With Gold Cup third Corach Rambler favourite to win the Grand National again, John Ingles looks at the horses who have made an impact in the season's two biggest chases.
For the third year running, last year’s Grand National hero Corach Rambler ran a fine race at last month’s Cheltenham Festival. The winner of the Ultima Handicap Chase in the previous two seasons, Corach Rambler looked to have plenty to find taking on top-class rivals at level weights in the Gold Cup this time. But the most testing conditions for the race this century played to his strengths and he turned in a career-best effort to finish third, beaten thirteen lengths behind winner Galopin des Champs, though was only a couple of lengths down on runner-up Gerri Colombe jumping the last before he tied up in the last hundred yards.
It was a superb effort with a defence of his Grand National title in mind, and while Corach Rambler has a stone more to carry than last year (11-5 this time), he looks the pick of the weights after his Gold Cup performance and is the clear favourite at 4/1 in most lists to give Lucinda Russell and Derek Fox another victory at Aintree.
While the Grand National and the Cheltenham Gold Cup are very different races in most respects, stamina is a prerequisite for both, particularly when conditions are testing at Cheltenham as they were this year. Grand National winners might not have the ‘class’ to win a Gold Cup - with a few exceptions we’ll come to later - though by finishing third at Cheltenham Corach Rambler became the latest Aintree hero to make the frame in chasing’s Blue Riband event.
Since 1986, five other Grand National winners have finished in the first four in the following season’s Gold Cup. All five then went back to Aintree but weren’t successful a second time, though three of them reached the frame there too.
1986 Grand National winner West Tip was only beaten around four lengths in fourth behind The Thinker when 50/1 for the 1987 Gold Cup before filling the same position behind Maori Venture when sent off the 5/1 favourite to win again at Aintree. The Thinker, incidentally, was placed in a Grand National two years later, finishing third under top weight behind Little Polveir and West Tip.
Richard Dunwoody’s other Grand National winner Miinnehoma, successful in 1994, had finished only seventh in that year’s Gold Cup but he gained a better placing at Cheltenham the following year, albeit beaten thirty lengths into third behind Master Oats in testing conditions. However, Miinehoma lost his enthusiasm for racing from then on and was pulled up at Aintree where Master Oats finished seventh under top weight as the 5/1 favourite (he went two places better at Aintree in 1997). The first three from the 1995 Gold Cup all contested the Grand National that year, with runner-up Dubacilla faring best of them at Aintree where she finished fourth to Royal Athlete who had himself been third at 66/1 in the 1993 Gold Cup.
Moving on to the current century, Hedgehunter provided Willie Mullins with his sole Grand National success to date in 2005, gaining compensation for a last-fence fall the year before when looking all set to finish in the frame. The following season, he ran an excellent race in the Gold Cup at odds of 16/1, when finding only War of Attrition two and a half lengths too good, before another magnificent effort back at Aintree when a 5/1 joint-favourite. Once again Hedgehunter had to settle for second behind a fellow Irish rival but under 11-12 was conceding more than a stone to winner Numbersixvalverde. Timeform’s report had no hesitation in describing him as ‘the finest Aintree performer since Red Rum’s day’.
Mon Mome earned fame as the 100/1 winner of the Grand National in 2009 and he was ignored in the betting again in the following season’s Gold Cup but outran his odds of 50/1 when storming home from a long way back to take a remote third behind Imperial Commander and Denman after odds-on favourite Kauto Star had fallen. That made him among the pick of the weights to win again at Aintree but a repeat success didn’t look on the cards even before he fell five from home.
Noble Yeats was another surprise winner of the Grand National in 2022 when successful at 50/1 in his first season over fences but improved into a top-class chaser last season when a staying-on fourth in both the Gold Cup and in a repeat bid at Aintree where he was just over eight lengths behind Corach Rambler trying to concede him 20 lb. Given a less orthodox preparation this year in the Stayers’ Hurdle, Noble Yeats has a big weight to carry again though is a stone better off with Corach Rambler this time.
By finishing fourth at Cheltenham and Aintree last year, Noble Yeats accomplished the rare feat of making the frame in the same year’s Gold Cup and Grand National. In addition to West Tip, Dubacilla and Hedgehunter already mentioned, Docklands Express managed this in 1992 when beaten around a length into third behind close finishers Cool Ground and The Fellow in the Gold Cup and then finishing fourth under Peter Scudamore – partner of Corach Rambler’s trainer Lucinda Russell – behind Party Politics when favourite at Aintree. A year earlier Garrison Savannah had gone close to securing an even more remarkable achievement as he was runner-up to Seagram in the National weeks after winning the Gold Cup.
