Foinavon

by David Owen

  Finally, it was time to weigh out and the 44, in full racing attire, trooped over to await their turn on the scales. It was at this point that Michael O’Hehir, the Irish commentator assigned by the BBC to Becher’s Brook and the other fences at the far end of the course, caught sight of a set of racing colours that, for all his exhaustive preparations, he did not recognise. As he later recalled, ‘I have a habit that through the years I go into the weigh-room at Aintree, with permission of the stewards there, and I stand for about an hour before the National checking off each jockey’s colours as that jockey gets into the weighing scales. I’ve been working for two months beforehand on paper … but to actually see these colours, you know, the shade of blue, the tinge of red. It can make all the difference.

  ‘I saw this man standing in a line of jockeys with a black jacket and the yellow-and-red braces effect on him and I went down my list and I went to the racecard and I couldn’t make out what [it was]. I said, “Oh to hell with it, I’ll go over.” And I went over and I said, “Johnny, what’s this you’re riding?” “Oh I’m riding Foinavon,” he said … “The owner thought that green was unlucky and they decided that today they’d use these new colours.”’

  The length and breadth of the British Isles – and beyond – people were now settling in for the race. At Mullingar, a small racecourse-town in the Irish Republic, students at a local college were assembling at an old gymnasium, where a 22-inch television-set had been positioned in pride of place in the middle of a stage. At the Oatridge point-to-point near Edinburgh, George Pottinger had told his son Piers that he intended to have a bet on Foinavon ‘because I fish there’. He walked across to the bookies, from the car where they were sheltering from the rain, saw that the horse was listed at 750/1 and decided not to bother. On a coach taking Everton fans to Nottingham to watch the FA Cup match against Forest, Michael Walters paid £1 10s (£1.50) to take part in an impromptu sweepstake organised by a stranger. He picked out Foinavon. With kick-off at 3pm, he was in the City Ground engrossed in the football by the time the race got under way. On the Orion oil rig in the North Sea, Eric Brown, a member of the catering staff, whose duties included fishing for cod off the rig on Thursday nights, organised his own £1-a-go sweepstake for fellow workers. He had sold all the tickets when a senior colleague approached him in a temper because he hadn’t been offered the chance to take part. Brown was reluctant to sacrifice his own ticket, which was for one of the favourites, yet this colleague was too important to risk alienating. So he decided to pretend he had one ticket left – for a horse that had no chance of winning. ‘You can have the last one,’ he told him. ‘It’s Foinavon.’

  In Berkshire, Cyril Watkins, Foinavon’s long-suffering but persistent owner, had phoned in a final £2 bet on his horse to the Tote before sitting down with wife Iris in front of their large television. Watkins had placed most of his bets on the race around four weeks earlier, securing odds of 500/1 with two bookmakers. Mac Bennellick, Watkins’s former co-owner, was preparing to watch the race in his office in Rainham, but had not backed the horse, although his son Colin had risked £1. Watkins’s pet-shop in Tilehurst, where items on sale included sacks of ‘racehorse manure’, was being staffed that afternoon by Sheila Nixon, Iris’s sister-in-law, and her daughter Lyn. They had to make do with a radio in the storeroom. Bennellick’s future daughter-in-law, Chris, by contrast, had wandered into a Romford electrical shop and had a selection of televisions to choose from.

  It was still a few minutes before three o’clock, but already the Aintree parade-ring was filling up with National horses, walking clockwise around the perimeter. They were labelled for the benefit of the huddled spectators, their names on the paddock-sheets strapped to their backs and their numbers on the left arms of the handlers leading them. Gregory Peck’s horse Different Class, a striking chestnut, gazed alertly into the crowd to his left, while Bassnet looked a picture as befitted a horse sired by Manet. The Scottish challenger Freddie, safely arrived from Haydock, had already started sticking out his tongue. The long-legged Honey End looked as calm as Forecastle, the only grey in the race, looked agitated, appearing quite unperturbed when the frisky Anglo, the 1966 winner, bowled into the ring in front of him. The eyes of spectators flicked from racecard to horse, horse to mud-flecked race-card, their shield-shaped badges tied prominently to their coats.

