The miracle of FOINAVON
Fifty years ago the world’s most famous race was won by a 100-1 shot after a mass pile-up at the 23rd fence. It went down in history as ...
ROMANCE, heartbreak, courage and resilience. The Grand National evokes as many emotions as it prints indelible images in the memory banks. Aldaniti and Bob Champion, Ginger McCain and Red Rum, Corbiere and Jenny Pitman. All have their own chapters in the history books of the world’s most famous steeplechase.
But, possibly with the exception of Lottery, the appropriately named winner of the first running of the race in 1839, no winner has done more to stoke Grand National folklore than the 100-1 shot who stole away with the prize 50 years ago next Saturday.
Foinavon, the only survivor of a chaotic pile-up at the insignificant 23rd fence, not only became a galloping emblem of the notion that any horse can win the Grand National no matter how uninspiring his previous form appeared, he has also endured as a sporting metaphor of victory against the odds.
It was not, however, a universally popular winner, as Foinavon’s trainer John Kempton recalled yesterday. Kempton can remember a postcard that arrived at his Berkshire stable in the weeks after the shock win. He said: ‘It was a postcard with a cruise liner on the front. On the back, it was just addressed to “Foinavon, England”.
‘Then there was a message saying “Thank-you Foinavon for a fantastic cruise”. It was sent from the Balearic Islands I think, so whoever it was must have backed him.
‘But almost everybody else probably hated us really.
‘Apart from our owners and the few people who followed us, all the punters lost their money, the trainers didn’t win or the jockeys other than John Buckingham. In racing, it was a catastrophe.’
And yet today no Grand National can be run without a replay of the hazy film showing Popham Down, who had unseated his rider at the first fence, turning sharply righthanded, balking Rutherfords and beginning a car-crash chain of events that either stopped every runner or caused them to lose their jockeys. Except Foinavon! Thankfully these days a YouTube search will bring up the original Pathe News colour footage of the race.
To the backdrop of Michael O’Hehir’s famous commentary, Foinavon was the one horse who cleared the obstacle. So far behind, the few vital seconds allowed the initial maelstrom to clear enough for his jockey, John Buckingham, to be able to pick a path through.
‘I was just far enough behind not to get caught up in the thick of it,’ said jockey Buckingham, who died in December aged 76, in an interview 10 years ago. ‘I had to make an instant decision, so I steered Foinavon to the outside to get away.
‘You’ve got to give a lot of credit to the horse. He was galloping into a wall of horses, some upside down in the fence. It wasn’t until the Canal Turn that I knew I was on my own. From then on I was just concentrating on keeping him going. He was a lazy old bugger, but I knew he wouldn’t fall.’
Buckingham, the third-choice jockey for Foinavon, had spent the night before the race, his first ride in the National, in his Liverpool digs with brother Tom. His bed was two armchairs pushed together.
The 1967 Grand National line-up itself was quite tasty. It included a future Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, What A Myth, the previous year’s 1-2 Anglo and Freddie, and the 1968 Grand National winner Red Alligator. But their limelight was stolen by a gelding once owned by Anne, Duchess of Westminster and, like her outstanding Arkle, named after a Scottish mountain.
That was where the similarities stopped, even though Foinavon, who had been bought from the Duchess for 2,000 guineas, had finished fourth in the King George VI Chase and run in the Gold Cup that season. But so disappointing had he become that owner Cyril Watkins was gifted the half-share of his partner in the horse. Even trainer Kempton did not seem to
have much faith in Foinavon, who paid 444-1 on the Tote. After Foinavon, accompanied by a goat called Susie and stable lad Clifford Booth, had been packed off to Aintree by head lad Colin Helmsley, Kempton sent his father Jack to Liverpool while he went to Worcester to ride stablemate Three Dons.
Kempton, 28 at the time, watched events unfold in the weighing room. He said: ‘They had a little black and white television in the jockeys’ room. I could keep an eye on where Foinavon was because he had blinkers on. I spotted straight away that he had popped over the fence and I leapt up on the table where all the saddles were. I think I broke the table but I thought “B ****** s, I can pay for the table”. I knew he would keep jumping. Foinavon had fallen so much, I had taken him hunting and jumped over all sorts of things. Every day he was jumping.
‘That’s why I think he was all right when he got left on his own because he had jumped so much with us. It was second nature. It was a great honour to take part and it’s great when an underdog can succeed.’
The post-race celebrations may have been reserved but Foinavon did take part in a charity parade outside Buckingham Palace with his pal Susie the goat.
Yet, while Kempton was an integral part of one of the sport’s most memorable moments, it did little for his training career. ‘It was always a struggle,’ he said. ‘Foinavon didn’t bring us owners. We were tiny fry, insignificant.’ Two years later, he handed over the licence of his 15-horse stables in the village of Compton, north of Newbury, to father Jack.
Kempton, who had worked as a blacksmith to supplement his income, went on to be assistant trainer to David Barons in Devon for five years before setting up a successful scuba diving business.
Forty-four horses started that 1967 National — 28 were still standing after the field cleared Becher’s Brook on the second circuit. Seventeen remounted after the carnage at the 4ft 6in 23rd, the smallest obstacle on the course. Yet by the time the pursuit started Foinavon was a fence in front, clearing the Canal Turn, but only after Buckingham steered past three loose horses and barely clambered over.
By the last, 15-2 favourite and runner-up Honey End, ridden by Josh Gifford, had reduced the deficit to 20 lengths, but was close enough for commentator Peter O’Sullevan to declare ‘it may still be a race’. But Foinavon hung on, with Red Alligator back in third.
The race for Stan Mellor, the three-time champion jockey, was over at the 23rd when his mount The Fossa had been blocked. Mellor, who turns 80 two days after next Saturday’s race and is a guest of Aintree chairman Rose Paterson, said: ‘When the drama happened I was stupidly on the inside. If I’d been on the outside I could have won it!
‘I ended up on the fence and my first thought was I am going to get out of here with maybe 30 horses behind me. I ran to the outside.’
Mellor has a theory why Popham Down suddenly decided to refuse to jump after tackling the other fences with relish as he led his field after his early exit.
He said: ‘I think they had jumped Becher’s Brook on the inside and they got such a shock on the steep landing that the next fence they thought how do we get out of this?’
Foinavon’s return to Aintree 12 months later was fruitless. Ridden by Phil Harvey as Buckingham had a broken arm, Foinavon was brought down at the Water Jump.
Poetic sporting justice, perhaps. He died after an attack of colic aged 13. In 1984, the fence that etched his name into those Aintree records was named after him.