The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Sisters square up in Grand National battle
Gina Andrews takes the reins on Latenightpass as sibling guns for husband aboard Galia Des Liteaux
THE Grand National will become a family affair today as a husband-and-wife team go head-to-head with their brother-in-law.
Trainer Tom Ellis, 39, and his jockey wife Gina Andrews, 32, are plotting success at the world’s most famous horse race, but will go up against family member Harry Skelton, who is married to Bridget Andrews, Gina’s younger sister.
The elder Andrews will aim to become part of the first couple to win the race tomorrow, hoping to ride Latenightpass to victory ahead of 33 other competitors in front of 80,000 spectators.
The 11-year-old gelding she will ride is owned by her husband’s mother Pippa, who bred the horse, trained at stables in Warwickshire.
Meanwhile, Skelton, 34, is riding Galia Des Liteaux, an eight-year-old, and has vowed to race in the 185th Grand National even if his fellow jockey wife goes into labour, with the baby due in two weeks’ time.
Bridget Andrews, 30, is expecting the couple’s first child on April 23, but Skelton, a former champion jockey, has insisted he will partner Galia Des Liteaux, trained by his brother Dan, come what may. Although the jockey said he would not want to miss the birth of his first child, he said his wife would be first to back his decision to take on the famous Aintree fences.
“If I get the call telling me Bridget has gone into labour I think I would end up riding in the Grand National as I know what Bridget would say,” Skelton said. “She would say ‘get out there and win the Grand National, then get here as soon as you can’. That is what she would want me to do.
“I know how her brain works pretty well. She is not a selfish person at all and she never has been. She knows that if I have a chance of winning the Grand National, she wouldn’t want to take that away from us as a family.”
He said his wife will be at Aintree with him today and joked that if she went into labour during the race there would be plenty of medical help available. “It would be the absolute dream to win the Grand National, then get the call to say ‘I might drop’ and I would be off. Bridget is here up at Aintree with me, and her waters could break in the middle of the paddock in front of the winner’s enclosure. At least there would be a doctor on hand if that happened.”
While Skelton has been busy preparing to become a father, the other side of the family has been taking a different approach to the most important event in the racing calendar.
As other jockeys and trainers rested ahead of this week’s meet, the couple stayed up all night watching replays of Latenightpass’s previous successes during a different race at Aintree in 2022.
“We sat there in bed on Tuesday night at 10.30pm and watched videos of him winning around here to get us revved up,” Ellis said. “It was probably a stupid thing to do as neither of us slept a wink.
“Every time we get in the car together we end up talking about it. We went to London the other week and it was the only topic of conversation on the way there, and on the way back.
“It is a huge thing for us to be doing as a family. I feel very honoured, and privileged, that we are in the position we are in. It is a little bit bonkers to think someone like us has got a runner in the Grand National.”
‘Bridget is here up at Aintree with me, and her waters could break in the middle of the paddock’
The pair hope to be the most successful husband-and-wife team at the Grand National since Carrie Ford rode her husband Richard’s Forest Gunner to finish fifth in the race in 2005.
Three men have been arrested after a fight broke out on Ladies Day at the Grand National meeting at Aintree. The suspects were seen throwing punches in front of the Princess Royal Stand. It is understood the fracas involved a small group of people who all knew each other. One person suffered an injury which needed treatment but did not wish to press charges. A racecourse spokesman said: “There was an isolated disturbance which was quickly dealt with by our security teams.”