  There had been a false start in the six-furlong Flat race that preceded the National, with one of the runners haring down the entire length of the course before his rider could pull him up. The resultant 16-minute delay looked like prolonging the agony of the steeplechase jockeys now itching to get under way. At 3pm, as the day’s four FA Cup ties kicked off in Nottingham, Birmingham, Leeds and London, the 44 men were released from their purgatory. Into the paddock they strode, eyes darting from group to group in search of their horse’s connections, some tipping the peak of their brightly coloured caps with due deference as they approached. Biddlecombe, dazzling as a tropical bird in the blue, yellow and cerise colours of Greek Scholar’s owner, was one of the first to mount. Soon, clumps of discarded sheets and rugs were littering the middle of the paddock as, one by one, the jockeys climbed aboard their conveyances. It was at this point that the BBC camera, which had been flitting from horse to horse as commentator Clive Graham outlined each runner’s form and prospects with a few deft phrases, alighted on Buckingham and Foinavon. ‘Thirty-eight in the blinkers Foinavon,’ Graham began. ‘His chance must be considered remote. He’s not won from 14 starts this season and it seems unlikely he will make an exception here.’

  It was as the jockeys rode out in single file towards the racecourse, where they would parade in front of the grandstand before cantering down to the start, that their expressions and posture conveyed most poignantly the tensions raging inside them. For one of them, in all probability, these formalities would be the prelude to the most important race of his career. For many more, the day would end in disappointment; for one or two, more than likely, in disaster.

  Freddie’s jockey Pat McCarron, in blue and red, mindful no doubt of the near misses of the previous two years, looked particularly tense. Andy Turnell, at 18 the youngest rider in the race, lips pursed, seemed grimly determined. Nick Gaselee, a leading amateur rider, held his head high and his back ramrod straight like a Roman centurion in chocolate and yellow. Roy Edwards, riding Princeful, appeared almost avuncular beneath his black and yellow spotted cap. Tommy Carberry, one of the Irish contingent, bore a resemblance to the young Bob Dylan on Packed Home, a horse owned by Raymond Guest, the US Ambassador to Ireland. Brian Fletcher, another teenager, aboard Red Alligator, a horse many expected to run well, looks in retrospect a bit like a young Ryan Giggs, albeit in colours – purple and green – more readily associated with Wimbledon than Manchester United. Pat Buckley, his left hand on his hip, his colours recalling the Irish tricolour, was at least smiling, though it is hard to tell if this was a manifestation of confidence or tension. Much the happiest-looking jockey, his stick tucked under his left arm, was the oldest man in the race, the 67-year-old American, Tim Durant. Perhaps he was the one who felt he had least to lose.

  It was coming up to 3.15pm as the top-weight What a Myth, at the head of the parade, led his 43 rivals past the winning-post, moving in the opposite direction to the one in which the winner would later gallop up to it. This was a moment of pure pageantry, like medieval knights saluting their patrons before some joust or tournament. But it could also be particularly nerve-racking for both horse and rider. What a Myth’s jockey Paul Kelleway, in the Eton blue-and-black colours of his patron, Lady Weir, the horse’s owner, assiduously stroked the horse along the base of his neck, aware that the rain would have improved his chances. At around this time, news was breaking that a half-share in another of Captain Ryan Price’s Sussex-trained horses, the placid Honey End, was in the process of changing hands. This appeared to change the tone of what had been an indecisive betting market. In the minutes remaining before the off, the odds offered
on Josh Gifford’s already well-fancied mount tumbled, making him clear favourite.

