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NOT A LESSER RACE BUT IT'S LESS OF A NATIONAL

Racing Ahead

June 2024

Rolf Johnson bemoans the hot air blowing holes in Aintree highlight's international heritage

NOT A LESSER RACE BUT IT'S LESS OF A NATIONAL

Next year's Grand National, I'm reliably informed, will be a four-mile bumper with sleeping policemen replacing fences: Animal Rights protestors could do that job, after all they've got form at Aintree prostrating themselves on the hallowed turf, sticking to fences...but eh, we don't want their Hi-Viz jackets frightening the horses.

There wouldn't have been a 'next year's National' had Scotland's Corach Rambler fallen at the first and killed himself. Instead, unfamiliar with the standing start and foreshortened run up, last year's winner unseated at the first. Had his jockey (who stayed on all the way round in 2023) glued himself to the saddle with the brand of adhesive recommended by Animal Rights he, Derek Fox, could have been back in the winner's enclosure. (Incidentally, were the hardy annual agitators bought off or 'warned off' this time?).

At least Fox didn't end up in Aintree Hospital, the unsaddling enclosure for stricken Grand National jockeys. In 1951 there were eleven fallers at the first: this time Corach Rambler survived injury; National Hunt followers breathed again. But hot air surrounding the race and its future, blew from diverse orifices.

Racing pundits and assorted presenters broadcast their two penn'orth on whether tinkering with the National had emasculated racing's greatest spectacle or whether the changes are its salvation. But the mercenaries stuck to their guns - and their betting paymasters. Every knob you turned had 'the names' prostituting themselves on their bookie master's platform.

Marcus Armytage of the Daily Telegraph was an exception but then Armytage too has 'form; he only went and won the damn thing on Mr Frisk in 1990 - in record time, which still holds, though the course is 300 yards shorter! The next year Mr Frisk and Mr Armytage - he was an amateur - pulled up. Aldaniti in 1981 and '82 set the grim precedent for Corach Rambler first fence far enough for both, second time round.