Foinavon

by David Owen

  Diagram of Race Position at Second Becher’s

  See Notes on Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  A Chain Reaction of Ruin

  The record for the most finishers of a Grand National at this time was 22 runners, set in 1963, not long after the shape of the plain fences at Aintree had been altered. As the leaders in the 1967 race approached Becher’s for the second time, this record looked in danger of being broken.

  Steeling themselves again for the fence’s disconcerting drop, 28 of the 44 starters were still in the race. No more than half a dozen of these seemed definitively out of contention. For John Lawrence, none the worse for that first-circuit mistake and lying handily in about tenth spot on Norther, the ingredients were in place for ‘one of the finest, most spectacular contests in the National’s history’. Had he been asked at that moment to name the winner, Lawrence subsequently wrote, ‘My answer would have been Different Class.’ Squinting into the Merseyside murk from the stands nearly a mile away, Gregory Peck must have felt like he had been nominated for another Oscar.

  Besides first-fence casualty Bassnet, a further two of the more fancied runners had failed to make it this far. The 1966 winner Anglo, never prominent, had slammed into another horse at the fearsome Chair fence at the other end of the course and been pulled up. Madame Borel de Bitche’s Kilburn – the Welsh Grand National winner who had once refused to jump tiny cavaletti – had, meanwhile, simply failed to take off at the big open ditch that served as the 19th fence on the second circuit. ‘He had a habit of not doing anything every now and then,’ recalled jockey Tim Norman. ‘He buried his head in it. I went over. When I got back, he was back-legs out of the fence, front-legs in. I trotted him back.’ A further unwelcome surprise awaited Madame Borel de Bitche on her return to her hotel suite. Thieves had forced the door and stolen jewellery worth more than £4,000 from the drawer of a dressing table. Missing items included a square blue diamond solitaire ring, a pearl necklace and a bee-shaped brooch.

  This was also the fence that ended the Galloping Grandad’s race, saving Ladbrokes £900 plus that case of champagne in the process. The fading Penvulgo was out of the reckoning too, though Johnny Lehane reported that the horse had given him a ‘super ride’ until the 20th fence when he ‘jumped right onto another one’.

  Paul Irby, riding Ronald’s Boy, was another whose Grand National had come to a premature halt. ‘The Canal Turn was quite a shock because I hadn’t appreciated quite how sharp the turn was,’ he told me. ‘Anyhow, we wheeled around and went gaily along until we came to the 12th. Much to my dismay we failed to leave the ground, ploughed through the bottom of the fence and it was the one time when there was a bloody great ditch the other side, so there was no coming back from that. I was really rather upset because I was beginning to enjoy myself. After that it was a bit of an anti-climax. I was sitting on the horse in the ditch … I hacked back down the five-furlong course at which point I was greeted by a couple of mounted policemen who said, “Excuse me, sir, but do you realise you’ve got most of that fence on your horse’s tail?”’

  Four horses – Princeful, Rutherfords, Castle Falls and Kirtle Lad – had joined Penvulgo in dictating a fast pace for most of the first circuit. As they neared the stands, though, two new faces started to move up menacingly among the leaders. What is more, they were carrying substantially less weight than the pace-setting quartet. This is because they were running without the encumbrance of jockeys.

  Early fallers they may have been, but Popham Down and April Rose had not, like Bassnet and Border Fury, been recaptured by their grounded riders. When left to their own devices racehorses will tend to try and follow the herd and, in those days, at Aintree there were very few places where loose animals could exit the course, even if they wanted to. So they kept on running, reins flapping. This was an extra problem for the jockeys still in the race, since an unpiloted racehorse can do wholly unpredictable things. ‘A loose horse in front is a terrible thing to have,’ according to Paddy Broderick, Kirtle Lad’s jockey.

  One possible exit-point comes as the field starts the second circuit, to the inside of the course, down towards the starting-area. Accordingly, as the blinkered Popham Down cruised up on Kirtle Lad’s inside as he led the way back out towards the Melling Road, Broderick made strenuous efforts to shoo him away from the racecourse. Popham Down would not be told. He hit the front and led impressively over the 17th fence that had precipitated his downfall first time around. April Rose, for whom the Aintree fences held few terrors and no secrets, followed in his wake some lengths behind as John Leech (Rutherfords) and Stan Hayhurst (Castle Falls) tried to keep their distance.

