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Monday Musings: BBC Shows National Apathy

13 April 2026/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Have you ever needed to get somewhere but have found yourself stuck in traffic, writes Tony Stafford. Of course you have. At £1.90 a litre for diesel (if you’re lucky) you would imagine there would be fewer than usual cars out on the North Circular Road in London, early on a Saturday April afternoon, but no.

I needed to get home to watch the Grand National having undertaken an errand but realised it unlikely unless I wanted to collect a guaranteed speeding ticket. Brainwave! Didn’t BBC Radio Five Live cover every race of the Cheltenham Festival’s four days uninterrupted last month, with Gina Brice at the helm? Why wouldn’t they give some attention to the event their admirable chief commentator (and West Ham United fan) John Hunt rightly described as the “most famous race in the world”?

We had the vital matter beforehand of full commentary of Brentford versus Everton from 3pm but with the big race starting an hour later, Steve Crossman, hosting the day’s coverage from Aintree, assured racing fans that there would be the best build-up to the race, with the football switching to Radio Five Sports Extra while we were at Aintree.

Needless to say, there were five additional minutes to the first half at Brentford, so it wasn’t until 3.50 and 35 seconds that the half-time whistle blew.

Once more, this time by commentator Ian Dennis, we were promised all the build-up was on its way. If you want to stay with the football, retune to Sports Extra, otherwise here it’s all about the 178^th Grand National.

Crossman by now had the microphone, announcing there’s ten minutes to go and that he had just “seen I Am Maximus in the golden dark brown colours” (sic). Then without a second breath he added, “half times in the football, Burnley/Brighton” and we got a brief report on that so important match.

Next Steve was “in the parade ring with the suits, dresses – all the colours of the rainbow. On the course, John Hunt”. “Can Willie Mullins win it again and make it three in a row to equal Vincent O’Brien’s feat of 70 years ago?”

John spotted Panic Attack and Gerri Colombe, one of five runners for Gordon Elliott, and noted JP McManus and his six runners.

Steve jumped in, “Half-time Oxford 1-0, St Mirren…, Southampton 0 Derby 1. Other half-times <without reports>”.

Seamlessly, he switched back to Aintree and Davy Russell, twice the winner on Tiger Roll. “When you go out to ride in the Grand National what do you feel?”

Davy says, “You have to keep calm, take your routine, think about which horses you want to be around, and those you don’t want to be near <in the race>.

Again Steve showed his nimbleness. “Half-time, Hearts… Could the door be creaking open for Celtic? The reporter said, “Celtic are dominating the ball…”

Steve again: “Other scores, League 2 Newport/ Harrogate. That reporter informed Grand National fans hanging on every word that Newport had achieved the great escape in avoiding relegation from the Football League nine years ago and now that fate seems destined for basement club Harrogate.

Back to John. “The last chance for punters to have a bet.” Over to Rob Nothman who has been at the BBC since the time they used to broadcast live sport on TV. “Betting movements. I Am Maximus is favourite at 13/2, Jagwar second favourite at 15/2 ahead of Panic Attack at 8/1.”

Time marches on, but it stands still if you want football info. Live scores… but even as the last dregs of the halftimes around the country were dribbled out, the sound of bugles could be heard in the background.

Steve again. “This sound tells us that it’s nearly time, the buglers of the King’s Guard in their red tunics and black caps. Davy is still with us.”

Davy: “So many bright colours, bays, greys, all the jockeys’ colours. Gerri Colombe is a good horse, Oscars Brother, trained by Connor King and ridden by his brother, Daniel. “

Steve: “The jockeys climb on board … and walk past Blackmore’s Bar named after Rachael, the first woman to ride the winner of the race. Then Red Rum’s Bar. Toby McCain-Mitchell, grandson of three-time winner Red Rum’s trainer Ginger McCain has the ride on Top Of The Bill.”

Back to John. “They are cantering down right in front of us” and then John introduces his three co-commentators, in order Darren Owen, Gary O’Brien and Gina Brice, the first woman, they say, to commentate on the race. Do I not remember though in the dim and distant past, Aintree’s then owner Mirabel Topham, an actress in her younger days, once making a very amateurish attempt at doing so when the normal commentator stayed away?

Back to Steve. “Davy, I bet the heart rate goes through the roof when the race starts.”

Davy: “Yes, but it’s eerily quiet all the way round.” Davy valiantly and generously tries to get Andrew Thornton, another former jockey and regular Sky Sports Racing man in the north, also one of the pillars of the Cheltenham radio coverage, into the discussion, but he’s shut down.

Steve now must bring in the script he presumably wrote that morning, thus. “You might love the manicured greens of Augusta, the clean white lines of the football but this is all about the torn-up turf, mud, sand and hammering hooves.”

John says: “And torn-up tickets! It’s the biggest betting race of the year, so Rob?”

“I Am Maximus is down to 11/2 clear favourite ahead of 7/1 Panic Attack and 8/1 Jagwar.”

By now they were standing at the start and at 4.02 23, 12 minutes and two seconds after the half-time whistle at Brentford, they were off. The money had continued to go on I Am Maximus, apparently principally a £100k winning bet, reputedly from none other than his owner JP McManus. A hundred grand bet from JP is like a tenner from most of the punters there on the day and in the betting shops of the UK. Not to mention a fiver for you and me!

I stopped off straight after the race to get a bar of chocolate in a petrol station and got back to the car at 4.15 on the dot. Radio Five Live happily had sorted all the post-race thoughts from its team by then and we were back at Brentford. No need to retune then!

Bang on 5pm, the strains of the introduction to the station’s long-running Sports Report programme, still with Steve in the saddle, as it were, from Aintree. He did have a quite lengthy and informative interview with Willie Mullins, keeping John Hunt nearby to help Steve avoid the obvious blunders that the once-a-year “expert” can make.

Willie said how he had wanted to concentrate on the Gold Cup for I Am Maximus and leave the Grand National alone as he’s already won it. “But thankfully, JP was firm wanting him to have another try.”

Mullins suggested there would still be time to win a Gold Cup. “Didn’t L’Escargot win a Gold Cup and then a Grand National?”

Quite right in some respect, but the amazing L’Escargot won two Gold Cups, age seven and eight, then at the age of 12, at the fourth Aintree attempt, overturned a previous defeat in the race by Red Rum, by 15 lengths all from the last fence! How good was he? That was one of two second places for the race’s greatest alongside the three wins. Even the very classy I Am Maximus would do well to match that!

Having backed L’Escargot for that first Gold Cup at 14/1 ante-post I watched him drift to 33’s on the day, but it remains one of the thrills of my racing life being there to see him win, as it was on my first ever visit to the meeting when he won a division of the Gloucestershire Hurdle.

To win a Grand National five years after a first Gold Cup was astonishing. His owner, Raymond Guest, also went down in history for a similarly amazing double. He was the winning owner of one of the great Derby winners, Sir Ivor, trained by Vincent O’Brien after the legendary handler had packed up the jumping game as he had nothing more to prove.

Last week I said I was bored with the Grand National as it had all become too predictable. Mullins did win it again, but he only had a fifth and an eighth among his other seven runners. There were again two UK horses in the first ten, McManus’ Iroko and Johnnywho (4th). The former followed I Am Maximus through late on to pip Joseph O’Brien’s Jordans for second after the Jordans had looked to have the race won under Ben Jones’ aggressive ride.

That meant last year’s second and fourth moved up one spot and two respectively, as the winner, Mullins’ Nick Rockett, was a late withdrawal. Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero reckon runner-up Iroko can make it third time lucky next year.

Although rated 150, so guaranteed to get in the race, Jordans had only one win from 11 runs over fences on his card, but fortunately that was over three miles, otherwise he wouldn’t have been qualified to run. Joseph O’Brien is sure to exploit him to great effect in the future.

There was a measure of unpredictability this year, as seven horses fell with another seven unseating their riders as 16 of the 34 finished the course. At the first fence Patrick Mullins, last year’s winning rider, was unseated from his father’s Grangeclare West, the third home last year. Two more casualties quickly followed: Quai De Bourbon, also Mullins, 33/1, fell at the second and Panic Attack, badly hampered by the latter there, departed at the big ditch that followed.

So Dan Skelton didn’t bring home the Grand National, but four winners on the day (184 on the season) brought him to £4,762,920 against Mullins’ Grand National-enhanced figure of £2,668,886. Dan could be in reach of that unprecedented £5 million seasonal haul with money aplenty on offer at Ayr and Sandown and loads of little fish in between (little fish are sweet, as Arthur Stephenson used to say). I think he can do it.

As to the BBC, I don’t want you to think that Steve Crossman made a bad job of things. It’s just that whoever produced that show ought to have switched the entire football coverage from 3pm onwards to Sports Extra, leaving a full hour to dissect the many interesting aspects of what they did repeatedly say was the world’s biggest race. Then another period of reflection bringing it up to 5pm and Sports Report.

In the end, it was 12 minutes and two seconds, with at least half of it given away to keep us racing fans abreast of events at St Mirren and the travails of Harrogate Town.

I wonder how the executives at the beleaguered Beeb can equate six minutes as the “best build-up to the biggest betting race in the world” – with the reputed (was it 70?) BBC staff being sent across to cover the Masters golf at the same time at licence-payers’ expense. That’s another major event you need to search for elsewhere to see it live.

The BBC has had more than its share of scandals in recent times. That they no longer televise the Grand National is shameful enough, leaving it to ITV and Racing TV. But to think that six minutes is regarded as the best build-up coverage shows just how warped the Corporation’s values have become.

- TS

Monday Musings: Bored of the National?

6 April 2026/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Are you bored with the Grand National? I am and I would never have believed it could happen in the days when I used to make my selection in the Daily Telegraph for the race straight after going to the weights press conference, writes Tony Stafford.

That started, believe it or not, when Red Rum got up to beat Crisp in 1973 – he won it twice more, of course – and happened another eight times in my three decades of trying. Then there were 40 runners, stiff, unforgiving fences, many fallers, few completions and the race, if not stopping a nation, as the Melbourne Cup reputedly does, was the vehicle for office sweepstakes all around the country, mainly eagerly contested by people who never bet otherwise.

Last year, with the new limitation on runners, down to 34, easier obstacles and a slightly shorter trip, it has become almost another long-distance steeplechase on a park course to be mopped up by the big Irish brigades.

With no incentive not to run as the need for specialist jumping skills other than getting from one side to the other has become irrelevant, the same old names will be trotted out year on year.

The 2025 version had the full complement of 34 runners and 16 of them (41%) completed. The so-called “fearsome” Aintree fences, 30 of them, accounted for only five casualties. Three horses fell, one unseated the rider and a fifth was brought down, so just 14% actual casualties. Additionally, 13 were pulled up.

I could have landed anywhere over the past half Century, but I thought 20 years would be enough for most racing fans’ appetites. That year, 40 horses took their place in the line-up, just nine finished – Numbersixvalverde, trained by Martin Brassil in Ireland, beating the 2005 winner Hedgehunter, notable as the first Grand National winner for Willie Mullins.

Hedgehunter had another three attempts, during sparing campaigns between tries, while in 2006, the 2004 winner, Amberleigh House, ridden by Graham Lee with to my mind the outstanding ride in the race during my seven decades of watching, was pulled up as a 14-year-old behind Numbersixvalverde.

It took another 19 years before Ireland’s perennial champion trainer added to it with I Am Maximus, who tried valiantly to repeat history for the stable last April, failing but only in an honourable second place as Hedgehunter had done almost two decades earlier.

Here, Saturday’s top-weight had to give best to the almost unconsidered Nick Rockett, a 33/1 shot ridden by the trainer’s son and supreme amateur Patrick Mullins. He too will be back again, second highest-rated after having an interrupted career since.

To complete the Mullins stranglehold in terms of recent Aintree form, we have Grangeclare West, third last year and now nicely into form having won the Bobbyjo Chase, often a good guide to the big one. There he beat another of the high-weighted horses in Saturday’s line-up in Gordon Elliott’s Gerri Colombe.

Gerri Colombe is one of five Elliott horses guaranteed to run, and with the riches on offer, £500,000 to the winner and a total of £1,000,000 to disperse, it’s hardly surprising that we’ll be lucky to get more than one or two absentees by race time.

Elliott trained Silver Birch, the 2007 winner, so early into his training career that he had yet to train a single winer in Ireland. He has proved throughout the subsequent two decades, with a blip or two along the way, that he knows how to prepare an Aintree horse, winning twice with Tiger Roll, who probably would have equalled Red Rum’s three wins if Covid hadn’t intervened to stop the 2020 edition of the race.

Belatedly back to 2006, I must say there was one element I hadn’t either been aware of or simply forgot. The winner’s owner, Mr Carroll, collected a few pennies short of £400,000. With the loss of value due to annual inflation over the intervening time, that equates to an equivalent of almost £700,000 today.

