ROBERT COOPER
Losing my mike on Grand National Day almost spelt disaster
For many that nostalgic nudge invigorates the hairs on the back of your neck to prickle, but for me it’s all in the knees. Revisiting Grand Nationals gone by is the proof of the pudding; Red Rum left my patella unmoved, probably because I never backed him, but Leighton Aspell winning on Many Clouds had me twitching like Usain Bolt before an Olympic final. And I wasn’t even there. Another recent kneecap moment was One For Arthur in 2017, and again I was as far away from Aintree as a racing fan could be, at Leopardstown reporting on their Classic trials.
The 2003 Grand National triggers a Pavlov’s Dog lurid dread of reliving the five minutes that felt like five days in the aftermath of Barry Geraghty winning on Monty’s Pass. I was working for BBC Five Live and my principal task was to ‘mop up’ post-race, gathering jockeys’ reactions the moment they returned. The problem was that at some stage during the race I had ‘misplaced’ my microphone, all I could hear was a voice from the studio through my headphones (they were safe and sound on my head) saying, ‘Ok Robert, we’re recording, let’s go!’ My reply of ‘I’ve lost my effing mike’ went unheard. On the cusp of confession, I shuffled through the hordes in the winning enclosure to own up to my unforgivable negligence. Having reached a point where I could move neither forwards nor backwards, there before my bespectacled eyes on a ledge lay a microphone labelled ‘Robert’s mike’. It was a life-defining Guardian Angel moment and just the whispered reference to Monty’s Pass makes me wince.
However, nostalgia aside, the Grand National remains the greatest of all races, still an unequalled visual spectacle. I view the Cheltenham Gold Cup as statistics; great names on a page but with the National I’m there in pictorial detail every step of the way. Holding my breath over Becher’s, gasping as they clear the six-foot ditch at the Chair, and only occasionally cheering my horse galloping drunkenly round the elbow to the finishing line. Every year without fail there’s unscripted drama. Who needs Line of Duty?
I was also on board Radio Five Live in 2001 when the valiant Red Marauder and Richard Guest won the Grand National at 33/1 in the slowest time for 100 years – it took them 11 minutes, a full two minutes longer than Tiger Roll in 2019. On going deeper than bottomless, Aintree resembled a swamp. Only four horses completed the course and two of them, Blowing
Wind and Papillon, were remounted. My job this time was reading out the betting shows – a far safer role than when assigned to misplace my microphone two years later, but I was not complaining as barely three feet away in a crowded commentary box was the peerless Peter Bromley, nearing the end of his tenure as the BBC’s first racing correspondent, but always a brilliant commentator. This was Bromley’s last Grand National, he retired after calling Galileo’s Derby victory that same year – his 200th Classic commentary, and I mean Classic with a capital ‘C’. Bromley could breath life into any race let alone the Derby.
While Sir Peter O’Sullevan was irrefutably the Voice of Racing on television, the golden tones of Bromley illuminated many great races on the ‘wireless’ for those unable to warm up the telly or be present at the racecourse. As a packer in a Covent
Garden bookshop in the late 1970s there were regular midweek commentaries on Radio 2 slotted into Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart’s daily show. My parcels probably unravelled through negligence on race days, I only had
eyes for my betting slip and ears for Bromley. Decades later, to be sitting just a step away from the man who had delivered the unforgettable 1981 Derby commentary, ‘It’s Shergar, and you’ll need a telescope to see the rest’. Or at Aintree in 1973, ‘Red Rum wins it, Crisp second and the rest don’t matter, we’ll never see another race like this in 100 years’. My knees tingle as I type the words!
Cometh the day, Peter Bromley was poised for action at the helm, to his right sat Dick Francis (never failing to refer to the agonising splits performed by Devon Loch in 1956, with the flummoxed master of mystery and suspense on board). I was tucked away in the corner with my betting machine (a phone), there was a production assistant nearby and adjacent was an empty chair for a ‘mystery guest.’ Today it was Jenny Pitman
OBE, the first woman to train a Grand National winner when Corbiere (or Corky as she called him) won in 1983. Her son, Mark was endeavouring to continue the family tradition with his first runner in the race, Smartie.