  As Popham Down and April Rose were moving up in the field, Foinavon had been dropping back, going through halfway in 31st or 32nd position. He was in good company though. According to John Buckingham, ‘Up towards Becher’s second time, Josh Gifford was only just in front of me on Honey End. That gave me a bit of confidence. Josh was probably one of the best judges of pace and I thought if Josh is there then I’m not in a bad position. When we jumped Becher’s second time, he was only three lengths in front of me.’ Two other good horses, What a Myth and Freddie, were in the same vicinity.

  With the loose horses over and clear ahead of the field, two of the leaders breathed a particularly big sigh of relief on touching down safely at Becher’s. One was Leech on board Rutherfords, who had taken a narrow lead. ‘Paddy [Broderick] and I were talking around the course; we were talking about the loose horses,’ he said. ‘I remember going to Becher’s and thinking, “God I hope those things don’t stop here or we’ll all get killed.” They jumped Becher’s and I said to myself, “Oh, we’ll be all right now.”’ The other was Nick Gaselee riding a horse called Kapeno, who had fallen at Becher’s in both previous Grand National attempts. ‘I had gone to the middle of the fence,’ Gaselee told me. ‘He jumped it beautifully. I thought, “Here we go”. His bogey had been laid to rest. I thought, “This could be it” – along with a lot of other people.’ On Gaselee’s inside, Stan Mellor, the former champion, was enjoying a model ride on The Fossa, appreciating his partner’s jumping action. ‘He used to get well out over his fences and well out the other side, which is nice at Aintree,’ Mellor said. ‘On landing, he was better than most because he would stretch out. He would land like on a cushion.’

  Mellor could have made good use of a cushion a few moments later. Disaster for most of the field was now just seconds away.

  It was a battlefield. It was a defeated cavalry charge. It was reminiscent of those blood-curdling 19th-century sporting prints. It was like cars in a multiple motorway concertina in fog. From a mile away, it was as though a film had broken down with a temporary cessation of all movement. It was a cauldron of furious activity. It was a chain reaction of ruin.

  In the days that followed, all these metaphors – and more – were deployed by writers striving to convey the trauma of seeing one of the world’s great sporting spectacles disintegrate into chaos in the blink of an eye. The tangled limbs, human and equine, the frenzy of confusion, with horses suddenly facing in all directions, the spraying clods and foliage – all of this was transmitted instantly to a goggle-eyed television audience. Some elements of the nightmarish tableau, though, could only be appreciated by eye-witnesses at this far end of the course, as well as the 28 men sucked into the maelstrom. There was the steam, a big cloud of which soon spanned the width of the course over the hot, thrashing bodies. There was the noise, both the disbelieving hubbub of the tightly packed crowd and the desperate, frustrated cries of riders and their mounts. And there was the sheer, forlorn helplessness. ‘Everybody was just panic-stricken,’ according to Freddie’s jockey Pat McCarron. ‘It wasn’t the danger. It was just you were losing a grip on the race. The whole thing was falling apart and you couldn’t do anything about it.’

  So what happened? In a sentence, Popham Down, the loose horse who led the field along the line of wide fences all the way to Becher’s,
appears to have decided he had had enough. Approaching the one after Becher’s with April Rose and the rest of them on his tail, he headed for the left-hand corner of the fence close to the inside rail. He may have been trying to run out, and there was a small gap in the rail just before the obstacle. Instead, at the last moment, he veered to his right across the face of the fence, causing April Rose to check, and triggering mayhem among his still-mounted pursuers. Since he was wearing blinkers, it is worth pointing out that Popham Down’s view of what was behind him would have been restricted.

  Mellor is not alone in surmising that though the pile-up did not take place at Becher’s, the unexpectedly big drop there may have unsettled the loose horses. ‘They were on the inside, the deepest part,’ he told me. ‘And I think what went through their mind was, “the floor wasn’t there”. Like when you step off the pavement and suddenly, bang, you get this jar because you didn’t know the kerb was there. Next fence I think they thought, “Oh, not again!” and tried to run out.’