So, while we gasp at the big prize pool on offer, it still hasn’t kept pace with inflation, not that Mullins minded 12 months ago when he copped £885k of the million total on offer.

In 2006, in a field of 40, nine got round. Eleven fell, six unseated rider and two refused. As last year, there were plenty of pulled-up horses, 12 against 13 last year. Thus only 22% finished the course and another 46% were casualties.

If you thought Elliott had a strong hand as he aims for a fourth win in the race, Mullins with nine of the 34 guaranteed places, has 26% of the entire field. Add the other three top Irish jumps trainers, Gavin Cromwell, Henry de Bromhead and Joseph O’Brien, and you get 21 of the 34, almost two-thirds. Only nine UK-trained horses are guaranteed a run, two of them, Iroko and Jagwar, owned by JP McManus and trained by Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero, both with decent chances.

Others I would like to see win are Mr Vango, trained by my long-term Daily Telegraph colleague, the late John Oaksey’s daughter Sara Bradstock and Panic Attack, trained by Dan Skelton.

Panic Attack has been a star already this season, the ten-year-old mare impressively winning the Coral Gold Cup (formerly Hennessy) over 3m2f and after another easy win at Cheltenham In January, she then finished third to Mullins’ brilliant mare Dinoblue in the Grade 1 Mares Chase when dropping back to 2m4f at the Festival last time out.

Panic Attack has been a stand-out contributor to Dan Skelton’s season in which he has become the first trainer ever to break the £4 million barrier in a season. Last year Mullins earned £3,570k from his UK runners, but that had twice previously been exceeded by Paul Nicholls, Skelton’s mentor.

Nicholls set a mark of £3,646,511 in 2007/08 and then exceeded it by a paltry £75 another 15 seasons later. If Skelton could win with Panic Atack it would push his takings towards an almost unthinkable £5 million. To achieve that though he would need to pick up many of the valuable prizes this week at Aintree, next week at Ayr and on finals day at Sandown later in the month.

It would be a supreme achievement should Panic Attack win. She would be the first mare to do so since the Jack O’Donoghue-trained Nickel Coin in 1951, 75 years ago. Neville Crump, three years earlier, won with Sheila’s Cottage, the first of her sex to be successful in the race since 1902. It isn’t easy – only 13 mares have won in the near 200 year history of the race, most in the days when they were walked to the course! If she does win, it would rank as Dan’s most treasured career moment.

Meanwhile, with the UK turf flat campaign still in its “phoney war” phase, most interest this Easter is with the domestic Mullins/Elliott rivalry at Fairyhouse and Cork yesterday and today.

Numerically there isn’t much between them with Mullins running a total of 52 horses over the two days and Elliott 48, but as ever it is in the Graded races where Mullins holds the advantage. He needed to retrieve a little over £300k on his rival, having lodged €4,175,250 with 172 wins from 704 runs and 284 individual horses.

Elliott’s 171 wins have come from 1066 runs from 314 individual horses. They don’t race every day in Ireland by a long shot but that’s an average of two runs every day for Mullins and three for Elliott. Would you want to take them on? That makes it even more admirable that young Mr Skelton – maybe not so young now – has managed to see everyone off and in record-breaking fashion too!

The feature of yesterday’s racing was Harry Cobden’s continuing quest, eventually into the 30s, to ride a first winner in Ireland. JP McManus’ retained jockey for next season finally got the job done on the last of six Mullins runners, five of them favourites, and four, like the sole winner Funiculi Funicula, at odds-on.

As to my Grand National 1-2-3 it’s Panic Attack from Banbridge (Joseph O’Brien) and Mr Vango. Sorry Willie, but there’s always next year.

- TS

Monday Musings: Levelling Up

17 February 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Much was made when the entries came out of this year’s alleged “levelling up” of the respective teams for the Randox Grand National, writes Tony Stafford. Home stables, tired of the now routine grab of almost all of the £1 million prize money by the Irish, had entered close to half (37 of the 87 still engaged) so would have better chances to keep the prizes at home, went the thinking.

Fat chance. Nowadays only 34 can run, making the task of breaking into that portion guaranteed a place in the starting lineup almost impossible. Of last year’s field of 32 (two cried off with vet’s certificates on the day of the race), only eight were UK trained. In contrast, Willie Mullins ran eight on his own, and Gordon Elliott seven. Three each from those all-powerful stables started at 40/1 and bigger and they all pulled up. The Mullins trio of pullers-up were 100/1, 40/1 and 125/1: Elliott’s were 125/1, 50/1 and 100/1.

No hopers maybe and, just as possibly, their respective owners fancied an afternoon at Aintree and the privilege of being looked after by the redoubtable, nay vivacious, redhead Siobhan Doolan in the owners’ dining room! More likely, their main purpose was to eliminate as many potential UK threats to the big two stables as they possibly could.

With just shy of 50 per cent of the field, it was hard to imagine their failing to get among the big prizes and so they did. Mullins won it with I Am Maximus in the JP McManus colours, and Elliott was second and fourth with old-timers Delta Work and Galvin.

Their compatriot, Henry de Bromhead, had three runners, and two of the first six home in third-placed Minella Indo, the 2021 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, and Ain’t That A Shame, sixth for amateur-riding owner David Maxwell. Only the Maxwell horse does not have the Aintree ticket this time, but the Irish top quartet from last year do. Christian Williams’ fifth-placed Kitty’s Light does not have the entry.

At nine, I Am Maximus will be the baby of the returning team, and he is up 8lb to a top-weighted 167. Second and third are now age 12, and the fourth is an 11-year-old. They aren’t for moving anytime soon.

Two Venetia Williams horses are the sole UK interlopers in the top ten in the weights. Both Royale Pagaille, the second top-weight, and L’Homme Presse ran on Saturday and neither showed the sort of form needed to be feasible contenders at Aintree or, more immediately, in the Gold Cup at Cheltenham.

Royale Pagaille has a fantastic record at Haydock but, predictably, asking him to give almost two stone to some tough staying handicappers in the Grand National Trial over 3m4f there proved too demanding a task. He faded out of contention behind an impressive winner in Nicky Richards’ Famous Bridge, who does have the Aintree entry, as does runner-up Apple Away and fourth-placed Git Maker.

Famous Bridge had been loping along easily in the same race 12 months earlier, when unseating his rider Sean Quinlan six fences from home. The race was won by Gavin Cromwell’s Yeah Man. He returned aiming at the follow-up but this time it was he that didn’t get round.

Royal Pagaille’s intervention in this race had a significant difference to Famous Bridge’s chances, even if he was running off only a 1lb lower handicap mark. Last year, Famous Bridge carried 11st4lb, now he was 16lb lower on 10st2lb. Checking back, he had never carried less than 11st in any of his last ten races over the previous two years! Going as far as three-and-a-half miles, that surely would make a massive difference and so it proved.

So is Nicky Richards planning ahead to the big day in April? Hardly. On 136, Famous Bridge is number 80, five places lower than Lucinda Russell’s mare Apple Away. To complete the trio of unrealistic Grand National candidates from this so-called Trial, Jamie Snowden’s Git Maker in a closing fourth, is number 84.

Famous Bridge did well to collect the £57k first prize. Yeah Man, rated 144 and who unseated on Saturday, is number 61 for the big race. The lowest mark to get in last year was 146. It could happen, but Gavin Cromwell is almost sure to have his sights lowered, maybe to a Cheltenham handicap with the Irish Grand National even more a possible destination.

The other Venetia star L’Homme Presse did his Gold Cup aspirations no favours with an abject performance in the Grade 1 Ascot Chase. Jumping out to the left from an early stage, he was soon pulled up by Charlie Deutsch as the Paul Nicholls-trained Pic D’Orhy won in trademark all-the-way style.

Nicholls showed his emotion, first cheering the horse and Harry Cobden home with his inimitable energy. Then, when interviewed later, he showed how much he was relieved at this first Grade 1 success for his stable since Pic D’Orhy won the same race 12 months ago. Don’t worry Paul, nobody thinks you’re anything but a fantastic trainer. What do they say, form is temporary, class is permanent?

Anyway, the Irish do not intend relinquishing the £500,000 top Grand National prize lightly and it seems more inevitable by the day that JP McManus will be making it Grand National win number four.

He has the first three in the betting with Inothewayurthinkin on top at 8/1 for Cromwell, and last year’s winner second in at 12’s. Slightly from left field is third favourite Iroko, trained in the UK by Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero; he gets in fine as he’s number 27 on the list.

His latest fourth place in a Grade 3 handicap at Cheltenham last month attracted the attention of the stewards who interviewed Jonjo O’Neill, his rider, afterwards and then issued a lengthy report of his comments. Reading between the lines, it doesn’t seem that they were totally convinced by what he told them, and the 14/1 price about the horse, a seven-year-old as is Inothewayurthinkin, reflects the market’s fear of a McManus “plunge”, if he still bothers plunging that is.

Nicky Richards has been recovering well from the riding accident which caused such serious injuries last year, and his horses have been providing the ideal tonic. As well as the valuable prize so deservedly collected by Famous Bridge in the revered Hemmings racing colours, he has also been having a great time with previously unraced bumper horses.

He even asked me to mention a couple of weeks ago to the boss of the geegeez.co.uk team that he had some horses available for syndication and that surely Geegeez needed a representation in the north of the country! Sorry Nicky, no joy on that one.

It seems that Thursday’s debut bumper winner Upon Tweed had been the subject of considerable interest, and he says, “I’m not sure I’ll be training him for much longer. I’ll never stop being amazed how much money agents seem to have to bid on behalf of wealthy people for prospective jumping horses, but they do!”

At the other end of the scale, the latest Tattersalls Online sale last week proved little short of a total washout. Two or three sequences of around ten horses at a time did not receive a suitable bid between them when the closing time for their sale came up with a few minutes’ space in between them. I made it that only 53 of 137 lots changed hands and many of these at bargain basement levels. The whole sale might have struggled to match what Upon Tweed eventually goes for when that piece of horse trading concludes.

Richards' accident last year is testimony to the inherent dangers of riding racehorses. Yesterday’s news that Michael O’Sullivan, at 24 one of the most promising jump jockeys in Ireland, had died following his fall in a race at Thurles last week, shocked the racing community there and here in the UK, too.

Racing families are uniquely resilient, but such terrible accidents are a constant reminder that the ambulances, doctors and vets that attend every race in the principal racing countries are not in any way arbitrary but rather absolutely essential.

- TS

Roving Reports: Aintree Mayhem

29 April 2024/in Horse Racing Blog/by David Massey

As we come to the end of another jumps season, one in which my 6-1 Sean Bowen to win the jockeys' title was arguably the best-value loser I’ll ever bet (yes, get those tiny violins out for me), I’d better be telling you about what April has been like on the road for us, writes David Massey. And that means all roads leading to Aintree, to begin with.

I decided to drive there myself this year as, with the weather threatening all four seasons over the three days, I’ve so much clothing and rainwear that I can at least leave the majority of it in the car each day, rather than go through the laborious process of transferring it all to my lift, and then having to sit on a postage-stamp sized space in the back as there’s no room left for me. It’s a good decision, plus it means the music there and back is a sight better. (Aintree playlist: Orange Juice, The Fall (obviously), The Wedding Present, A Certain Ratio, amongst others. It’s basically the best Indie Disco you’ll attend.)

Thursday morning, 8am, and we leave the hotel for the track. And here’s the first result of the day, and what a result: the bookies car park, which for the last two years has resembled something that they might have held Junior Kickstart on back in the day, has been paved over! Okay, not paved, but they’ve put down a lot of stones to try and remedy the situation. It works, to a point - some water is still seeping through, but let’s not moan, at least we aren’t dragging the kit through muck and mud. They make sure we pay for the privilege, mind, with prices increasing 40% year on year. Up go the expenses…

For the bookmakers, Aintree is about a lot of standing around in the mornings. You have to be there early because the pick time for your pitch is around 10am each day, but of course there’s no point in starting to bet until midday at the earliest. So there’s not much to do. Thankfully, I can go and get some work done and, more importantly, grab a tea and bacon roll in the media centre, to which I have access. Enjoy the cold, lads, I’m off to find a nice warm chair!

Thursday is always the quietest day of the three, but equally you’re far more likely to bump into a lumpy bet, which is exactly what happens when we go 11-10 Sir Gino in the Juvenile Hurdle. Despite some sketchy leaps late on, our intrepid punter never really has that much worry and he duly lands him his £1100 quid profit. Four of the first five favourites going in is a disaster for many of the books, and they hardly get any respite in the Red Rum with second-favourite Sans Bruit beating the favourite. Only Diva Luna in the last offers any respite.