  Sitting in the grandstand as a guest of the executive was Marie Christine Ridgway, whose husband John had spent the previous summer accomplishing a feat which made even riding the Grand National course appear mundane: he had rowed across the Atlantic with a companion, Sergeant Chay Blyth. Blyth, who was also at Aintree that afternoon, had called his Scottish house Foinaven, after the mountain near where it stood. When he noticed that a horse of that name was running, it was hardly surprising that he could not resist having a small flutter.

  Someone else on the course that day who was keen to have a bet on Foinavon was stable lad Clifford Booth. No sooner had he let go of the horse, leaving it to wheel away with Buckingham at the end of the parade, than he made his way to the Tote windows. ‘I had ten bob in my pocket,’ he says. ‘I was going to have four bob each-way on him which would have left me two bob to get home for food.’ Sadly, when the National got under way a few minutes later – the signal for betting on the race to halt – Booth was still waiting in line to be served. ‘I couldn’t get a bet on,’ he says.

  See Notes on Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Over the Melling Road and far Away

  Every serious athlete knows it. The moment when you step into the arena and the rest of your life is put on hold until the match, fight or race in which you are about to take part is over. For most of the 44 Grand National jockeys, this threshold would have been crossed during the six or seven nerve-jangling minutes that they milled around in the starting-area, against the backdrop of a poster advertising Vernons football pools, waiting for the commanding, bowler-hatted figure of starter Alec Marsh to send them on their way. For the unlucky ones, this state of grace would last no more than a minute or two; for the finishers, considerably longer. But whatever banana-skins the racing gods were about to strew in their path, the 1967 Grand National was now for all of these men, in Brough Scott’s phrase, ‘the capsule of their existence’.

  The hands of the square-faced clock surmounting the frame where the names of all 44 jockeys were displayed were creeping towards 3.25pm when the horses began coming into line, signalling that the start was imminent. In such a large field, the position assumed by each jockey on the start-line can be a good indication of the type of race he intends to run. At Aintree, a great deal of ground can be saved by riders prepared to hug the inside rail. There is, however, a quid pro quo: the drops on the landing side of the daunting drop-fences, particularly Becher’s, are at their most severe on the inside. It is a route for the bold, best avoided by beginners. It was not surprising, then, to see Fred Winter’s jockeys Eddie Harty (Solbina) and Bobby Beasley (Anglo), on whose shoulders rested the trainer’s hopes of securing a hat-trick of Grand National victories, lining up on the inner. Alongside them was the experienced Stan Mellor, perhaps the weighing-room’s foremost tactician, riding The Fossa. At the last moment, they were joined by David Nicholson on the well-backed Bassnet, runner-up in the previous season’s Topham Trophy, run over the Grand National fences. Nicholson had been quoted in one of the papers that morning saying, ‘I have never had a better chance of winning.’

  At four miles and 856 yards, the National, though, is a very long race. In those days, a less aggressive approach whereby riders ‘hunted’ around the first circuit, assessed the situation and then set about getting into the race, was deemed perfectly respectable. For jockeys adopting this race-plan, a central or outside line was preferable, since it would afford them the best chance of avoiding trouble in the chaotic early stages, when bad luck could strike at any moment. On this occasion, those lining up on the outer consisted mainly of long-shots, such as the Galloping Grandad’s mount Aerial III, Harry Black, Ross Sea and Foinavon’s old rival from Ireland, Quintin Bay, who had finished sixth the previous year. Josh Gifford was plainly intent on allowing Honey End to acclimatise to conditions in his own time and had lined the favourite up slightly behind most of the others. John Buckingham, almost certainly not alone in thinking that the preliminaries ‘seemed to take ages’, had positioned Foinavon ‘between the inner and the middle’.

  Finally, the imposing, long-legged figure of Marsh strode deliberately across the line of horses, removing his raincoat as he approached the rostrum, and expertly started his 15th Grand National. Considering he was operating without a tape, the big field got away remarkably evenly.