  For a split-second, as he approached the 23rd, Mellor thought that the danger was past. ‘I thought they could get out,’ he said. ‘They disappeared. I sat down and rode in. The next thing: they came out, one, two, just following each other at a half-trot. Donkey, donkey, donkey.’

  The Fossa turned right. Mellor carried straight on – and landed on top of the gorse-dressed thorn fence. Realising the peril of his position, he quickly rolled off to the landing side and joined the ejected John Lawrence in sprinting to the safety of the outside rail. Still that wasn’t the end of it. Mellor thought he saw a horse go by wearing his blue denim saddle-pad. So he gave chase. ‘I legged it down to the Canal Turn. Nearly.’ Too late he realised that it wasn’t The Fossa. ‘So I was out with the washing.’ This didn’t stop him ending the afternoon by winning the last race on the card, a Flat race featuring the likes of Paul Cook and Willie Carson. There can be no better illustration of this tough competitor’s insatiable appetite for winners.

  Mellor’s was merely the most eventful of a score of hard-luck stories unfolding simultaneously before the incredulous eyes of passengers on the ‘officers’ special’ and Michael Daley and his mates in their dark-blue ‘mod macs’. ‘We could not believe it as all the horses were falling on top of one another,’ Daley remembered.

  Of the quartet who had made most of the running, Broderick was probably the most unfortunate. Tucked in behind the others at the moment of disaster, he managed to stay in the saddle. Kirtle Lad, though, was stuck on top of the wrecked fence. Thinking fast, Broderick rolled off, just ahead of Mellor, onto the landing side and eventually extricated his mount. He shouted to an ambulance-man standing by the fence, ‘Give us a leg-up, give us a leg-up. But he just stood there looking at me, dumbfounded.’ Conspicuous in yellow silks and black cap, he did remount quickly enough to keep his hopes alive. But Kirtle Lad refused at the Canal Turn, the next fence. He had pulled a muscle in his hindquarters. Broderick was left to ‘lead him back along the track’.

  Princeful’s jockey Roy Edwards and Stan Hayhurst also found themselves on the landing side. Edwards made a vain attempt to catch his dark-brown mount as he kicked himself clear and lolloped down to the Canal Turn. Castle Falls had bellied onto the fence, but been shoved unceremoniously over by the heaving pile-up of horses behind him towards the inner. Hayhurst ‘landed sprinting on my knees and dashed to the inside thinking, “Oh God, there are 40 horses here”. My fellow was on his back under the fence. Another horse had his front legs almost on Castle Falls’s tummy.’ The noise was deafening and from the take-off side of the fence equine heads were waving around, in the inimitable Lawrence’s phrase, like ‘demented serpents’. Nonetheless Hayhurst ran back in, grabbed the reins as the horse righted himself, but found they had got stuck under his breastgirth. By the time he was ready to ride on, he was far behind.

  Leech, on Rutherfords, was closest to April Rose and had no chance when his horse slammed on the brakes. He was first to hit the deck and ‘thought I was going to get kicked to death’. Luckily, he came to rest under the fence’s wing. The riderless April Rose was such a consummate Aintree jumper that he actually managed to fiddle his way over the obstacle with chaos breaking out around him. This may have cost Johnny Haine, aboard the hard-pulling Rondetto, the race. The pair had been showing ever more prominently and were up into third alongside Princeful as the devastation started. Whether by luck or sheer brute strength, they cleared the obstacle – one of only three runners to do so at the first time of asking – and Haine immediately fell off. It is hard to be sure, but April Rose may well have played a part in his demise as the two horses jumped the fence together. Like Princeful, they then jogged off riderless to the Canal Turn. It was the stylish Haine who had ridden Popham Down to his Scottish Grand National victory. Perhaps he would have got the ride at Aintree if Rondetto’s regular jockey Jeff King had not had to sit out the 1967 National with a fractured skull, and perhaps the course of Grand National history might have been changed.