I’m Southport-bound Thursday night to discuss some racing business with friends. I can’t reveal too much at this stage but all I can say is stay tuned, some exciting developments are in the pipeline that we hope can shake up the status quo a bit! Exciting times ahead, but I will say if we pull it off, it’ll probably be the end of my days working with the bookmakers, as my time will be taken up elsewhere. So enjoy the tales this summer, they may be the last…

Anyway, back to Aintree and Friday, Ladies Day. Let’s give the ladies of Liverpool their due; they know £2.50 each-way is a fiver, and that if there’s seven runners, you’ll only get first two each-way. Been brought up right, in my opinion. It seems packed out and almost inevitably, the push-and-shove means two lads start scrapping right in front of the joint. I should point out this is before the first race, too, so they aren’t even tanked up yet. There’s no security around to stop it, and we try and alert a nearby copper, but sadly he’s out on the track and can’t actually do a lot other than report it in. It’s fizzling out but one of the lads is covered in blood. Remarkably, he’s still around come Race 5, hawking a docket around, not knowing which bookie he’s had the bet with, so it’s not as if the course got active and kicked them out either. A very scary episode, particularly for a lot of young ladies who almost got caught up in it all, who hid around the back of the joint.

Back to the on-track action. Friday is FOMO day. For those of you not down with the kids, like what I am, FOMO means Fear Of Missing Out. In betting terms, what this means is that every group of lads you come across that bet with you will all back the same horse, generally the favourite. Win together, lose together. Nobody in that group wants to be the one to say they backed something else as the rest celebrate a winner. Nothing worse. So for the first, they all want to be on Inothewayurthinkin and although at various times he looks in trouble thanks to some shoddy jumping, by the time we reach the last it’s game over for the books as the jolly romps clear. A big payout, and all they want to do is play it up on Kateira.

When that wins the second (from the unlucky Jango Baie) I’m already into the reserve float for more twenties, but they’re piling in now, and Mystical Power is their latest target. Bang, in it goes, and the punters are up 3-0. This is chaos now. More reserves are called for. Bet, bet, bet, pay, pay, pay. It’s just relentless and for all we’re trying to keep up, the queues look endless. It’s just one big party and it’s at the bookmakers' expense. Jonbon next, and they can’t shovel it on quick enough. £200 win bets come at you like confetti. There are reports coming in of books running out of money, many having to have back bets with each other in an effort to put on a tourniquet to stop the bleeding away of money. We pray to the racing Gods to help us out and get this one beat, but they’re JP fans too, and as the jolly Jonbon hits the front two out and goes on to win, it is PANDEMONIUM.

I cannot, in words, give you a real sense of how bad things are at this point for some of the books but I kid you not when I say one more bad result and it might be the end for a few. Thankfully our tank is big enough to cope with another monster payout but we are eating through it. The crowd know they can’t lose on the day and they’re all-in on Shakem Up’Arry for the Topham.

You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief as ‘Arry is in no ‘urry to win, dropping right away on the home turn, and the 20-1 winner Arizona Cardinal is an excellent result for most of the books. It somewhat kills business off, with many punters pulling stumps well in front, which is a shame as the last two results are decent. Especially for me - I’ve backed El Jefe at 66-1 the day before, and it gets a right old roar as it comes from nowhere to win the lucky last. Oi oiiiii! First round is on me tonight, lads….

Grand National Day. I’m on a diet, which I might have mentioned before (just over a stone, thanks for asking) but stuff it, I’m having a full English, as it might be the only time I get to eat before it goes dark tonight. Extra bacon, extra hash brown. It’s on the expenses, after all.

We’re on track for 9am, and have a think about where’s best to bet. Last year we bet at the bottom of the “ramp” and it worked well, so that’s where we’ll go again today. Once in, I disappear off to the media centre for the final time. The champagne is out, and as it would be rude not to, I have a small glass. Unbeknownst to me, young Sam Boswell is live on Sky Sports Racing doing a piece and I manage to stand behind him in my salmon-pink shirt quaffing champagne, which causes a bit of merriment in the studio! Sam, I can only apologize…

Anyway, back to the joint at lunchtime and away we go. The earlier start time for the Saturday means it’s a little slow to get going but not too bad. Some of the books need a very good day to get in front after two days of being bashed from pillar-to-post. “If I just get the expenses for the week after today, I’d almost say that’s a result”, complains one Midlands bookie.

If we were hoping to get off to a good start, then Gwennie May Boy gives that a good kicking. Almost to the exclusion of everything else, it was money for either him or West Balboa. Into the float we go again.

“Please tell me we can get Brighterdaysahead beat, Davey Boy…”. Pinno has the prayer mat out already. I shake my head, as I think she’s a good thing. So she proves, and Bugise Seagull rolling in third (that’s surely spelt incorrectly, isn’t it?) at 50s smashes the each-way up as well.

Cruz Control is better in the Freebooter and Strong Leader is even better in the Liverpool Hurdle (it’s at the bottom of the board numerically, remember what I told you? Punters work from the top down when they don’t know what to back) but then it’s National time. Business for the big one is strong, with plenty of money around. Sadly, the majority of it is for I Am Maximus and Limerick Lace, and whilst the latter fades out of things in one of the most open Nationals I can remember for a long time, the former powers clear in the style of a good horse and the payout queues are long ones.

I say pay out - many of the lads, fuelled by some of Kimberley Ales’ finest, throw the lot back on Found A Fifty in the Maghull. With an hour’s gap between races, once they’ve had their bets they disappear off, which is just as well as the weather takes a terrible turn. The wind whips up, causing a tsunami of plastic pint pots to come tumbling down the ramp towards us, and the rain starts lashing in. This is reminiscent of a couple of years ago when similar happened, and it cleared the place in ten minutes then. None of this matters as Found A Fifty, who looks beat at the last as Master Chewy takes it up, rallies to the cause and gets back up. The roar is deafening and that’s basically game over.

Most don’t stick around for the last, preferring to take their hard-earned winnings and get going, which is a shame as the weather gets better but, alas, all too late. On the plus side, I find the winner of the bumper merely by watching them go to post, which was nice and will pay for the petrol home. It’s been three days to forget for many of the bookmakers - one of the major Festivals that they would expect to win at, for many a disaster, and that coming off the back of a mediocre Cheltenham for them will mean a major Spring rethink.

For me, this will be my last Aintree on the books. Next year, something completely different, as Monty Python might have said. Can’t say what yet, but whatever it is, I’ll not be getting any 6-1 about Sean Bowen winning the jockeys' title again. Not that I’m bitter about that, or anything…

- DM

Monday Musings: A Cakewalk for Willie

29 April 2024/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

We knew when he won the Grand National it would be tight, writes Tony Stafford. The differential between Willie Mullins, devouring his first (of many, no doubt) UK trainers’ titles and runner-up Dan Skelton, was in the end just the £344,717, more than enough to see off Kerry Lee, whose 18 winners at a fine strike-rate of 24% earned in total £309k. She was 43rd in the table with some very big names finishing considerably south of her.

I read somewhere that it was remarkable that Mullins could achieve his feat with so few runners in the UK. If you talk of total numbers fair enough, but apart from the money – expertly plucked out of the vagaries of the programme book where he has such an advantage – his numbers weren’t as great as you could imagine.

Let’s start with strike-rate, just 18%, lower than Paul Nicholls – third overall, and £95k behind Sketon, but Paul’s 169 wins came at a rate of 23%. Nicky Henderson, who belatedly enjoyed his own time in the spotlight thanks to Jonbon’s destruction of Willie’s El Fabiolo in the Celebration Chase, with Edwardstone just behind, perhaps surprisingly bettered last season’s tally of 90, by one, achieved at 21%.

Mullins sent over 115 individual horses to the UK – I kid you not! They were mostly targeted at the best of the best, running until the last week’s blitz, for the best money on offer. His 28 winners in all were provided by 26 individual horses.

Only nine trainers raced as many individual animals through the season. Top with 210 was Skelton, winning 120 races. Fergal O’Brien ran 171, winning 107 but still at a better strike-rate of 20% compared with Willie’s 18%. Then it was Nicholls, 169, Donald McCain 167 and Henderson who, for all his peak-season travails, still had 144 to run.

The only others to run more were Olly Murphy, 135; Lucinda Russell, 130; Jonjo O’Neill 126, and Ben Pauling 123. Murphy ought to be eternally grateful to Sure Touch, the geegeez.co.uk-owned horse, who with three successive wins, culminating in defeat of a Mullins raider at Perth signalled his own growing status among the training community as well as helping to clinch the ton.

I’ve gone on over the past two weeks about the relative risk/reward situation with the Grand National under the latest mollified fences but also the mechanism that means hardly anything other than the top Irish stables can get a horse into the contest. Not much risk, but plenty of reward!

I’ve just identified the nine UK-based trainers with the strongest and most effective teams in the land. Between them in the now-denuded 34-runner Grand National, they had two of the seven UK runners, the Irish having the remainder.

Half of their interest went at the first fence when last year’s Lucinda Russell-trained winner Corach Rambler unseated Derek Fox. Dan Skelton’s Galia Des Liteaux ran a creditable eighth.

Contrastingly, the top four Irish NH trainers supplied 20 of the 32 (two were taken out in the morning). Mullins had eight including the eight-year-old winner I Am Maximus; Gordon Elliott, also with more than a century of UK runners in the season just concluded, had seven; Henry De Bromhead three and Gavin Cromwell two. That’s 63% of the field.

Further scrutiny showed that two each of the Mullins and Elliott runners started at 100/1 or more and none finished the course. The effect, if not intentionally, was to minimise the potential danger to the pair’s leading contenders by excluding others (maybe even trained here!). Of course, it’s nice to get hold of owners’ tickets on a day like that.

The simple fact is that without the 500 grand collected by I Am Maximus, not only would Mullins not have beaten Dan Skelton, he might well not have bothered to bring a proportion of the runners that came principally to Aintree and Sandown, leaving it more a traditional last-day Skelton/Nicholls tussle.

Now he’s won it though, the appetite will be there to win it again. All the middle to major prizes will now be on his agenda, and I’ve even heard in the last few days that a satellite yard in the UK might be in the planning.

He did comment that when he asks his owners to fund the travel of his horses across the water, he invariably gets their blessing. How much easier to be based in the middle of the country somewhere like Ian Williams, close to the Midlands motorway hub. Trainers here, say in Newmarket, metaphorically have to get down on their knees and beg to send a horse further than York!

It will be interesting when he does expand his operations from Ireland or if indeed he does take another yard here. The one time that I can remember such an inferiority complex – I was still very young when Vincent O’Brien used to take home Grand Nationals and Gold Cups to order – was in the days of Arkle and Flyingbolt.

Actually, it was more the home trainers afeared of the Tom Dreaper pair. For all Arkle’s greatness, he was still only rated 1lb superior to Flyingbolt, who was the more versatile of the pair, and the Irish handicapper even used to make separate handicaps for some of the biggest races with and without the pair.

The implications for jump racing over here if Mullins was to target mundane day-to-day cards is frightening. Three odds-on shots per meeting would be unappetising, the rest having to trail around like half the fields in Irish novice events to ensure competitive starting marks. But then he has the owners, most of whom are active here anyway.

I’ve no doubt he could easily assemble a team almost as numerically strong as is the case back home. Prospective owners would flock to him, but he could afford to put stringent requirements on them. Maybe with Nicky Henderson as his assistant? Sorry, that’s silly. Without the Grand National, Nicky would have been close to Mullins this time around and with 142 according to Horses In Training in his care, the future after Saturday’s revival, is bright enough with such as Constitution Hill, Jonbon, Sir Gino and the rest to keep him cool through the summer.

What must Nick Skelton, father of Dan and new parent Harry Skelton, be thinking? His project in Warwickshire has developed to the extent that his son has mastered his former boss Paul Nicholls as well as Henderson and yet he must accept only second place. Harry is a former champion jockey: Dan sorely needs to join him as a champion.

It’s a reminder of the days when Adrian Maguire expected to step up after his tussles with Richard Dunwoody for a first UK title only to be confronted by the comet that was Tony McCoy. Last time I saw him he was riding out at Ballydoyle for Aidan O’Brien, but I gather he has moved on since.

McCoy, Aidan and Willie Mullins all started their careers around the same time three decades ago with Jim Bolger. Many since have made a similar journey, some with great success, but none will match the achievements of this Holy Trinity.

Bolger has made an impact on the flat of course, with his homebreds. Two, Poetic Flare and Dawn Approach, won the 2000 Guineas and I expect to see another Irish-trained colt win next Saturday’s race. City of Troy made a marked impression on me (and everyone else I’m sure) when coming over twice last year to Newmarket, for the Superlative Stakes on the July Course and the Dewhurst Stakes over seven-eighths of the 2000 Guineas mile in October.

His two flawless performances had many thinking back to Frankel and I hope he will deserve to be regarded in the same breath as that great unbeaten champion after Saturday.

The biggest boost to his chance, apart from the Coolmore, Aidan O’Brien, Ryan Moore connection, is that his sire Justify is proving as potentially good in the breeding shed with his first crops around the world as he was as an unbeaten colt in the USA. Only the second Triple Crown winner there since the 1970’s, he should build stamina as well as lightning speed into his horses having won the 12-furlong Belmont Stakes.

