Monday Musings: Another Noble National?

For the whole of the intervening 12 months, I have been insisting that Noble Yeats will win his second Randox Grand National at Aintree on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford. Winner at 50/1 as a seven-year-old last April, he is set to carry 15lb more this time and start at one-sixth the odds. But no matter!

As the legendary Red Rum, half a century ago, and his modern nearest equivalent Tiger Roll showed in their turn, weight is not really the barrier to a repeat win. It’s the aptitude for the fences and a spirit that remains unbroken having run over them, that wins the day.

The three horses had widely differing starts in life. Red Rum, foaled in 1965, started with a dead-heat in a two-year-old selling race at the 1967 Grand National meeting which in those days was interspersed between flat racing and jumps.

It was another six years from that modest start before his epic first win, when Red Rum and Brian Fletcher pegged back Crisp and Richard Pitman from a distance behind as that two-mile specialist ran out of puff on the run-in.

Saturday is his half-centenary and I can still remember that we watched the race in the Managing Editor’s office on the fourth floor of the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. I believe that was the only television set in the entire building and in those days a cup of tea in the canteen cost 10p – amazing, really, how inflation took over after decimalisation two years before in 1971!

I’d tipped him in the paper coming back from the weights lunch the previous month in whatever swish Central London hotel they staged it. Red Rum had 10st 5lb, receiving 23lb from Crisp, the great Australian, trained by Fred Winter. He also won the following year and, after second places to dual Gold Cup winner L’Escargot and then Rag Trade, he completed the hat-trick aged 12 in 1977 under Tommy Stack.

Tiger Roll’s start came a year and a half later in life, in a three-year-old hurdle at Market Rasen, trained by Nigel Hawke. As with Red Rum, he was to change hands before astounding Hawke with what the son of Derby winner Authorized would achieve.

He too won consecutive Grand Nationals as an eight and nine-year-old. He was denied the chance of a hat-trick when the 2020 race was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. Those two multiple winners were among 14 eight-year-olds that won the race in the period between 1940 and last year.

Noble Yeats was filling that gap, repeating the achievement of Bogskar, the 1940 hero and the last seven-year-old to win before Noble Yeats.

The amazing part of his story was his inexperience over fences. Indeed, his inexperience per se, before his date with destiny. He did not make his chase debut until six months before his Grand National victory, in a 2m2.5f conditions event at Galway, which he won by a neck.

At that point his entire career record had been: second in a point; then third and first in maiden bumpers before a sixth in a Graded bumper and then an easy win in the only hurdle race he’s ever contested.

Following on from that initial chase success, his next win, amazingly, was in the Grand National and the miracle is how trainer Emmet Mullins and the horse’s connections ever got him qualified to run.

The Grand National is a race open to horses aged seven years and upwards (phew, just made it) that have been placed in the first four in any steeplechase of at least 2m7.5 furlongs and must have run in six chases.

Additionally, they need to have run in at least one steeplechase in the current season and have recorded a rating of at least 125.

The cut-off date this year was February 15. So, by around that date in 2022, Mullins and the horse’s then owner Paul Byrne – he wasn’t acquired by Robert Waley-Cohen until after all the red tape had been successfully tied up – had several conditions to fulfil.

His chase programme after the initial win was an unplaced run a in a Grade 3 over 2m4f; sixth in a 2m110y handicap; ninth in the big Leopardstown 3m chase over the Christmas holiday; and then he pulled up in a race the following month. That just left a few days for him to run in a sixth chase and finish in the first four effectively over three miles.

Naturally, original planners Mullins and Byrne had the answer, coming across to England for a Grade 2 novice chase at Wetherby on February 5.  In the event, he was comfortably beaten by the smart Ahoy Senor, but Mullins and Byrne knew they would be fine to set up their attractively packaged Aintree prospect as there were only four runners. All they needed was for Noble Yeats to get round.

That he did for a creditable second and with his rating of 148 already well ahead of the minimum handicap requirement of 125, the deal was duly and swiftly completed. He even went off to Cheltenham for a feeler under the not so young amateur who was going to bow out of riding after partnering him at Aintree.

I must say, if anyone saw it coming I certainly didn’t, but here in Sam Waley-Cohen was one of the old-style amateurs who bar his family and business background, would have made a decent fist of challenging for a jump riding title. Instead, along the way he happily rolled up at Cheltenham, riding the 2011 Gold Cup winner Long Run for his father and Nicky Henderson.

His successes at Aintree were even more plentiful, often outclassing his fellow amateurs in the Foxhunters and always seeming to get round whenever he encountered the fearsome fences.  Even against the pros, he had possibly the best radar around the big fences. That was one of the qualities Red Rum’s dual winning rider Brian Fletcher also had at a time when it wasn’t so easily achieved.

Noble Yeats was ninth to Corach Rambler in the 2022 Ultima at Cheltenham, in the race before his big win, giving Sam a nice feel, racing wide all the way. Twelve months on, after the year older Corach Rambler was advertising his 2023 Grand National claims with a repeat Ultima success for the Lucinda Russell team, Noble Yeats’ attentions were fixed on much bigger fish.

He started in the Gold Cup, now with new rider Sean Bowen on board and, while never in contention, the way he finished to take a late fourth place, as the front three headed by Galopin Des Champs had their own private battle, was the most eye-catching Aintree trial you could imagine.

You could just about pick him out a dozen lengths behind the second wave coming down the hill for the last time in the Gold Cup and he was still a long way back two from home. From there he finished fastest of all for fourth. On the long gallop home from the last fence down the far side second time round to coming back onto the racecourse for the two final fences at Aintree, I expect his galloping power to wipe them all away.

Last year’s runner-up Any Second Now gets a nice weight pull and the first two home in the Cross-Country at Cheltenham, Delta Work and Galvin, are two obvious top-class threats for Tiger Roll’s trainer Gordon Elliott. But that fourth place in the Gold Cup and his fantastic fast finish was enough to reinforce my long-held belief that here is the reincarnation of Red Rum, exactly half a century from that little champion’s arrival on the Aintree scene.

- TS

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