  A few strides further back in the field, Gaselee’s satisfaction at surviving Becher’s had been made instantly irrelevant. Kapeno hit the backside of another horse and came to a halt, still standing, but with his front feet in the fence. Gaselee ‘went right up the horse’s neck, but didn’t come off. Two things struck me straight away, “Oh God, what a way to end”; but also, “Hey no one has got over it”. You heard this extraordinary noise from the Canal Turn. I suppose it was people ooh-ing and ah-ing. I thought, “If I’m quick I can still do it”. I pulled him back about five yards from the fence. The horse refused. For my second attempt we went back much further.’

  Cruising one moment, David Mould and Different Class were at the eye of the storm the next. ‘My brain was telling me it was going to happen,’ he told me. ‘But I couldn’t do anything about it.’ Different Class was knocked to the ground and Mould cannoned into the fence. ‘We ended up being wrapped around bloody great spikes and everything … My horse was smashed into the floor. I couldn’t find him. At the time I thought my horse had been killed … I think we all walked back. People were just walking about dazed really. I thought someone had to be killed. Guaranteed. It was just mayhem. By the time I got back, the winner was gone from the winner’s circle. I hadn’t a clue who had won.’

  Though Mould could have been forgiven for thinking, like plenty of others, that the pile-up cost him the National, the outcome of the following year’s race, when Different Class finished third, suggests he didn’t quite have the staying power.

  In the Sunday papers, some of the most dramatic pictures featured the massive bulk of Limeking, the biggest horse Pat Buckley ever rode, lying flat on his back under the fence, his concerned jockey standing beside him. ‘I was exactly where I wanted to be,’ Buckley, who was 13th going over Becher’s, recalled. ‘I got bumped in mid-stride. I was hoping my nag would go forward because then we would have got over.’ Instead, the jockey was deposited on top of the fence. When he found Limeking stuck on his back on the take-off side, ‘the Red Cross people were giving me advice. When the mayhem was finished, I gave him a smack around the arse. He got up and shook himself. I had a look around his legs. No cuts, nothing.’ They walked back ‘totally disappointed about the result’.

  If the leaders had little control over their fate, those further back in the field at least had a sporting chance of picking a path through the pandemonium. Eddie Harty, aboard the speedy Solbina, was one of these. ‘It all happened in front of me,’ he recalled. ‘It was a concertina effect. They just folded up.’ Solbina did indeed get through to the fence, but his take-off stride coincided with a gust of noise from the crowd. He refused and threw the pale blue-jacketed Harty off. It was here that the jockey’s injuries from earlier in the meeting came back to haunt him. ‘I couldn’t get back up,’ he told me. Valuable seconds were lost before he was able to remount and address the fence again.

  The mêlée also ended any lingering fancy that Freddie might finally win a National. He fought
his way through at the third attempt, but by then was so far behind that, in McCarron’s words, ‘I was in the next parish’. It is possible Freddie – though ‘a hell of a great animal to ride’ – was a spent force even before the Aintree fates intervened. It felt to his jockey ‘as if it was a bit lacklustre. As if he had done it all before and knew it. It’s a hell of a thing to take on – four-and-a-half miles with a big weight on your back. It definitely leaves its mark. I came to the conclusion he had had enough.’

  That said, Freddie jumped Becher’s only marginally ahead of a horse whose name makes you realise that, had the cards fallen differently when the leaders started sandwiching into each other, the Scottish challenger might yet have pulled off what would have been an intensely popular victory. That horse was Foinavon.

  See Notes on Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Only One Gone On

  It was just starting to appear that the baby hurdle would defeat all-comers, when a dark form skirted its way around the edge of the war-zone, approached the fence with short, chopping strides and clambered over, before continuing, almost apologetically, on its way. In the Canal Turn stand, John Pinfold remembers a rustling of paper as spectators tried to identify the escapee. Television viewers encountered no such problem. ‘And now, with all this mayhem, Foinavon has gone off on his own,’ Michael O’Hehir rattled out unerringly, no doubt thanking his lucky stars that he had approached John Buckingham during his vigil beside the red Avery Toledo scales in the weighing-room before the race.