The form of City Of Troy’s two wins over here is solidified by Haatem, winner in between them of Goodwood’s Group 2 Richmond Stakes and, this April, the Craven Stakes over the full 2000 Guineas distance, but slaughtered each time by the Guineas favourite. He is regarded as inferior to his Richard Hannon stable-mate Rosallion, who won the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere at the Arc meeting last year. It could be tough, but that’s how the greatest reputations are made.

- TS

Monday Musings: Fences

14 April 2024/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

We wait all year for the Grand National, anticipating the sternest examination in jump racing anywhere in the world, writes Tony Stafford. Such is the conditioned attitude that the great race has engendered over so many years, owners who have been around for a while, when lucky enough to own a top steeplechaser, are more often than not terrified of taking up the challenge.

We, or rather they, consider the fearsome fences, like the Chair, Becher’s Brook and the rest, and shrink away. Are they wise? Well let me give you a definitive if an admittedly after-timing answer. No, they are not!

The three races over said fences, Thursday’s Fox Hunters, Friday’s Topham and Saturday’s Randox-sponsored £1 million feature, carried big fields by day to day standards, even if the latest modification (or rather mutilation) of the big race has reduced the maximum field to 34 – denuded further with two on-the-day defections on Saturday - more about that later.

The Chair did prove too much of a jumping test for two of the 24 runners among Thursday’s hunter chasers – we were used to seeing 30 - two of them falling at that point. Then again, one was a 50/1 shot, the other was 66’s.

So the biggest of the 16 obstacles and which, along with the water in front of the stands, is one of only two to be jumped once, would surely take more fallers over the next two days. It didn’t, and nor did any of the other 15 obstacles over all three.

Thus, I’m sure we had the first ever Grand National where there had not been a single faller. True, four horses unseated their riders, ironically one of them was last year’s winner Corach Rambler, who continued only briefly having left Derek Fox on the deck at the opening obstacle days after the jockey had recovered from injury just in time to aim for the repeat. Corach Rambler actually did fall, unencumbered by a jockey, at the very next fence and then was seen veering to the right having refused at the third. Three-in-one, unseated, fell and refused at the first three obstacles!

Seven were pulled up, so that left 21 of the 32 starters to complete the course. In the Fox Hunters, in addition to those two fallers at the Chair (fence three), three unseated and seven pulled up, leaving ten finishers. The Topham also had 24 starters, one of which unseated and six more pulled up leaving an almost unfathomable 17 (71%) to get round. These are unprecedented figures, especially on soft or heavy going.

In my usual way of securing a comprehensive analysis, I thought a quick look back two decades to one of my most memorable races, 2004, the year that Graham Lee rode that wonderful race on Ginger McCain’s Amberleigh House, would provide a useful yardstick.

Graham’s ride that day was the Grand National performance I always considered the best I’d seen. He coolly took a pull when most jockeys would have gone hell for leather at the third-last, saving enough in the testing ground to come out on top. Graham rode quite a few winners for me in his Wilf Storey days and it’s a poignant thought that he suffered his horrific injuries after switching to the flat.

The ground was testing that week twenty years ago, but times for the three respective races, the Fox Hunters, Topham and Grand National were all significantly faster than the 2024 versions. This year’s Fox Hunters took around 18 seconds longer to complete; the Topham 12 seconds more and the Grand National seven seconds more even though the course had dried significantly over the previous 24 hours.

The 2004 Fox Hunters had six fallers, two brought down and two pulled up. The Topham that year had eight fallers, two brought down and one refusal while four horses pulled up. In Amberleigh House’s Grand National, nine fell, two were brought down, two refused, seven unseated rider and eight pulled up.

All the modifications have done is to make it little more than a park race. High-class chasers, especially those so redolent of the Irish steeplechasing scene, can continue year to year, mopping up the many Graded and Listed races around their country and maintaining a status that guarantees a place in next year’s field.

Here, the good horses have to run in the few well-endowed but ultra-competitive high-class handicap chases in the calendar like the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury in early December or the Welsh Grand National, also sponsored by Coral at Chepstow on the day after Boxing Day.

Nassalam has been the unwitting vehicle for the grossest example of a handicapping error from his win in the Welsh National, and for once I’m not blaming the official it concerns, but our system. Nassalam had already won a handicap chase at Chepstow a month earlier when he went back to the track for the 3m5f feature. Gary Moore’s gelding was always in contention but in heavy ground, as they moved out of the back straight, his mastery was already evident.

In an eerie foreshadowing of Saturday’s big race, there were no fallers that day at Chepstow, largely because by the time most of them had got to the end of the back straight, they had already given up. Of the 19 horses that set off, five completed, with Iron Bridge off levels with the winner, nearest but beaten 34 lengths.

Iron Bridge, trained by Jonjo O’Neill in the Hemmings Racing colours, and at eight two years senior to Nassalam, hadn’t won a race for some time and his best chase form, far from in top races, had been in novice handicap chases. If the handicapper had been able to wait until the four other horses that completed ran again, he might have acted a little less extravagantly. None of the quartet has done a thing since. All of them were probably bottomed by their run behind Nassalam, so to rate that as a 16lb improvement was simply horrific.

I think Gary Moore, brave enough to let him take his chance in the Grand National even after pulling up in between at Cheltenham in the Gold Cup, has a very strong case to appeal. By going to 161 he was giving weight to a former Gold Cup winner in Minella Indo on Saturday. That one finished third, behind and just ahead of the Gordon Elliott pair Delta Work and Galvin, both habitual competitors at the top level, as well as winner I Am Maximus. Last time out, he had given Vanillier, the 2023 runner-up 12lb and a 14-length beating in a four-runner Grade 3 chase at Fairyhouse.

I Am Maximus received 2lb from Nassalam on Saturday, but had the Grand National weight assessor had available evidence of Fairyhouse to hand, he would have been conceding 3lb to Nassalam. I think having seen him start at 50/1 and after making a couple of mistakes, yet still valiantly completed, the UK handicappers might start adjusting their reaction to what have been hitherto perceived as key races.

If in a 19-runner handicap like the Welsh National it is obvious that only a few horses handled conditions, a more measured approach might be in order. Horses like I Am Maximus, Delta Work (close to dual Grand National winner Tiger Roll more than once), Minella Indo and Galvin should not be receiving weight from a horse with a single performance that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Elsewhere, great credit must go to David Maxwell. Most 45-year-old estate agents would have been in the hospitality area if inclined to visit the Grand National. Instead, he bought Ain’t That A Shame, 105 lengths behind Corach Rambler in last year’s National under Rachael Blackmore and pulled up more recently in the Munster National and guided him into sixth place – and a £30k instalment on the purchase price - only 15.75 lengths adrift of I Am Maximus. Rachael, on the third Minella Indo, still had the edge in the Henry de Bromhead team, so a good piece of business all round.

Most interesting for me, having put forward one of J P McManus’s other runners, Limerick Lace, as my selection last week, it was a shock to see her price contract to 7/1 joint-favourite with the winner.

She finished tenth after making some mistakes, beginning when interfered with, as far as I could see on a single viewing, at the Canal Turn first time round. She was going on very well at the finish, and if she does come back next year, whatever happens in the meantime (almost) I’ll be with her.

Changing tack, something though has to be done about a situation where two trainers can know from months out they can share half the Grand National field between them without fear of serious challenge. This also prevents other potential candidates lower down the handicap scale – usually the best chance for one of ours – to get in. I do think a cap on the maximum number of runners for a trainer or owner, or both, might well need to be an interim measure before trainers here totally pull up the white flag.

Dan Skelton, Ben Pauling and a few others have stepped forward to bolster the long-established leaders Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls. Irishman Fergal O’Brien is well entrenched in Gloucestershire and all five of those talented men had winners over the three days last week.

In a way the £500,000 first prize, along with £200,000, £100,000 and £65,000 for the next three places does nothing for the race, except in enabling people to say it’s the biggest prize in UK jump racing. So what?! It’s our race and we need our top and highly skilled trainers and their owners to have a shot of winning it.

A first step would be to let owners know that the old antipathy against running in the race for fear of an early end to a jumper’s career is no longer valid. If it always gives an imbalance to the trainers' championship too, that’s a side effect. When Aidan O’Brien habitually contests the flat trainers' title with the Gosdens and others, he needs to win Classics and numerous Group 1 races to make up for the numerical advantage of his British counterparts. There’s no such balancing act in jumping – it’s Willie first, the rest nowhere!

On the point of non-runners, Gordon Elliott reduced his big team by one via a vet’s certificate, but Chambard, trained by Venetia William, was withdrawn on a self-certificate. For a normal race I would say the self-cert rule is fine, but for a race like the Grand National, surely not. For contests of a certain value and status, specific reasons should be required. Two horses were denied the chance to run for the big pot and I bet their connections are fuming!

- TS

Monday Musings: My Idea of the National Winner is…

8 April 2024/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

It’s a horrible thought, but if all the horses eligible to run before today’s five-day stage for the Randox Grand National stood their ground and then took up the engagement on Thursday morning, only six of the drastically reduced field this year, from 40 to 34, will be trained in the UK, writes Tony Stafford.

Even more salutary, between them, Gordon Elliott (ten) and Willie Mullins (eight) will have more than a 50% chance of knocking off the £500,000 first prize and the better than acceptable place money from second, £200k, down to five grand for tenth.

The inertia once horses get to a certain level – and this time there’s no fault being found about handicapping on either side of the Irish Sea - means it takes a lot for, say, a 150-rated animal to drop out of his guaranteed place in the line-up from year to year. That’s why they race so infrequently – where else can you have a shot at half a million?

The lucky six this time would be supplemented if the big two fine down their options. Six of the next ten are trained over here so it could at least bring, if not a level playing field, one that offers a hint of promise. Of the guaranteed sextet, connections of the 11-year-old Latenightpass will be on a winner even before the gelding lines up.

Fourth under multiple champion and overall point-to-point lady record holder Gina Andrews in last year’s Foxhunters at the National meeting over the same fences, the gelding will be her first ride in a Grand National. He’s safely in on 24, and Gina, the multiple point-to-point champion and by far the winning-most lady rider in that sphere, rides the family gelding for husband Tom Ellis, king of the point-to-point trainers.

In racecard order as they stood this morning, the top two from the UK are number 3 Nassalam and number 8 Corach Rambler. After his excellent third behind Galopin Des Champs in last month’s Gold Cup, Corach Rambler is only a 4/1 shot to repeat last year’s victory for Lucinda Russell. Nassalam concedes him 2lb because of two spectacular performances around Chepstow in December but was then pulled up in the Gold Cup, so the market’s preference is understandable.

But such was Nassalam’s astonishing demolition job on the Welsh Grand National field in his last race before Cheltenham – unfortunately causing Gary Moore’s gelding that abrupt jump in his rating – he must be a contender especially as we’ll be having heavy ground bar a miracle with the weather by Saturday.

Nassalam also looked good around the big Aintree fences in the autumn, staying on well from a long way back in the Grand Sefton over a woefully inadequate 2m5f, gathering momentum as the race neared its climax. He’s one of the best equipped to handle both ground and distance in the field and although he did carry a big weight in the 3m6f Welsh National, his mark soared another 16lb after that.

I reckon every 1lb will be worth two under these conditions, so with regret I’ve been looking down the list. Sadly, apart from the obvious claims of Corach Rambler – and repeat winners aren’t exactly unheard of - even if the ground might not be totally to his liking, I’ve landed on an Irish contender.

The same age as Nassalam, that’s seven, and significantly the 2022 winner Noble Yeats was also that age at the time, I find it hard to get away from the Gavin Cromwell-trained and, need I say it, J P McManus-owned mare Limerick Lace.

Limerick Lace would be the first of her sex to win the race since 1951 and indeed only three mares, Shannon Lass (James Hackett) in 1902, 1948 Sheila’s Cottage (40/1) trained by Nevile Crump, and Nickel Coin (50/1) for Jack O’Donoghue, won the race in the entire 20th Century. It will take something special to quell that statistic but maybe Limerick Lace is that entity.

She had the effrontery to intrude on Elliott’s second most heinous action as a trainer when he supplied 14 of the 20 runners in Navan’s Troytown Chase in November. Limerick Lace didn’t win the three-miler on heavy ground but got within a couple of lengths of Coko Beach, who did, a fair old run for a 6yo.

She will meet Coko Beach on 2lb better terms, fair enough, and equally being put up 6lb for that was entirely understandable. But she’s run twice and won twice since then, both in the UK. Firstly, she came over to Doncaster for a mares’ chase and bolted up by six lengths with her mark already on the 147 allotted after Navan, and that remained unchanged.

Then she took in the Grade 2 2m5f Mares’ Chase at Cheltenham last month and won it nicely from Willie Mullins’ Dinoblue, who was rated 13lb her superior. Cromwell’s mare did a touch of tail-flashing but showed plenty of resolution and her official mark is now 153, but a bargain 147 for this early closing race only.

