How ‘Gatwick Nationals’ lifted Britain’s mood
Country’s favourite race was held in Sussex while the First World War raged, reveals Alan Tyers
The Grand National moved to Gatwick? No, not the latest passenger-baiting stunt from Ryanair supremo and racingindustrial complex Michael O’leary, but in fact a curious interlude during the First World War.
The War Office requisitioned Aintree during the Great War, and the Grand National needed a temporary home. Gatwick Racecourse had been opened in 1891. It had stables, good transport
links, and a dedicated station connecting the stands to the platforms via covered walkways. It was described in The English Turf as “a model racecourse”.
It also had space to replicate exactly the era’s Grand National distance of four miles and 856 yards, and 29 fences were rebuilt to copy Aintree’s. There was one notable difference from Aintree: it was right-handed not left.
The man driving all of this was Frederick Henry Cathcart, who was chairman of Gatwick and later did so much to develop Cheltenham racecourse. The 1919
Bloodstock Breeders’ Review wrote of him: “In the racing world of today there is no man imbued with a greater spirit of enterprise than Mr Cathcart.” Perhaps due to his showbusiness background – his father’s profession was listed as “comedian” – he identified the public appetite for the National to carry on despite the war.
The 1916 running of what was renamed the Racecourse Association Steeplechase attracted strong public support. The Daily
Telegraph noted “memory cannot recall a worse February and March for evil weather”, which led to heavy going for horses – and plenty of the newfangled motor cars stuck in the mud (now Tarmac).
The race was on a Friday, in a card that also featured Flat racing. The winner, Vermouth, was “narrow and light-boned”, and had initially been bought as a Flat horse. It was a surprise to The
Telegraph that “the little horse beat the massive runner-up Irish Mail”, so perhaps that is a good omen for wee Tiger Roll this time around.
By 1917, the race was billed as the War Steeplechase and was held on a Wednesday. Conditions were not favourable, the light was poor and only eight of 19 completed the course. A horse called Limerock had a proto-devon Loch moment: he got over the last in the lead, only to slip on the flat. Ballymacad was the chief beneficiary, winning for jockey Edmund Driscoll and trainer the Hon Aubrey Hastings.
The 1918 race at Gatwick was the best of the three. Poethlyn, tipped in that morning’s Telegraph, won. He and Captain Dreyfus, who carried top weight, were well clear of the field. Poethlyn would go on to win the Grand National proper at Aintree the next year. Also in the race was Sergeant Murphy, who would go on to triumph in 1923 – and inspire the 1938 movie of the same name starring Ronald Reagan. The winning jockey in 1918 was Ernie Piggott, grandfather of Lester.
By 1919, the National was back at its rightful home. In something of a mirror image, Gatwick was itself commandeered by the armed forces: the aerodrome there used by the RAF in the Second World War and then greatly expanded at the course’s expense. The last meeting there was in 1946, and the only significant surviving memento is the bandstand, which was reassembled in Crawley.
Gatwick’s trio of Great War National winners will ever have asterisks by their names, but perhaps they carried more than just jockey and lead, providing as they did some sporting relief in the most trying of times.