The rain on the eve of the race was unrelenting and there were serious doubts about the meeting going ahead, but it’s one of those events when you race at any price. So deep was the mud and so slowly run the race, that no horses or jockeys were injured, not even the 50/1 outsider Lance Armstrong who with such a name might have discovered a method to conquer the conditions. In little more than a circuit the field 40 dwindled to a mere handful.
It was soon clear that the winner would be either Red Marauder or Smartie, and when Timmy Murphy edged to the lead three out, the chair behind me started to shudder. The vibrations were so intense that the anxious production assistant feared that Mrs P was having a heart attack. A glass of water was offered (and refused) as Red Marauder re-asserted his superiority, and the now dispirited mother had conceded her son would not be winning this actual renewal.
I’m sure there is a recording of Peter Bromley’s commentary somewhere in the annals of the BBC but the live version will do for me. It was such a shame that Bromley who stepped down after Galileo’s Derby would not enjoy a long, healthy and welldeserved retirement. He died just two years later. The Peters – Bromley and O’Sullevan – set the bar on the highest notch for future generations of commentators, a template virtually impossible to match.
Four years after Red Marauder’s mud-caked victory, Hedgehunter carried Trevor Hemming’s green and yellow quartered silks to victory. And again by Ballabriggs (2011) and Many Clouds (2015). The Grand National is and has always been 85 year-old Hemming’s most sought-after trophy, and this year victory for his 9 year-old gelding CLOTH CAP would make him the winning-most owner in Grand National history – a notable achievement for a race first run in 1839, barely two years after Queen Victoria’s Coronation.
Since undergoing many modifications to the course, safety now being more dominant than in yesteryear, the National is not the lottery it may once have been, nevertheless negotiating 30 fences will never be a cakewalk. CLOTH CAP (Hemmings rarely seen without one) will start a worthy favourite after winning the Ladbroke Trophy at Newbury and more recently Kelso’s Premier Chase. It’s hard to pick holes in the form; he jumps well, looks pretty certain to stay the marathon trip and has been expertly handled by his trainer Jonjo O’Neill. Peter Scudamore must be counting the minutes until the starting flag is raised.
Nevertheless, I can’t sit here and tip one of the more obvious likely winners in the race’s illustrious history, so instead I’ll sing the praises of Tom Lacey’s KIMBERLITE CANDY who carries the colours of JP McManus who recorded his only Grand National victory with DON’T PUSH IT (2010).
It’s unlikely that KIMBERLITE CANDY will be the only ‘JP’ representative in the green and gold hoops – there’s been plenty of support for Ted Walsh’s ANY SECOND NOW, a winner over just two miles at Navan last month.
KIMBERLITE CANDY hasn’t run since finishing runner-up, for the second successive year, in the Becher Chase over the Aintree fences. Tom Lacey has no concerns about his fourmonth absence from the racecourse, ‘I thought about running him at Kelso but there was no need as he’s very well and runs well fresh’. Lacey bought KIMBERLITE CANDY as an unbroken store-horse, he won his point to point (trained by Lacey’s wife Sophie) – ‘he won on ability not strength’ and has now developed into top-class staying chaser, as we saw when he won Warwick’s Classic Chase last year – the race ONE FOR ARTHUR won prior to his 2017 National victory.
Richie McLernon, who was shorn of Grand National glory when SUNNYHILLBOY was denied by a nose when NEPTUNE COLLONGES got the judge’s nod in 2012, will ride KIMBERLITE CANDY. Just imagine galloping 4¼ miles to be denied triumph by the width of a cat’s whisker. Oddly McLernon has partnered CLOTH CAP in 11 of his 19 races, so a KIMBERLITE CANDY victory would taste ultra-sweet.
Covid 19 robbed us of a real Grand National in 2020 and in desperation to part with some cash, I backed KIMBERLITE CANDY in the computerised Virtual Grand National (won by POTTER’S CORNER). According to Tom Lacey, his horse was given ‘an appalling ride’ by McLernon to finish only 15th. Here’s hoping the real thing delivers a more satisfactory result.