YESTERDAY’S HERO
Graham Buddry recalls the legend of Aldaniti and Bob Champion
Despite their size and strength horses are incredibly fragile. Thin, spindly legs which often go wrong have to carry them at racing pace over fences. An internal system where colic is a serious problem and a universally bad reaction to anaesthetic should they need anything intrusive explains why many horses are retired early or sidelined for long periods, if they return at all.
Of those which overcame such adversity many times, perhaps the most accomplished was Aldaniti.
Born at the Harrogate stud of Tommy Barron on 25 June 1970, the rangy chestnut was very friendly, kind, always trying to please and so easy to look after that Barron named it after his four grandchildren, ALastair, DAvid, NIcola and TImothy.
Held in such high regard, Barron eventually sent the horse to the prestigious Ascot bloodstock sales in May of 1974 instead of Doncaster where he sent everything else.
Josh Gifford was present that day looking for horses with his father-inlaw, an excellent horseman with a good eye for a horse who normally reined Josh in when the bidding got too high. This time, liking what he saw, he kept encouraging Gifford to bid more until Lot 115 eventually went to Findon.
Having spent a small fortune on the horse, Gifford was perplexed when he couldn’t find a buyer, so ran Aldaniti as his own in his first race over hurdles at Ascot on 10 January 1975 where the five year old romped home first at 33/1.
Nick Embiricos, who lived at nearby Barkfold Manor, was the son of a Greek father and American mother, who had owned horses in Barbados where they lived when Nick was young. His racing colours were based on the Greek flag of royal blue and white. The father of Nick’s wife, Valda, owned the Gold
Cup winner, Pas Seul, while her mother had owned the Champion Hurdler, Salmon Spray, and was the first female jockey to win the Newmarket Town Plate, which Valda won herself some years later.
Nick and Valda had been very impressed with what they had seen at Ascot and soon decided to buy the gelding. Regular jockey, Bob Champion, had reported that Aldaniti was almost asleep when just walking but very keen otherwise. In that race and the subsequent ones of his first season Champion found the horse very difficult to steer and very strong but felt sure he would stay for ever, as he showed in each of those races, being placed four times.
During his first summer break at Barkfold, Aldaniti developed a very bad case of worms and then went down with anaemia. These proved to be just the start of a whole catalogue of problems for the horse although the staff at Barkfold always found Aldaniti the most kind and gentle of horses, always eager to please.
Recovery from those issues didn’t last long though as the unfortunate Aldaniti returned badly lame from his second race of the new season with heat in his fetlock and a strained tendon, for which he was fired, (a treatment to shrink the tendons in order to repair the damage) and thus missed the rest of the season.
Gifford and Champion both knew that Aldaniti’s future lay over fences and so, in mid-February 1977, he lined up in his first novice chase, finishing a good second to the impressive Tree Tangle.
The leg which had caused all the worry stood up fine, allowing Aldaniti to race six times, another second place being supplemented with two impressive wins, one at Ascot by 15 lengths and another at Uttoxeter where the saddle slipped so far backwards it finished on his rump. Good luck, though, didn’t last long as during another summer at grass Aldaniti somehow contrived to cut his face very deeply right across bone and so close to his eye it couldn’t be stitched.
The 1977/78 season started well when Aldaniti won his first race at Leicester so impressively that Champion confided to Gifford: “He’s going to win a Grand National one day.”
Having won so well Gifford aimed Aldaniti at Newbury’s Hennessy
Cognac Gold Cup for which he was set to carry bottom weight of just ten stone – which Champion had no hope of doing. Nick Embiricos publicly stated he would rather have a top jockey who knew the horse, so Champion weighed out on 10.6.
At just the second fence Aldaniti was badly impeded and was suddenly ten lengths behind the rest of the field. With their race already over, Champion intended to just hack around to the enclosures and pull up but Aldaniti was having none of it and pulled himself back into and through the pack. Eventually, with just three left to jump it had turned into a three-horse race. Aldaniti clouted the second last and lost ground but all three were level again at the final obstacle, the classy Bachelor’s Hall winning by a neck from Fort Devon with Aldaniti third. At the weigh-in Champion hit the scales a lot heavier on 10.11 which led to an interview with the stewards.
