GRAND GESTURE

Race star Lori reveals pact with mum who has been her stable inspiration

- VIVIENNE AITKEN

THE stablegirl who led out Grand National winner Corach Rambler banned her mum from betting on the horse.

Lori Walsh, 19, captured the hearts of racegoers around the world with her beaming smile as she congratulated the horse she cares for at Lucinda Russell's yard in Kinross.

But Lori feared the horse would fall if her mum Mercy McEwen, 48, had a flutter because she's a jinx".

Lori said: "Every time my mum bets on a horse, it doesn't go well. I told her not to bet on him.

Proud mum Mercy said: "We are jinxed. Lori said whatever you do don't you back it because it will fall." A winning bet would have helped her parents enormously as for the last eight years they have lived in a caravan on a disused coal bing after Mercy, Lori and her brother Hamilton, 18, became homeless.

The three moved in with Mercy's partner, now husband, Ronnie McEwen, 59, sharing his caravan in Auchinleck, Ayrshire, and while Lori was quick to say she and her brother "had everything we could have wanted" life was sometimes very hard.

Lori said: "My step-dad Ronnie and my mum were incredible.

"They have a very hard life but they brought me up amazing. I got everything I could dream of. They worked very hard bringing me up." But she admitted life in the caravan wasn't always easy.

She said: "During winter, the ice is on the inside of the windows but we had electric blankets and duvets so we were always warm when we were in bed.

"When we got up in the morning to get dressed it was cold.

Mercy added: "It has not been as easy ride for Lori.

"I had a midlife crisis and made myself and the two kids homeless and moved into the caravan with Ronnie.

We still have no house." Mercy, Ronnie and Hamilton still live in the caravan.