In all she has five wins from ten starts over fences with three seconds and a third as back-up. I’m going for a rarity, but one that did happen twice in the first five years of my life – I wasn’t out quite in time for Shannon Lass! Limerick Lace to beat Nassalam and Corach Rambler.

My copy of Horses in Training finally came on Friday and I’ve enjoyed trying to work out which stable has the most horses, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Inevitably, we have to guess a bit as two of the biggest strings each year decline sending full lists. The Gosdens have 149 three-year-olds and up but are keeping their two-year-olds a secret while Richard Fahey won’t tell us a thing.

Generally, the boys with more than 200 in their care are the ones that will be challenging for top honours most of the time. But while not yet at that rarified atmosphere numerically, one intriguing name which has a lasting place in Grand National history, is undergoing a re-vamp.

I noticed his list on first skim through but then when wanting to look again, couldn’t find it. The book is in alphabetical order, but Dr Richard Newland and joint licensee Jamie Insole are sandwiched between Tina Jackson and Iain Jardine.

Ten years ago, I backed the doctor’s Grand National winner, Pineau De Re. Now he and Jamie have 100 horses in their care and are obviously going much more seriously at the flat. Last year’s 73 were all older horses. This time, of their 100, 20 are juveniles and all bar one was acquired at the sales, at prices between 16 grand and 110k.

They joined forces late last season, by the end of which they had four wins from their first six runners on the flat. A further four have come at the more sustainable rate of ten per cent this year. The jumpers have provided the partnership with five wins from 77 runs. Until the switch-around, Dr Newland alone had 18 jumps wins from 158 runners.

Insole, 26, is from an Irish family with plenty of NH riding history behind it. He grew up, some might say, curiously in Billericay in deepest Essex but has been involved in the sport for most of his life from adolescence. After jobs with such as Alan King, he went the whole hog into flat racing as a pupil assistant to Charlie Hills.

Of all the stables that have caught my attention, in Grand National week I can’t stop thinking that if someone like the doctor (and his owners) have invested the best part of £1million at the sales to get this embryo partnership under way, they must have the utmost faith in their new recruit. I can’t wait for their first juvenile runner. Royal Ascot maybe?

- TS

Roving Reports: The National’s Still Grand

25 April 2023/in Horse Racing Blog/by David Massey

This year's Aintree adventure, as always, starts not on Thursday morning but on Wednesday evening, with my lift to Aintree picking me up, complete with luggage (four work shirts, two pairs of trousers, assorted toiletries, an Aldi 'bag for life' full of wet weather gear, another bag containing all the electricals and laptops I'll need for the trip, including an extension cord and adaptor - absolutely essential when staying away) at 8pm, writes David Massey. There's no need to go any earlier, with the purpose of the trip merely to put us in the right area for Aintree on Thursday, as the pick for bookmaking spots takes place ridiculously early: 10.15am Thursday and Friday, 10am Saturday. Bookmakers tackling the M6 on the relevant mornings have been known to miss their spots. You're much better off staying local and we're just half an hour away, in Warrington.

We're also taking our friend Steve, who is working for a different bookmaker this week, along with us and dropping him off at his Premier Inn, which is in Warrington but a different one to ours. Sadly, the info Steve has about his residence for the week is limited and we end up dropping him off at the wrong one. "I'm in Room 16", he tells the receptionist but it seems someone called Danielle is already in Room 16, so unless Steve has, er, booked a friend for the evening we are in the wrong place. A quick phone call reveals he's in the one a mile down the road (who knew there were so many Premier Inns in Warrington?) so we pack all his stuff back up, and head off again.

Once he's in the right place we head to ours, and get our first good result of the week. "I'm afraid the rooms you have booked are being renovated", we are told on arrival, "so we've upgraded you to the Premier Plus rooms." What a touch. Walk-in rainfall shower, here I come...

It's only 9.50pm so I head for a pint next door, only to find the doors of the place locked. It's an early night then. I'll get the double up next morning when I head for breakfast at 7.45am, only to still find the doors firmly bolted. So it's breakfast in the Premier Inn instead, and I have to say it was very good indeed.

We head for Aintree good and early and arrive at the car park around 9am. I say car park - regular readers might recall the bookmakers' "car park" is little more than an overgrown patch of land opposite the track. It's normally £60 for the three days, but the cost of living has also affected car park owners, it seems, and it's an eye-watering £90 this time around.

And the state of it. It's bad enough in dry weather, with the vines on the ground waiting to literally trip you up at any moment, but two days of wet weather have turned it to something akin to where you might have staged Junior Kick Start thirty years ago.

So, hauling the gear on suddenly becomes an Olympic sport, and I'm sweating and knackered before we've even got going.

In the mornings I can avoid the tedium after the pick by using the press facilities, which I do every day, but for the rest it really is a case of standing around waiting to get going. And when we do, as expected, business comes in dribs and drabs.

Initially Stage Star is popular but the moment 2-1 Banbridge appears on the board, in come the Euros for him. And they're right, with Stage Star finding it coming too quick after Cheltenham and the fresher Banbridge coming out on top. Banbridge had been my Cheltenham banker, so it was a blow to see him taken out there; this is some compensation.

Zenta is no good in the next and Shiskin lands the £700-£400 I'd taken, although it looked most unlikely for 90% of the race. We bet with and without the favourite for the Aintree Hurdle and I take the inevitable each-way bet on Constitution Hill. The bloke in question has a tenner each-way; enjoy your £1.25 profit, sir.

It's strange weather, this. The sun is out but it isn't warm, with the wind keeping the temperature down. However, I'm stood right in the sun and can feel its heat, so take precautions and slap a bit of sunscreen on my bonce. Behind the joint, however, Colin is in the shade and not only has his anorak on, but is reaching for his gloves.

Famous Clermont is popular in the Foxhunters and the Irish are back with the Euros for Dancing On My Own in the Red Rum. Dysart Enos is barely a good result in the last and that's Day One done. Punters in front, for sure.

Tea/dinner (dependant on where you're from) is Nando's, with the forever-locked pub now forsaken. I do like the occasional Nando's, and we order the family platter for the five of us. There's plenty left over at the end and I'm only too happy to help clear up. As Colin often points out, "if ever there's an eating competition between the bookmakers, we're putting you in to bat." Harsh. But probably true.

Thursday is the quietest day of the three, Friday and Saturday are busier and so we are joined by two more workers, Paul and Martin (aka BMW). Martin joined us last night and immediately had a result. On checking in he was told the room he had booked had been trashed by the couple in there the night before (trashing a Premier Inn, how sad do you have to be?) and so had to have a different room, one with a wet room. As compensation, free breakfast. The best sort of breakfast there is.

The sun is well and truly out today, and shaven-headed Martin goes straight for my sunscreen. I like working with Martin, he always has a tale to tell from his days working with Racing Raymond (most of them utterly unprintable for this column) and, given he has an eye for the ladies, today is most definitely his day.

The sun does not last long. Showers are predicted from 2pm and whilst the timing is about right, the rain is set in. It's never a good thing for business, and especially on a big day like today. The ladies have already abandoned their heels for flip-flops, but my word their feet, in the mud and rain, become filthy very quickly. On the plus side, whilst their dress length may be short, their betting knowledge is longer, and they know a fiver each-way is a tenner, not a fiver, and don't back favourites each-way. Having said that, you all know I took a £2.50ew Gerri Colombe in the first.

The handicap hurdle that follows is one of those where they all latch on to the same runners, namely Pull Again Green and Camprond. When neither can be found with radar at the finish, it's going to be a winning race.

They all want Luccia in the next, but I don't fancy her and place lay her. She doesn't win but in rolling in third costs me a few quid. The Irish pile into Fakir d'Oudaries in the next and I take a €400 bet at 2s, but he can never quite get to Pic D'Orhy and that's another good race for us. Not as good as the Topham, though - not a single bet is struck on my joint on Bill Baxter. A skinner in the big race, and only five people have backed anything in the frame. Incredible.

We've had two very attractive ladies betting all afternoon with us, not only attractive but good fun to chat to. (Note; Martin is doing most of the chatting.) It's their first time at the races and have had the crash course from us, so know what they're doing by now. One has her last tenner on Apple Away in the next, and I'm delighted for her when it wins. As is she. Punctuation in the last isn't a skinner, perhaps surprisingly, as two people have crystal balls better than mine and have had a tenner each-way on him. One admits to backing the wrong horse, but decided to stick with it anyway, which turns out to be the best decision they'll have made all day.

With the results very much turning in the bookmakers' favour, it looks like a Friday night Nando's is once again on the cards. We troop over but it's absolutely packed, and as we don't fancy a 90-minute wait, it has to be Pizza Hut instead. The lady serving us is on her last day of service with the company and it would be very easy for her to basically go through the motions with us before she packs up for the night, but far from it. She talks us through all the deals, and couldn't be more attentive if she tried. She gets a good tip.

Saturday. Grand National Day. We're at the track before nine and having heaved the gear through the ploughed field that is the car park, head on in. Straight away it is noticeable how much security has tightened. Everyone's on edge. Even the mush (the umbrella, for those unaware) gets searched. There's clearly a feeling something is going to kick off, but as yet, where and when remains a mystery.

In the press room there's donuts and, later, champagne kicking about. I wouldn't normally, not that early anyway, but it seems rude not to. Pork pie, you say? Don't mind if I do. I take another piece for later.

Let's get betting then. The place feels rammed and despite the first hardly being a betting heat, with Jonbon a 2-11 chance, the forecast option is very popular, with Jonbon to beat Calico the choice of the punters. We're staring at a big payout before Calico departs at the last; maybe that's an omen for the day.

Or maybe not. Loads of £20 and £50 bets come sailing in for West Balboa and she duly obliges in the next. A monkey comes in for Hermes Allen to recover the Cheltenham losses but Irish Point proves too good for them. He's going to be a force next year, for sure. Not many back Sire Du Berlais either, although one bloke is on a roll, having started with £30 on West Balboa, playing £60 of that up on Irish Point and has now had £100 on Sire Du Berlais. I advise him he can buy lottery tickets at all good newsagents. His next move is £130 on Midnight River at 7-1; when that wins, I tell him to buy two.

And now, Grand National time. A grand is thrust my way, the punter wanting £500 e/w on Fury Road at 33s. The simply matter is if that wins, we haven't enough float to pay him, so he's laid half that. He's happy and has the rest next door. £100 bets are flying around my ears, mainly for Any Second Now, Delta Work (again, a £250 e/w laid) and Le Milos.

Then the announcement rings out. "There will be a delay to the start of the race."

And that's really about it, we hear no more from the PA (as deafening as ever, they haven't listened to a word we said about it last year) until they are going down. However, the power of social media tells us everything that's going on over on the far side, and protestors are indeed now on the course. I'm not here to get into the politics of it all, I shall leave that to others far cleverer than I, but I can tell you it was a massive pain on the day. The only positive I could find was that the ridiculous one-hour gap to the last (utterly unnecessary, 40 minutes would be more than enough) was bridged to around half an hour.

Remarkably, Corach Rambler is a decent result. Not many have backed it, and the payout queue is not a long one. All we need to do now is get the last out of the way, with business unsurprisingly dropping right off (many head straight for the exits after the National) and head home.

Farewell car park, I hope you've dried up by next year. Better still, had some concrete over the top of you. I think that's probably asking too much. Knackered, but paid up and with a little bonus, it's time to go back to Nottingham. See you all next time.

- DM

Monday Musings: Tom Told Us!

17 April 2023/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Seven weeks seems a fair amount of time, writes Tony Stafford. After all, it’s almost one seventh of a year and one-five hundred and forty-ninth of a lifetime if you judged lifetimes by my earthly experience. Actually, to me it seems like a couple of weeks.

When I sat down to pen my article for the week before the Cheltenham Festival on the night of March 5/6, fresh in my mind was the rather chaotic Cheltenham preview night, enacted behind a small, sort-of select gathering in the Horse and Wig public house along and up from Chancery Lane Station in Central London the previous Wednesday evening.

Two years earlier I had been one of the leading lights (chief guest securer) in a similar, albeit slightly grander and better organised, affair in the same venue. This time, as a last-minute thing, I got a late invitation along with a plea to secure someone significant to star on the panel hosted by Charlie Methven and dominated by Scott (Mr Cheltenham) Ellis.

I thought I had a great idea – and so it proved. “Leave it to me,” I said and worked away at asking Tom Scudamore, in the knowledge he’d just retired from riding and knew his stuff as well as anyone, whether he would come.

Scott and the event organiser, Les Straszewski, were all for him and, with the assurance that with the help of his long-time driver, Tom would aim to be there as soon after 6 p.m. as road conditions allowed.