  In spite of its marathon length, the National nearly always begins at a blistering gallop. The pent-up tension affecting rider and horse, the temptation to jockey immediately for position given the large number of runners and the knowledge that the first fence is far, far away over the cinder-cushioned Melling Road all help to explain this phenomenon. With the rain making the going slippery but far from soft, the 1967 race was certainly no exception. And for a few strides, Buckingham and Foinavon were among those leading the herd as they sped away from the stands in a north-easterly direction, hooves drumming like a stampede of 44 buffalo.

  It was all of 470 yards to that deceptively alluring first fence – and National debutant Richard Pitman had encountered an unforeseen hazard even before he got there. Galloping across the Melling Road aboard Dorimont who, at 13, shared with fellow outsider Bob-a-Job the distinction of being the oldest horse in the race, Pitman was ‘so heavily showered with dust that I could not see the first fence’. The old chaser, though, jumped it ‘with ease’.

  Not everyone was so lucky. Indeed, while the first-fence casualty toll was nowhere near as heavy as in the ‘Crashionals’ of 1951 and 1952, the 4ft 6in thorn obstacle can never have exercised a greater influence over the destiny of the race.

  Stockbroker Paul Irby, riding Ronald’s Boy, survived by the skin of his teeth. ‘I bloody nearly fell off,’ he says. ‘I lined up on the outside … After what seemed an interminable journey we crossed whatever road that is and came a bit close to the fence. I thought, “Oh this is it!” There was an appalling bang when the horse hit the fence and I was thrown all over [its] head. But I managed to avoid coming off.’

  By the time the leaders – Princeful, Rutherfords, Penvulgo and Castle Falls – were back into their stride and streaking towards the second, three jockeys had crumpled to the wet Aintree turf. One of them was Nicholson. Bassnet had, in the words of The Bloodstock Breeders’ Annual Review, ‘completely over-jumped’ the fence. A photograph, published the next week by The Field, captures the startled gelding lying on his right flank preparing to get up while, a couple of yards in front of his nose, the jettisoned jockey kneels on the grass as if before some deity, the peak of his yellow and green spotted cap still touching the ground. A thin scattering of spectators on the embankment beyond the outside rail surveys the scene seemingly dispassionately.

  At 10/1, Bassnet was second-favourite behind Honey End. So his early demise dismayed many punters. In the jockeys’ room at Worcester racecourse, however, dismay was not the emotion felt by Peter Jones as BBC commentator Bob Haines identified the first-fence fallers. Jones, who had just ridden a horse called Prince of Ormonde to victory in the 2.45pm, had partnered Bassnet in 12 of his 16 races since the start of the 1965/66 season, winning five times, with three of these victories at Cheltenham. However, after coming only fifth on the horse in Newbury’s Mandarin Chase in January 1967 in a field so strong it included two of the first three horses home in that year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, Jones lost the ride. Instead, it was Nicholson who rode him to victory in the National Trial at Haydock Park on 1 February and in his three remaining races that season, including the National. It was a textbook illustration of the unforgiving nature of a sport whose competitive pressures often conspired against the journeyman jockey. ‘If he could have got the milk out of your tea, he would have done,’ says Jones of Nicholson, who was nicknamed ‘The Duke’, adding, ‘He was all right, but very keen to get decent horses off you.’ As Jones recalls, a cheer went up around the jockeys’ room television in Worcester when Bassnet came down. ‘They k
new what he was like, The Duke,’ he says.

  Above Bassnet’s withers in the photograph, in the semi-distance, lies Andy Turnell, whose debut Grand National has lasted less than 500 yards. The teenager is curled in the foetal position adopted by fallen jockeys trying to minimise the risk of injury from flying hooves while they are on the ground and directly in the path of the horses behind them. Frankly, if a half-tonne animal travelling at 35mph happens to tread on you, there is no position on earth that is going to protect you. On this occasion, though, Turnell was OK if supremely gutted. ‘I was fine … just very disappointed,’ he says. His mount, Meon Valley, jumped the fence ‘very big, came down a bit steep and bowled straight over. So that was the end of it.’