was going.