The rest of the panel was all in place, mikes nicely balanced, Charlie ready to hold forth and Scott armed with ante-post vouchers from the front door to the tube station as I reported seven weeks ago. They probably stretched in truth back halfway to Brentwood in Essex!

Anxious at the lack of arrival and then, more pointedly, paucity of communication, we set the latter in play with a call or two. In the way of such things, like waiting for a kettle to boil, anticipating Tom’s arrival was an unrewarding activity – that is until he finally appeared.

Suggestions that they start without him were considered and only just resisted. Finally, though, after a few frustrating calls which revealed passing various points in West London, gradually edging to Knightsbridge and Piccadilly, the final bulletin came in on my phone’s text. Timed at 19.18 it read: Hi Tony, moving slowly, getting to you as quickly as we can.

Quickly as we can was another half an hour, but thank goodness (says Scott), we waited.

Settling into some rather nice wine, Tom adjusted to the pace of enlightened opinion and was quickly adding his professionalism to gems offered by our two main experts and Joe Hill, son of Alan and Lawney and their co-partner in the family pointing and Rules operation. Tom had ridden regularly for the Hill family, and his retirement had come just a day before he would otherwise have ridden a winner for them.

The one big message he had to offer though, as son of Peter Scudamore, partner to Grand National-winning trainer Lucinda Russell, was that they fully expected to have a Cheltenham winner in the shape of Ultima Handicap Chase candidate, Corach Rambler. The horse had won the race the year before.

Tom revealed that not only were they expecting a repeat in that always-competitive Festival three-miler but were equally hopeful that the nine-year-old would go on to success in the Grand National five weeks later.

Having been in the Charlie Methven role two years earlier – his big contribution was to suggest 16/1 winner You Wear It Well for Jamie Snowden in the Jack de Bromhead Mares’ Novices Hurdle – I was just an observer this time. When challenged by the panel for a bet in the week, I put up Langer Dan and repeated it in the article of March 5/6. I’d forgotten all about it until watching horrified as Harry Skelton drove him home in front of 25 others nine days later!

Scott, however, doesn’t forget - anything! Every snippet of Cheltenham Festival relevance uttered, printed, whispered, rumoured, or overheard is filed away. You can see from the accompanying betting slip, what Mr Ellis did with Tom’s timely bit of info, 4,500 quids-worth, is what he did! Goes to paying towards his trip to the Masters Golf the week before, or at least it should just about reimburse him for the suitcase full of Masters regalia he brought home.

After the fact, Corach Rambler was the obvious winner! [Aren't they always? - Ed.] I had strongly expected Noble Yeats to dominate the race in the way the Lucinda Russell-trained Derek Fox-ridden winner emphatically did. Last year’s winner took an entire circuit and a half to warm up after some surprisingly hesitant jumping quickly had him among the tailenders. They say in racing you can give away weight and distance but never both.

And so it proved, and the much bigger weight compared with last year obviously told. Yet for him to finish a closing fourth, just over eight lengths behind the winner (albeit a winner that could easily have stretched further away if necessary), was admirable, with 17 finishers in the race.

The Irish must have found it hard to believe they couldn’t continue their recent winning sequence, a run of four since One For Arthur in 2017 (one year missed by Covid) also won for Ms Russell.

Although having 26 (two-thirds) of the 39 runners in the final field, and filling second to seventh, six more UK-trained horses finished after them, one better than last year when 18 started for the home team. Best placed then was one-time Nicky Henderson Gold Cup candidate Santini in fourth for Polly Gundry.

For much of Saturday’s race Henderson, having struck on the opening day with Constitution Hill and Shishkin, and prefacing the big race with a bloodless triumph for the superb two-mile novice chaser Jonbon, looked likely finally to collect the great prize after half a century of trying.

His Mister Coffey jumped the Aintree fences with a rare alacrity from the off and was still several lengths clear at the second-last fence but, by then, his stamina reserves had run out. Joined at the last by Corach Rambler, who quickly strode clear up the run-in, Mister Coffey expired to finish only eighth. Gavin Crowell’s Vanillier ran a great race in second.

If we had thought Noble Yeats had made up a lot of ground in the Gold Cup in his previous race, he had even further to retrieve this time and to get as near as he did, reflects greatly on his stamina and resolution. He’ll be back again.

Corach Rambler only usurped him as favourite in the final minutes, despite Noble Yeats drifting to almost double his SP earlier in the day, as the Merseyside police, aided it seems by members of the public, were carting demonstrators away. More than 100 were arrested. As I said, it was obvious really. Corach Rambler had won only narrowly at Cheltenham, but his idling half-length margin was not fooling the chase handicapper who put him up 10lb. That much well in - no penalties after the weights are published - but he’ll be wearing Noble Yeats’ heavy boots in 2024!

Last year, Emmet Mullins worked the system to get his horse in, sold and triumphant. This time it was repeat "offenders", Russell/Scudamore senior and Fox (he needed to pass a late fitness to take the ride having been ruled out of Ahoy Senor’s near miss behind Shishkin, Brian Hughes taking over).

How the champion would have loved to have been asked to deputise in the big one! In the event he sat (I would imagine) disconsolately in the well-appointed jockeys’ room, waiting an hour for his unplaced ride on a 40/1 shot in the bumper. Maybe it’s time for the champion to ride in more of the big races rather than clock up title-winning numbers around the northern gaffs.

One footnote: my good friend Siobhan Doolan, nowadays adding spice to the training regime at her grandfather Wilf Storey’s Co Durham yard, took three days off from her busy multi-stranded life to be the face of Aintree’s owners’ dining room.

I am sad to report that over the entire stretch of the meeting, her efforts to placate owners waiting to be seated for lunch brought a very disappointing response from people who should have known better. If the racecourse executive provides a facility for owners, who after all provide the very expensive horses that put on this greatest of all horse racing shows, that facility should be big enough and have sufficient palatable food to last through a day’s racing. Three days in fact.

Neither consideration was successfully achieved by Aintree. But while the people that organised and prepared the food and accommodation came up short, just one front of house face bore the brunt of what she described often as “owners and their friends taking the piss!”. What do they say, don’t blame the messenger. Aintree’s course executive should offer a serious apology to a very popular young member of the racing fraternity.

- TS

Monday Musings: Another Noble National?

10 April 2023/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

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

Monday Musings: Nicholls Clunk and National Disaster?

13 February 2023/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Last weekend we had the two days of the Dublin Racing Festival, writes Tony Stafford. In the proceeding Monday’s piece I referred to Willie Mullins’ win haul, speculating without adding that a million Euro plus would have been won. Overall, there was €2 million on offer.

UK trainers and their owners have become so defeatist about the annual annihilation at Cheltenham every March that the thought of challenging them on their home turf at Leopardstown five weeks before C-Day is anathema at best, the road to suicide at worst.

So, even with the riches on offer there, only two UK horses were dispatched across the water, one on each of the days. Nigel Twiston-Davies offered up Weveallbeencaught for the opening 2m6f Grade 1 novice hurdle.

A winner at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day, he started the 7-2 second favourite, just half a point longer than the Barry Connell-trained Good Land, but after making the running under son Sam, he stopped quickly and finished last of eight. In the subsequent veterinary inspection, he was found to have a skinned knee but otherwise no physical abnormalities.

Day two last Sunday also brought a single runner, the Alan King-trained and double-greens owned Sceau Royal, a 9-1 shot behind 4-1 on favourite Blue Lord in the same ownership. As expected, he couldn’t match the market leader, finishing almost four lengths in arrears, but the other Willie Mullins horse, Gentleman De Mee, did to the tune of seven lengths. Sceau Royal earned connections a handsome consolation €13,500 for his third place in a field of five to bring career earnings to a few quid short of £700k.

Over recent seasons, Paul Nicholls has been loath to travel across to Ireland, scene of so many major triumphs in the past, and he also seems very cautious about sending his best horses to Cheltenham in March. Instead, he favours saving some of the best for Aintree the following month where the invaders do not quite match the ferocity and numerically overwhelming strength of Cheltenham.

But, while an advocate of Aintree generally, his defeatism where the Irish hold sway is also shown with only one entry among 85 in the Grand National, run this year on April 15^th. His lone candidate, Threeunderthrufive, was last seen finishing a well-beaten sixth in Warwick’s Classic Chase. More of the Grand National later.

The domestic trials days for Cheltenham in March are mainly at the same track at the end of January – a fixture which almost surreally survived the prevailing frost – and Saturday’s well-endowed card at Newbury.

Nicholls had his team primed for the latter, with nine runners on the seven-race Betfair Hurdle card. His sole entry in that tough handicap hurdle (which he had won with Zarkandar and Pic D’Orhy previously) was Rubard. He was a well-fancied 8-1 shot but, in finishing only tenth, was just one of a series of severe disappointments for the Ditcheat handler.

The Betfair Hurdle was won with determination by Aucunrisque, reverting to hurdling after some good runs in novice chases. He held off the plotted-up favourite Filey Bay, trained by Emmet Mullins and running in the McManus colours, by a hard-fought length. The Gary Moore pair Teddy Blue and Yorksea were a long way back close together in third and fourth but will have big race wins to come I’m sure.

Aucunrisque, well handled by Nick Scholfield, is trained by Chris Gordon, who was once a bit of a comic turn around the Southern jumps tracks and a magnet for the Sky Racing TV cameras and interviewers both before and after his runners performed. He is now anything but – a serious and highly successful trainer who knows how to win big races.

That was the only race in which Nicholls did not send out the favourite and he must have had an early hint that maybe things might not go to plan when McFabulous, 4-6 for the three-runner limited handicap chase which opened proceedings, was never travelling under Harry Cobden and was pulled up a long way from home as Coeur Serein won, Jonjo O’Neill junior for his father taking gleeful advantage. Unfortunately, McFabulous was found afterwards to have an irregular heartbeat.

Next up was Barbados Buck’s in the much-loved Andy Stewart colours, going off 7-2 best in a handicap hurdle. He ran well enough for second and that was the finishing position, too, for Hitman in the Denman Chase, but the Philip Hobbs 16-1 chance Zanza galloped all over him to the tune of seven lengths. This would hardly have encouraged hopes for the Ryanair.

If Hitman’s run was disappointing, Greenatean’s in the four-runner Game Spirit Chase must have been simply demoralising in the Nicholls yard. Rated 15lb superior to Venetia Williams’ Funambole Sivola (off levels), he couldn’t go with him on the run-in and even lost second place to the Tizzards’ Elixir Du Luxe, rated 25lb inferior and only getting 6lb here. The Queen Mother Champion Chase seems to be receding into the distance.

There was another second place from 7-4 favourite Holetown Boy, annihilated in the novice hurdle by a smart Gary Moore debutant, Love Is Golden, recruited from the Johnston stable. Big things can be expected from him.

They can also be anticipated by the winning trainer of the final race, Aslukgoes, who retained an unbeaten record when battling home under Jack Quinlan in the valuable Listed bumper. Nicholls ran two here, 9-4 jolly Meatloaf, who was fifth, and Fire Flyer, 4-1 in seventh. The total prizemoney on offer for the fixture was paltry – in relation to the Irish trials meeting’s riches – at £365k. Nicholls’ owners collected less than ten per cent of that, just over 30 grand.

The Bumper winner was just the second success of the fledgling training career of Ben Brookhouse, whose father Roger owns and bred the horse. I met Ben first when he was assistant to Ian Williams, but last summer he and his father’s horses moved into the yard Wiilie Musson owns in Newmarket. He has followed, among others since Willie retired, James Ferguson, now a Group 1 winning trainer.

Aslukgoes won twice for Williams in summer bumpers, but the style of this success suggests he can be a force for the Brookhouse duo going forward in good company over jumps, maybe stopping off for the Festival Bumper and the Mullins hoards first.

I gave a passing reference to it earlier and on the evidence of this year’s entry for the Grand National, most English, Welsh and Scottish-based trainers can do little more than that these days either.

No race has had a bigger turn-around in the relative fortunes of home and Irish trainers than this greatest of all steeplechases and the unbroken sequence of winning raiders through the past five years looks almost guaranteed to be extended.

Of 85 entries, only 31 are trained in the UK and no domestic trainer has more than two horses in the field, those twin-prongers being Dan Skelton, previous winner Venetia Williams, Joe Tizzard, Henry Daly and Sam Thomas.

Lucinda Russell was the last UK winner with One For Arthur in 2017, following Mouse Morris a year earlier, but the decade before that was bereft of Irish success. Following Gordon Elliott’s explosion onto the scene with the 2007 winner Silver Birch, I seem to recall before he’d even had an Irish winner in his name, David Pipe, Venetia Williams, Jonjo O’Neill, Donald McCain, Paul Nicholls, Sue Smith, Dr Richard Newland and Oliver Sherwood won in succession.

Now the pendulum has swung so violently to the West that in the 2022 race won so impressively by UK-owned but Irish-trained Noble Yeats, he led home six more Irish and only two home runners in the first nine. Santini, fourth for Polly Gundry then, is not entered this time, but Fiddlerontheroof, fifth, is involved again and has not been seen since disappointing in the Coral, late Ladbrokes, even later Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury last November.

