Aintree anniversaries: Memorable Grand Nationals

By John Ingles

Horse Racing

Fri March 31, 2023 · 2y ago

This year marks the anniversary of some memorable Grand Nationals, including the void race, Jenny Pitman's first win and Red Rum's epic victory over Crisp.

Racing likes to celebrate its anniversaries and there’s no race with a richer source of memorable events to commemorate than the Grand National. This year sees the anniversary of several such landmark moments at Aintree, though perhaps ‘celebrate’ is the wrong word for the first of them, the 30th anniversary of a Grand National which, officially at least, never even happened and which some of those officiating at the time would probably much rather forget.

The 1993 Grand National made the front page of the Sunday papers, though headlines such as ‘National Disgrace’, ‘National Disaster’ and ‘The Grand Shambles’ summed up the general reaction to the chaotic events of the day before which resulted in the race being declared void and around £30m in bets being returned in a fiasco played out in front of 16 million viewers on television in Britain alone.

On a wet and windy day, the combination of the field arriving at the start early and then a delay while some protestors were removed from the course contributed to some horses proving reluctant to line up while others did so too close to the tape. When the tape was released for the first time, it broke, entangling some of the riders, though with a false start announced the whole field pulled up well before the first fence. A second attempt to get the field of 39 under way proved similarly shambolic, though this time most of the jockeys were unaware that a false start had been called again and later claimed that the flag man, 100 yards down the course, had given no signal to pull up.

Only nine of them did so before the first fence but the remainder continued before attempts were made by both officials and connections of some of the runners to stop those still going at the end of the first circuit. Ten more riders did pull up at that point, but that still left a dozen who continued for another circuit, seven of them completing the course headed by Esha Ness who has earned fame for ‘winning’ the Grand National that never was.

Esha Ness was trained by Jenny Pitman who, ten years earlier, had a far happier Aintree experience because 2023 also marks the 40th anniversary of Corbiere’s Grand National victory which put Mrs Pitman in the record books as the first woman to train the winner of the race. Two years after the void race, she gained the second win that had been denied her on that occasion when Royal Athlete was successful in 1995, paving the way for Venetia Williams, Sue Smith and Lucinda Russell to add their names to the roll of honour this century.

More recently still, Rachael Blackmore made history when becoming the first woman to win the Grand National as a jockey when successful two years ago on Minella Times which was another significant victory in what was once a much more male-dominated sport, even among the ranks of trainers. Indeed, Jenny Pitman only started training less than ten years after women were first allowed to train under their own names, a restriction lifted in 1966 after the matter reached the courts.

While the 1983 Grand National will be best remembered for Mrs Pitman’s historic win with Corbiere, who had also won the Welsh Grand National earlier that season, it was also a hugely significant year in securing the race’s future. The fate of the Grand National under Aintree’s previous owners had been uncertain for something like 20 years beforehand, but after protracted negotiations with property developers the Walton Group, who had bought the struggling track from the Topham family in 1973, the Jockey Club finally completed a payment of £3.4 million a matter of weeks after the 1983 Grand National which gave them rights to the race and the deeds to Aintree racecourse. Much of the money for the purchase was raised through public appeal in the absence of any government support.

Rewind another ten years, and we come to 1973, making this the 50th anniversary of one of the most memorable Grand Nationals, which was also the first of three victories which turned Red Rum into the race’s most famous winner and whose immense popularity did much to revive Aintree’s fortunes which were at a low ebb by the early 1970s. Grand National runners-up aren’t remembered so easily, but Crisp, who was second in 1973, also played his part in making it an epic race under Richard Pitman - the then husband of Jenny Pitman and later to be part of the BBC team covering the void race.

Red Rum and Crisp were sent off the 9/1 joint favourites, and while Red Rum was to carry big weights in most of his Grand Nationals, including when successful again a year later under 12-0, on his first appearance in the race he had just 10-5 on his back and it was Crisp who was burdened with joint-top weight along with the former dual Gold Cup winner L’Escargot. Having begun his career winning important chases in Australia, Crisp gained his biggest success on British soil for trainer Fred Winter in the 1971 Queen Mother Champion Chase but he failed to stay in the following season’s Gold Cup.

That was to prove his undoing in the Grand National too, but only after a remarkable display of bold jumping and front-running which took him 20 lengths clear of his remaining pursuers starting the second circuit. With Crisp still 15 lengths clear jumping the last, Red Rum, ridden by Brian Fletcher, was beginning to eat into his lead by then and, with Crisp out on his feet after they’d passed the elbow, Red Rum swept past in the final strides to win by three quarters of length, both horses breaking the record time for the race.

Red Rum was 12 when he won the last of his three Grand Nationals in 1977 which is quite old for a Grand National winner but not quite as old as Sergeant Murphy, who was the last 13-year-old to be successful exactly a century ago. That anniversary hasn’t gone unnoticed, at least not by American Pierre Manigault whose great grandfather Stephen Sanford was Sergeant Murphy’s owner. He’d been bought the horse as a present whilst studying at Cambridge by his father John Sanford, a major figure of the time in American racing who had owned the winner of the 1916 Kentucky Derby. Sergeant Murphy won the Grand National at the fourth attempt at Aintree (he also contested a wartime substitute version at Gatwick), having twice finished fourth in previous tries.

Manigault was seeking to buy Shark Hanlon’s Hewick, winner of the American Grand National last October, to represent him at Aintree this year, but with Hewick’s owner unwilling to sell, his colours will be carried instead by Cape Gentleman who has joined Hanlon with the mission in mind. Formerly a stablemate of last year’s Grand National winner Noble Yeats with Emmet Mullins, Cape Gentleman won the Irish Cesarewitch earlier in his career but has some smart form to his name over fences more recently and qualified for Aintree by finishing fourth at Fairyhouse last month.