The Grand National is precious link to past generations
SOME horse racing purists will tell you that the Grand National is not, in fact, the high point of the jumps season. This, they claim, comes a few weeks earlier at the Cheltenham Festival, where all the best horses compete on equal terms at the Gold Cup. Feel free to ignore them.
For no other race over fences can come close to the popular appeal of the National, a thrilling handicap race which fully merits its place as one of the crown jewels of British sport. In another 15 years it will mark its bicentenary, having been run annually at Aintree racecourse since 1839.
Yet today’s running of the race takes place under a cloud – the threat of disruption by animal rights demonstrators, who have increasingly targeted it in recent years. Police have launched a massive security operation to protect the event.
Last year a demonstration by the group Animal Rising almost led to the cancellation of the race, causing a delay of more than 15 minutes while police and stewards scrambled to round up protesters who had invaded the track. There is, alas, every chance of a similar invasion today, especially as disruptive protest at public events seems to be becoming an ever more common occurrence.
IT SHOULD be acknowledged at once that the animal rights lobby does have a point about the danger the National has posed in the past to partaking horses. Since the turn of the century, 16 animals have been destroyed after sustaining injuries during the race.
Yet this year’s National will be the safest ever: the entry criteria have been toughened to weed out entrants who may not be up to it, the most taxing fences have been modified and the maximum size of the field has been reduced from 40 to 34. But there is no number of new safety measures that will ever be enough to satisfy the animal rights militants and leftist culture warriors who want the race terminated.
And if they were ever to get their way, do not think that would be it. No, they would move on to horse racing in general and then to show jumping, polo and carriage driving. And after that to greyhound racing. And after that to angling. So the balanced and sensible approach is to keep seeking ways to make the race safer, while also honouring its role in our national sporting life, defending it to the hilt against fanatics trying to stop it – and simply enjoying it.
Almost every family in the land will have its memories of great Grand Nationals past. Mine began in 1973, when as a seven-year-old lad I got my father to put a ten pence eachway bet on a horse called Red Rum, just because I liked the name. My dad had backed the topweight Crisp, cruelly overhauled by Rummy on the runin. Suffice to say that he was less than enamoured with my youthful good fortune.
Many years later I stood in a packed betting shop in Cambridge with my friend Liz and her Irish fiancé Kevin to watch the 1986 race when the well-backed West Tip came home in front in a thrilling finish. The atmosphere in that backstreet bookies as at least a third of those assembled cheered home the mount they had put money on was something to behold. Never mind that most rapidly disappeared to spend their winnings in the pub over the road.
Perhaps it is just me, but the television coverage of the National seems to make it different and far better than any other race: the camera angles, the ritual pointing-out of the landmarks on the Aintree course – “over the Melling Road”, “heading towards the Canal Turn”, “coming up to the elbow”.
The modern-day commentators are very good, but for those of us of a certain age, these incantations will always bring back memories of Julian Wilson and Peter O’Sullevan, whose silky-smooth voice could nonetheless summon up a crescendo of excitement like no one else’s.
SOME traditional events are not exactly as they would be were we to invent them today. The Grand National is no doubt one of those.
Our modern health and safety wallahs would surely never allow gentleman amateur jockeys or fences above kneehigh to a grasshopper.
But this great sporting occasion should never be diluted or amended to the point where the magic disappears.
It is something that links us via a thread of memories to our heritage and to generations past.
And believe it or not, they knew a thing or two.
‘No new safety measures will satisfy animal rights militants’