Three-time winner Gordon Elliott, two with Tiger Roll, alone has 21 entries, Willie Mullins eight and the rest of the Irish the remaining 25.

But to my mind, as I’ve said before, eight-year-old Noble Yeats is the one to beat once more. His stamina is outstanding and while we must wait for him to run at Cheltenham in the Gold Cup first, the 10/1 available now looks a gift. Help yourselves!

- TS

Monday Musings: Having a mare for the National

4 April 2022/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

He could hardly have stage-managed it any better, writes Tony Stafford. Trainer Charlie Longsdon faces five days of anxiety and excitement as he prepares his grey mare, Snow Leopardess, to attempt what will be a doubly unique achievement in Saturday’s Randox Grand National.

Not only is the ten-year-old a mare and a grey to boot, but also uniquely one that has had a foal which has now reached racing age.

For the record – repeating (and I hope accurately) facts I trotted out when the aim was mooted a few weeks back – there have been 13 winning mares of Liverpool’s great race, but only two, Sheila’s Cottage (1948) and Nickel Coin three years later, in the past 120 years.

Three grey horses have won the race in its 183-year history since Lottery won the inaugural race in 1839. The Lamb in 1868 and 1871, Nicolaus Silver in 1961, and Paul Nicholls’ Neptune Collonges ten years ago, were the trio.

As far as I know none of the first 11 winners taking us up to 1902 had a foal, but in those days of milk-cart pullers turning up to have a go round the fences having walked miles to get there, who can say?

Snow Leopardess fulfils all three requirements and can also boast a win around the Aintree fences – in the Becher Chase, the middle of three unblemished appearances this season. And as if the portents hadn’t been positive already, having been some way out of the top 40 before her last win at Exeter, withdrawals mean she is safely in at number 38.

Longsdon sent her to that mares’ Listed race to gain the few extra pounds he reckoned it would take to guarantee her place in the field, but the jumps handicapper was unimpressed, leaving her unchanged on 145 after a ten-length romp. The Grand National gets special treatment and she resides there 1lb higher and, in these days of blanket Irish entries, it was just as well.

Looking at the race I think we should deal not much lower than the top 40 as it would take an idiot to neglect the opportunity to run for half a million sterling on a track presently officially good to soft and with a few showers to top it up. So little used, Aintree’s Grand National course invariably offers a sympathetic surface.

When the dry spell was continuing, the prospect of fast ground on Saturday was a worry for Longsdon, but if it stays as advertised she should be fine. Also, she is ideally placed, right at the bottom of the weights and therefore not in danger from a lightweight taking advantage of a hefty weight allowance.

The make-up of the race is interesting. Looking at the top 40 horses, 24 are trained in Ireland and 16 in the UK. Gordon Elliott (or rather owner Michael O’Leary) has declined to allow Tiger Roll to attempt the Red Rum-equalling third win, but they do have Delta Work, the horse that beat him in that thrilling battle in last month’s Cheltenham Foxhunters, to carry the maroon and white colours.

Delta Work, 8-1 equal-favourite at this stage with compatriot Any Second Now (Ted Walsh/J P McManus) and Snow Leopardess, is one of eight Elliott horses, all in the top 22, which can represent the trainer.

While he is no longer pilloried for the events which led to a suspension last year, he must have found Cheltenham an ordeal as he watched his great rival and obvious role model Willie Mullins winning ten races at the Festival. Mullins has a low-key trio (among the top 40) in on Saturday of which Burrows Saint looks his best chance.

If he had not run his last race, when beaten miles in third behind close contenders Any Second Now and Elliott’s Escaria Ten, Burrows Saint would surely have been higher in the market especially as he started favourite that day. He remains one under the radar and everyone knows Mullins’ capability of pulling rabbits out of hats.

It’s always fun to hear trainers and owners moaning about their horses’ treatment at the Grand National weights unveiling and Henry De Bromhead duly joined that group in complaining that Minella Times, last year’s record-breaking winner under Rachael Blackmore, had too much weight.

Pointing to this year’s two runs – a pulled up and then a fall as evidence – he reckoned he should not have been higher than when running in those two races. I am 100% behind the handicapper and 2lb for the long-established Aintree factor looks fair enough for me, especially remembering how easily he won last year’s race for J P McManus.

There is no incentive for trainers guaranteed to get their horses in the race to over-exert them in the season leading up to it, but I think Colin Tizzard deserves credit for the attacking policy he has pursued with Fiddlerontheroof, runner-up giving away plenty of weight in last November’s Ladbrokes Trophy at Newbury.

The Fiddler then went to Ascot for an excellent second to Fortescue in the Swinley Chase attempting to concede 17lb. He jumped the last in front of Henry Daly’s horse and subsequent revelation that he lost a shoe possibly enhances the merit of the performance.

Sometimes one modest run is enough to convince the betting public that a horse’s improvement may have come to an end. When Chatham Street Lad toiled home 22 and again 22 lengths third behind A Plus Tard and Royale Pagaille in the Betfair Chase at Haydock in November, he immediately dropped out of the subconscious.

But Michael Winters, his trainer, is a dab hand at the big races and it is probably wise to remember the ease of his runaway Cheltenham win in December 2020 and last May’s equally impressive victory in a Graded chase at Limerick.

A combination of Kauto Star and Denman would not have stopped A Plus Tard that day, nor indeed at Cheltenham last month when he was the most impressive of Gold Cup winners. Chatham Street Lad is my best outsider.

De Bromhead got A Plus Tard back to that peak – and what a peak! - at the right time for Cheltenham after a hit-and-miss campaign for much of the winter, and now you have to think Minella Times will have been precisely and single-mindedly aimed at this second shot. Repeat wins are less infrequent than you might think, and he could easily do it again. Imagine the noise if they did. Champion Hurdle, Gold Cup and another Grand National for Rachael in the space of three weeks? It could easily happen.

Apologies for another truncated offering – trouble getting my Internet sorted! – but I must end with a salute to Christian Williams and his achievement in supplying the first two in the Scottish Grand National last weekend.

His nine-year-old mare, Win My Wings, was held up a long way back for much of the four miles at Ayr but came through strongly in the straight. Leading halfway down she moved easily into the lead and scooted clear of stable-mate Kitty’s Light in a show of complete control.

Williams can now be sure she will be raised enough to qualify rating-wise for next year’s Grand National proper – her 140 will be raised at least to 150 unless the official was looking elsewhere on Saturday.

In the meantime a mare one year senior to her will have her chance to make the headlines and history. I hope Snow Leopardess can add a final accolade to her already impressive tally of achievement and win the Grand National. Chatham Street Lad, Fiddlerontheroof and Minella Times complete my four for the exotics. Good luck to everyone and let’s hope they all come home safe and sound.

- TS

Monday Musings: Snow’s Got a White National Chance

14 February 2022/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Yesterday, high up on Haldon Hill overlooking Exeter the mist rolled in as winter rainfall finally reached jumping racecourses after a frustratingly dry New Year, writes Tony Stafford. Shining through the murk as she always does and stealing the show was an old mare, nominally grey but in effect as white as the caps that J P McManus’s first strings sport on the racecourses of the UK and Ireland.

J P was cleaning up this weekend with a treble a day at Naas and Punchestown, but those exploits and the 3,000 and a fair few wins he already owns will hardly matter a jot if the said 10-year-old grand lady, Snow Leopardess to you and me, wins the 2022 Grand National.

Since 1839 when Lottery set the ball rolling in the world’s best jumps race ever challenged for, only 13 mares have won it. In the race’s early days there were loads, ten in the first 50 years. That makes it three – that’s right only three – in the next century and a third! After Frigate (number ten) in 1889, there’s only been Shannon Lass (1902), Sheila’s Cottage in 1948 and Nickel Coin in 1951.

Unless you’re almost as old as me you would not have been around for any of them – unlike me, here for the last two. But I hadn’t yet begun my interest in racing – that came with the following year’s King George VI Chase which we used to watch on my great-uncle’s television when we went to their big house at Christmas – so it starts with the Galloway Braes and Halloween battles between 1952 and 1954.

I suppose you can say I was as much brain-washed to county cricket at the Oval, football at Highbury, and racing everywhere from the early-1950’s to an extent that others might be fed politics of a certain standpoint and other life-defining attitudes.

Seventy years on, those three pastimes, nay obsessions, are intact and if anything reinforced by having had the opportunity to write about them. Thus when a Snow Leopardess comes along I think we should give full credit to the mare herself; the owners who bred her dam to a wonderful stallion, and her trainer Charlie Longsdon, who has guided her to an already exceptional series of achievements. If the final one happens, his role will only then be fully appreciated.

Charlie likes winning first time out with his horses – you only have to look as far back as Saturday at Warwick to see how Gaelic Park: “not really a bumper horse, more a galloper”, as he suggested, bolted up first time.

Two weeks short of six years ago, the daughter of the brilliant French jumps stallion Martaline made a winning debut at Doncaster, seeing off the heavily-backed Nicky Henderson-trained Rather Be. Charlie was Hendo-trained too – he was his former assistant.

There were a couple of highlights in her early days. One fifth place in the Aintree bumper spelt enough for her first season, but then she was shipped out first time next autumn for a valuable Listed bumper at Gowran Park and beat a Gordon Elliott mare and 18 others to pick up a €20k prize.

She was at it again at the end of that season, having in between won one minor hurdle race at Doncaster at 9/2 on. Here again she came home clear of a big field (16 runners this time) to win the EBF Mares’ handicap hurdle final at Newbury that March. The prize? another £22k.

Now, Snow Leopardess likes nothing more than winning first time sent to a new country, so after a six-month break Charlie despatched her to Auteuil for a conditions hurdle for, you guessed it, €21k. She duly beat seven rivals under James Reveley but unfortunately that’s where she sustained the injury that promised to end her career.

Snow Leopardess and her owners the Fox-Pitt family, though, do not believe in standing idle and, while recuperating, the mare was sent to Derby-winning stallion Sir Percy, the product of that union arriving early in 2019.

Amazingly, 26 months on from that ill-fated albeit winning trip to France she was back in action for a truncated twice unplaced campaign. She still the added one victory to her previous five in eight last term and also ran a remarkable race when finishing fourth in the National Hunt Chase, having lost her place when briefly outpaced on the faster than ideal ground. Nothing finished better than her as she chased 2022 Gold Cup candidate Galvin up the hill.

The story has developed apace this winter. After winning a nice handicap chase at Bangor – no she’d been there once before so the new country syndrome was not in operation this time – she then showed the most carefree disdain of the Aintree fences when dominating most of the three and a quarter mile Becher Chase in soft ground ten weeks ago. The Aintree run-in was another matter.

Her stride was understandably shortening in those last demanding yards but the nose by which she bravely held on was never more deserved. Switching back to a conventional three miles yesterday at Exeter for her first try at Listed class over fences might have been a pitfall waiting to happen but where her opposition of experienced and prolific-winning steeplechasers dropped away one by one, she slogged through the mud for a 12-length success.

A deserved increase (“not too high!” says Charlie) in her 145 rating should ensure she gets in the field come April and as Longsdon said afterwards: “We have to hope for a wet spring.”

Her career tally from only 19 starts is a remarkable nine successes at a rate that is very high up among the best products of Martaline. It would be very tidy if she could make it 50% at Aintree.

She jumped some of yesterday’s fences with feet to spare and I remember marvelling at the way she was clearing the fences in the Becher Chase. While not as formidable as in the bad old days, you still have to jump 30 of them and, Tiger Roll apart if he shows this time, there won’t be a horse better equipped to handle them, or the stamina test needed if it does turn soft.

As I said earlier, only three mares during the last 132 years have won the Grand National. Equally amazingly in its entire history only three grey horses have ever won it, The Lamb, twice in 1868 and 1871; Nicolaus Silver (1961) which my dad told me he’d backed after I got home from playing in the London Grammar Schools six-a side football championships at Chiswick that morning, and Neptune Collonges in 2012.

Snow Leopardess is already guaranteed one distinction if she does succeed. She’ll be the first grey mare to win it. Probably the early winning mares, namely Charity (1841), Miss Mowbray (1852), Anatis (1860), Jealousy (1861), Emblem (1863) or Emblematic the following year would have had other duties to perform.

Assuredly they would have been worked on farms, maybe pulled the milkman’s float or the brewer’s dray and then needed to be walked however many miles from their home base to Liverpool for their big race day. It could well be the case that one or more of them might have had a foal, but we can say for sure that Snow Leopardess would be doubly unique – the first grey mare to win the race and the first to add having a foal to that singular distinction.

As the enormity of the potential situation gathers momentum, rather in the manner of Andrew Gemmell three years ago when Paisley Park won his Stayers’ Hurdle, or through Rachael Blackmore’s domination of Cheltenham last year, you can expect a media barrage. Charlie, I hope you are ready for it.