Gifford was philosophical afterwards but Champion was rueing the missed opportunity due to the six pounds overweight, interference at the second fence and the mysterious extra five pounds afterwards. (Champion and Gifford would win the race the following year with Approaching).
One day later the unlucky Aldaniti developed further leg problems, eventually diagnosed as bone chips in the knee and missed the rest of another season. He spent seven months confined to a box at Barkfold and then took months to get fit again before taking to the track with three strangely poor runs. A vet then discovered the reason was a wolf tooth, growing in the wrong place and painfully rubbing on the bit and it had to be surgically removed.
Everyone connected with the chestnut gelding knew he had class despite those poor results so Aldaniti contested the 1979 Cheltenham Gold Cup. Nick and Valda shared a box with cousins, who part owned Alverton the eventual winner, while Aldaniti ran well in the mud to take an honourable third place.
Their next races were a stark contrast as Alverton lost his life in the Grand National while Aldaniti contested the Scottish version, taking up the running close home before just being run out of it by a fast finisher before ending his season with a win at Sandown.
While Aldaniti was on his summer break, Champion rode Fury Boy at Stratford in May, the horse falling and kicking his grounded jockey in a most delicate place as he struggled to get up. Despite the pain Champion remounted and won the race, but the huge swelling didn’t go down and an investigation revealed testicular cancer. Was it caused by the kick or found because of it?
Champion was extremely ill and underwent extensive treatment, which was nearly as bad as the disease itself but slowly he started to recover, cling
ing to the forlorn hope of riding Aldaniti in a Grand National.
At the start of the 1979/80 season Aldaniti ran for the first time without Champion in the saddle, the frail figure instead watching from the stands. It was the Ewell chase at Sandown on Nov 30 and Aldaniti had jumped superbly and was miles clear going easily approaching the second last fence when he broke down badly. It was the same front tendon, the fetlock joint bent right over and almost on the ground. The racecourse vet took one look and suggested he should be put down but neither Gifford nor Embiricos would hear of it. Administered with fast-working pain killing injections the gelding hobbled into a horse box and was taken back to Barkfold.
The vet there said retirement was the best he would ever get, if he survived this injury. Months passed standing heavily bandaged in his box, still a sweet and gentle horse with all his many visitors. Three months later he was still no better and the vet believed Aldaniti should be put down.
Nick and Valda knew Aldaniti meant as much to Bob Champion and his own recovery and wouldn’t hear of it and suggested a last resort, which included firing the tendon again and putting the leg in a plaster cast. The vet was very doubtful and feared the worst when the cast was eventually taken off but miraculously the leg was cool. Then followed many more months of walking the lanes and roads of Findon, finally returning to Gifford on 22 December.
The slow recovery continued. Nick Embiricos still had such faith in his horse he backed him at 66/1 for the Grand National. Finally Aldaniti had to put his leg, and future, on the line in a race and at Ascot on 11 February 1981, Champion partnered the ten-year-old to an emotional victory at 14/1.
The horse had the class to run in another Gold Cup but the decision was made to bypass the race, keep the horse sound with only the one run in 18 months, and wait for Aintree.
In the very first race of the three-day meeting one of Valda’s horses fell heavily and was killed. In the last race of that day Champion also had a fall and was trampled, a horse standing on his back in the days before body protectors.
Two days later the horse with the awful legs and the cancer-beating jockey won the Grand National.
Aldaniti suffered far more than his share of problems but was always a kind and gentle soul. After so many serious problems he beat them all to win the most famous race in the world then enjoyed a long and well-deserved retirement, finally dying of old age in March 1997. He was 26.
“THE RACECOURSE VET TOOK ONE LOOK AND SUGGESTED ALDANITI SHOULD BE PUT DOWN ”