More recently, Anibale Fly established an admirable record in both the Gold Cup and Grand National without winning either race. He was a staying-on third at 33/1 in the heavy-ground Gold Cup of 2018 won by Native River before finishing fourth to Tiger Roll at Aintree and a year later went one better in the Gold Cup when staying on strongly again, behind Al Boum Photo this time, before carrying top-weight into fifth in the Grand National behind Tiger Roll again.
Several Grand National winners, then, have run well in the following season’s Gold Cup, but it’s a long time since a placed horse in the Gold Cup went on to win the same year’s Grand National. Corach Rambler will therefore be bidding to emulate Rough Quest in 1996 who was second in the Gold Cup before winning at Aintree. Rough Quest ran what’s looking a typical Grand National winner’s race in the Gold Cup, staying on from a long way back, to finish four lengths behind Imperial Call. Even though he looked ‘thrown in’ at Aintree as a result, where he carried just 10-7, he only took his chance after a change of heart by connections, justifying favouritism at 7/1. There was only a sixteen-day gap between the two races that year, whereas Corach Rambler will have had longer than usual – over four weeks – to get over his Cheltenham exertions this year.
Rough Quest had a tendency to idle in front, a trait shared by Corach Rambler, and another point in common between the two is that, as well as both being Grand National winners and placed in a Gold Cup, Rough Quest, like West Tip as well, was also a winner of the Ritz Club National Hunt Handicap Chase, a former name of the Ultima.
The last Grand National winner to run in the Gold Cup beforehand was Many Clouds in 2015. He didn’t really advertise his chances for Aintree when a well-held sixth behind Coneygree when sent off at 7/1 for the Gold Cup but resumed his progress with a top-class effort at Aintree under 11-9, the highest weight carried to victory in a Grand National since Red Rum’s day. Grittar in 1982 was another Grand National winner who’d finished sixth in the Gold Cup on his previous start. One of the most famous – and unlikely - Grand National winners had also had a run in the Gold Cup beforehand, with the outclassed Foinavon trailing home at Cheltenham in 1967 before avoiding the mayhem at Aintree that year.
Other horses placed in the Gold Cup have gone on to win a Grand National later in their careers. The most recent to do so is Neptune Collonges who was the veteran of four Gold Cups (including third in 2008 and fourth in 2009) for Paul Nicholls before emerging from the shadow of Gold Cup-winning stablemates Kauto Star and Denman by winning the Grand National in 2012. Aldaniti entered Aintree folklore by recovering from serious injury to win the 1981 Grand National, having previously been good enough to finish third to Alverton (whose own Grand National bid was an ill-fated one) in the 1979 Gold Cup. Aldaniti’s contemporary Royal Mail needs a credit here too, finishing third behind him at Aintree but also a place in front of him in that Gold Cup.
This year marked a hundred years of the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Only one horse in that time has managed to win the Gold Cup and Grand National in the same year, and only one other has managed to win both races in his career. Golden Miller won five consecutive Gold Cups in the 1930s, and while he followed up his 1934 Gold Cup win by winning the Grand National that year, in record time under 12-2, that proved to be his only completion from five attempts in the Aintree race.
While Golden Miller evidently took a dislike to the Grand National course from his repeated attempts, it was a case of perseverance paying off for L’Escargot over the big fences some forty years later. He was one of the few horses since Golden Miller to have won more than one Gold Cup, being successful at Cheltenham in 1970 and 1971, and finishing fourth in the next two renewals as well. Despite carrying 12-0, L’Escargot was sent off favourite for his first Grand National attempt in 1972 only to be put out of the race early on. But a year later under 12-0 again he made a lot of late ground to finish third behind Red Rum and Crisp in their epic 1973 clash, was runner-up to Red Rum in 1974 and then turned the tables on him on better terms, winning by fifteen lengths, when successful at the age of twelve in 1975. Another Aintree regular who’d made the frame in the same three Grand Nationals, Spanish Steps, had also finished third behind L’Escargot in the 1970 Gold Cup.
Red Rum later won the third Grand National which L’Escargot had denied him in 1975, and both Corach Rambler and Noble Yeats will be bidding to join Tiger Roll as the only other dual winner in the fifty years since Red Rum won for the second time. But there’s a former Gold Cup winner in the reckoning too this year, and if Minella Indo can add the Grand National to the Gold Cup he won three years ago, he’d be another who’d enjoy a very rare claim to steeplechasing fame.
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