Dermot Weld duly won with his Cheltenham possible Falcon Eight in his novice test at Thurles on Thursday. Having looked to have a lot to do half a mile from home, magically he had completely eroded the gap from the leaders in a trice. You were allowed to see just a glimpse of the class he showed in winning the Chester Cup off 104 last May and a little brushing up of the jumping technique could produce another giant step forward.

My friends who have the 33/1 run guaranteed for the Albert Bartlett on the Friday will be hoping for dry weather. The beauty is, having backed him for Thurles, they know canny Dermot will not let him run if it turns soft at Prestbury Park so they are in a win/win situation. Especially if he win wins!

Focus this week is on my long-term boss Raymond Tooth’s return to ownership with the Ian Williams-trained Glen Again who makes his hurdles debut at Fontwell on Thursday. If he runs as fast and jumps as beautifully as he looks – which the trainer suggests he might – Ray could have some fun for the rest of this season and for a few more. Fingers crossed, as they say!

- TS

A Racing “Guess Who”

21 July 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

When people have been around the racing game for a while, especially when they haven’t had the good fortune to crack it in the way of a Henderson or an Aidan O’Brien, a good way of teasing out their identity is to offer snippets from their lifetime, writes Tony Stafford.

We all know about Mr Frisk, the Kim Bailey-trained Grand National winner ridden by the amateur Marcus Armytage, son of trainer Roddy and brother to the first female Hennessy Gold Cup winning rider Gee, later Tony McCoy’s secretary.

Marcus was subsequently a colleague of mine at the Daily Telegraph – indeed he is still there. But our mystery man beat the youthful Old Etonian to it, winning five chases in a row, and unbeaten in six on the gelding in an invincible season as a novice, at one point telling an interviewing journalist that he and Mr Frisk would win the Grand National. Events would subsequently conspire for the combination of horse and jockey to be broken through no fault of our rider.

Next clue, born and bred in West Ham, East London, he went to the same school as did - a good few years earlier of course - Michael Tabor and the late and much-loved David Johnson, owner of all those wonderful jumpers with Martin Pipe. Our hero’s father Norman, youngest of a family of 13 after serving with distinction in the army, joined the Daily Telegraph as a printer.

In the days of hot metal linotype he and his many skilled colleagues would stand one side of the “stone”, the flat piece of the print room’s furniture along which the individual pages would be laid out and constructed. He would help the sub-editor – very often me on the racing pages – standing on the other side to fit it all in from my upside-down, back-to-front perspective. My job was assisted by having paper printers’ single long “takes” of the individual stories and racing cards which had to be cut to length – rather different nowadays with instant editing for all, not least without all the sensitivities of not crossing other unions’ demarcation lines.

Knowing what and how much to cut was the key but a good stone man on the other side made it easy and Norman knew his stuff all right. I loved those days and can still read newspapers upside down – maybe not the most helpful attribute these days, rather like knowing Latin declensions and conjugations!

A bit sketchy so far, well how about this? At 6ft 2 1/2inches he was the tallest jump jockey of his time. One season he broke his right collarbone nine times; it was only when ironically riding Bailey’s Just For The Crack at Newbury that both went in the same fall.

After retiring from race riding in the mid-1990’s he would not begin training in his own right for a few years, instead working as Norman Mason’s assistant – the assistant to the amusement machine magnate from the North-East was in effect the trainer.

Mason also had a Grand National winner, but Red Marauder’s success in 2001 when one of only four finishers happened after the mystery man’s departure having overseen his novice win. He was already setting up his own stable by then. What has defined him in the intervening two decades has been his extreme patience waiting, it seems, forever to land a touch for his owner, then carrying it off with certainty.

If you haven’t got it yet you never will so here we go - say hello to Alan Jones. From West Ham to the West Country via Northumberland has been a stretch. He still stands just as tall and with a season-best of ten a while ago and more likely four or five every term from his ten-strong string of individually and minutely prepared jumpers, he keeps the show going for his owners.

One of them enjoyed such a winning punt on his veteran horse Tiquer in the winter of 2017-18 that he decided to invest at a higher level. “He won 140 grand”, recalls Alan, “so decided to go to Goff’s in Ireland that October to look for a smart yearling. He had been using an agent but he thought his fees excessive, so he asked me to go along and find a nice filly for around 100-110k”, recalls Alan.

“We started with a dozen but boiled it down and eventually settled on a Camelot filly. To my surprise we got her for €100,000. The wind came out of my sails a bit when the owner sent her to Richard Hannon, but she was from a major Coolmore source, consigned by Timmy Hyde’s Camas Park stud, so you would have expected her to go to a big Flat yard. In any case, he is my biggest owner so you’d want to keep him happy.

“Of course, I kept my ear to the ground, listening for news on how she was doing at Hannon’s. It seemed she didn’t make the expected progress and it was as much an economy measure as anything else when I was asked to take her for the winter as a two-year-old”, said Jones. The next season as a three-year-old soundness was again an issue with her so it was back again to Mr Jones for some more rest and recuperation.

Ironically, recalls Jones, it was just when he detected the filly was starting to shape up that the owner nearly brought the project to an untimely end. “She was improving every day and then suddenly there was a potential buyer wanting to send her to stud unraced. I told the owner I thought we could still do something with her and luckily he finally agreed.”

Thus on Sunday, prepared on the same type of hill up which Martin Pipe, who in Jones’s estimation, completely changed the science of training racehorses, Lady Excalibur was finally ready to go.

The chosen target, a bumper at Stratford last Sunday, came along 1,021 days after Alan Jones signed the docket to re-invest that big chunk of his owner’s massive touch. After the event he reckoned “she’s not quick” but if you watch the video of where she is turning for home and where she is at the finish with Tom O’Brien sitting pretty you might have another opinion. The world is her oyster and whatever she does on the track she will always have a value as a potential broodmare.

As Tom told him afterwards, “You are just like my Uncle Aidan, you can perform miracles. This one certainly is”. Praise indeed, but when your stable is limited to a handful of animals, candidates for such miracles come along only rarely. In 60-year-old Alan Jones’ case 1,021 days from purchase to payoff is a bit of a sprint!

- TS

Monday Musings: In Threes They Come…

12 April 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

They say disasters come in threes, writes Tony Stafford. The same is true where things we thought would never happen do actually occur. In four short days early in April, Prince Philip was no longer with us; a woman rode the winner of the Grand National, and a Japanese golfer became the first to win a major championship.

Having spent 73 years married to the Queen, Prince Philip was so much a fabric of our lives that it was a real shock when he did not make the century, unlike his mother-in-law Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother who died in her 102^nd year on March 30 2002.

On Friday morning I was stuck in a traffic jam having undertaken a routine 30-minute round trip to buy some hard-to-find organic dog food for our delicate and elderly Yorkshire terrier. As I emerged on the south side of Blackwall TunneI, I noticed a police car blocking the northern approach.

Three hours later, having missed the first three races on the second day of the Aintree meeting, I had undertaken a near 50-mile diversion to avoid the resultant gridlock. For all that time, after switching on the car radio and hearing of Prince Philip’s passing, I learnt lots I hadn’t known about him in Radio 4’s blanket coverage. How fortunate that the future Queen as a very young girl could discern the qualities which clearly entranced her on their initial meeting at Dartmouth Naval College more than 80 years ago.

Both descendants of Queen Victoria, who also made it to her 80’s despite being a carrier of the recessive gene haemophilia – none of the existing generations is afflicted happily - their marriage has been the one constant in a world increasingly subject to the potential horrors of social media and the like. Things may never seem to be the same again.

That’s true too of life after Covid. Today, on my late father’s 101^st birthday, shops can again open in the UK in the midst of a week’s mourning for the Royal family. Hopefully we can start to go racing – I resolved not to until the ravages of the disease had been beaten. It seems it almost has been and on Thursday my second helping of the Astra Zeneca will either kill (if you believe the Euro politicians) or fully protect me.

Missing Aintree didn’t prevent us celebrating the continued rise of the remarkable Rachael Blackmore. It’s not a surname you hear very often although John Blackmore was in my first primary school class. He was well enough behaved and from memory quite a jovial chap. That was unlike Johnny Robinson who was only in the reception class of Amherst Primary School for one day. He was so disruptive that halfway through the afternoon he was tied to a chair. We never saw him again, nor was anyone else in need ever of similar constraint.

Amherst was the third Christian name of Sir Henry Cecil whose father was the younger brother of the third Baron Amherst of Hackney. It was my pleasure to know him well enough to ask him to write a foreword for one of my few “proper” books, all three of which my elder daughter presented me with (two to return) when I made a first visit to her house for more than a year recently. I was especially pleased to be reminded of Frankie Dettori’s Year In The Life, ghosted before and amended after that seven-out-of-seven at Ascot.

The Cecil-embellished volume was a second go at the earlier Little Black Racing Book, foreword by Lester Piggott. The idea for that was spawned by Collins Willow’s commissioning editor, Michael Doggart, as a racing stable-companion to the Little Red Book, a best-selling and much-admired volume by Harvey Penick, the great American golf coach.

His most celebrated student at university in Austin, Texas, was Ben Crenshaw. When Penick died in 1995 after a long illness, Crenshaw was one of the pall-bearers.

The following day he started his Masters quest, and as Ben later confessed, he was guided to success in that Major championship by Penick’s memory. His triumph will no doubt have made only a ripple in the sporting lexicon of the 1990’s in comparison with what will happen back home in Japan after Hideki Matsuyama held on by a stroke on Sunday night in Augusta.

That event came just 30 hours after what for most of our lives we’ve believed would never happen. In 1977 Charlotte Brew, riding Barony Fort, got as far as the 27^th fence before her horse was pulled up. In those days Aintree was much more fearsome and the fact she could negotiate 26 of the fences should have prepared us for a future female winner. Forty-four years on we have one.

The first of a series of Flat races in which women could ride came five years earlier than Barony Fort, at Kempton Park, when Scorched Earth ridden by Miss Meriel Tufnell won, the first of three victories in a 12-race sponsored-by-Goya series which brought her the title. Sadly she died from cancer aged 53. Charlotte Brew, who watched Rachael’s victory at home in the West Country with her three daughters, is now 65 years old and confessed to a tear or two as she watched Minella Times’ triumph.

As with momentous events happening in triplicate, Rachael Blackmore’s achievement at Aintree, coming hard on her domination and champion jockey award at the recent Cheltenham Festival, was the first of three memorable female rides within an hour on Saturday.

The third of them came in the concluding bumper at Aintree where Megan Nicholls, riding her father’s Knappers Hill, was involved in a drawn-out battle in the last furlong with jumps championship contender Harry Skelton and lost nothing in comparison with him or with Paddy Brennan on the fast-finishing second.

Indeed her strength in the finish was notable as she gained a sixth bumper win of the year for her father from only 15 rides. Considering she has ridden on the Flat in the last year at 8st 1lb, to lug the saddle with around three stone of lead back to scale with her horse carrying 11st 4lb was a feat of strength in itself!

Before turning to riding on the Flat, which at the time when she was only 16, her father described as “getting it out of her system”, she had ridden one earlier bumper winner but none more until this term. Instead she has won 96 races on the Flat, based in the north, so, far from merely getting it out of her system, she has become very accomplished. Also at the age of 23 she has shown herself to be a talented broadcaster when given the chance, usually as the expert analyst at jumps meetings close to the Nicholls stable.

The middle winner of the three had already long weighed in by the time Megan went to post. Every day I do a line for FromTheStables.com, and pass on the thoughts of a dozen or so trainers, including Micky Hammond, to the members.

Micky had four runners at Newcastle on Saturday but clearly best liked the chance of Ballycrystal in the finale. Becky Smith, one of the leading female amateurs under both Flat and NH Rules, had been starved of action during the ban on amateurs and point-to-point racing. Now the younger sister of Gemma Hogg, Hammond’s assistant trainer, is raring to go and is quickly at full flow.

After talking to Micky, I looked up Ballycrystal’s form. When trained by Brian Ellison, on Nov 23 2018 he had carried the same weight (rated 125) as the favourite and eventual winner in a 3m1f chase at Catterick. He was well beaten in fifth place but now, fancied after a decent run in a jumpers’ bumper at the track in February, was running in a handicap hurdle off a mark of 93, 32lb lower.

Fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the Newcastle race, Cloth Cap, the horse that beat him at Catterick, was lining up as the favourite for the Grand National, 14lb well-in after winning at Kelso. If the two old rivals were to meet next weekend, Ballycrystal would be 69lb (so almost five stone) better off!

Becky expertly guided Ballycrystal (18-1 to 8’s) to a facile win in his handicap hurdle race, while Cloth Cap was pulled up after being in the first two for much of the marathon journey. I texted Micky later: “On the way they ran today, it might have been close between them at levels!” He’s looking up to see if he can find a race where he can take him on again!

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