Dream on
Robin Oakley
Beside the parade ring at Aintree on Saturday, as the wind sent the petals from the flowering cherries swirling around Philip Blacker's bronze of Red Rum, three times the winner of the Grand National and twice second in the big race, groups congregated for family photos. Somebody had placed a bunch of red roses between the old boy's forelegs. Inside the track, hundreds filed past Red Rum's daffodil-bedecked grave in the shadow of the winning post. Don't ever let anybody tell you that the Grand National has lost, or ever could lose, its magic.
Trainer Ginger McCain, who won last Saturday's race with Amberleigh House 27 years after his endeavours with Red Rum, does not forget it, declaring, 'You can have your Gold Cups at Ascot with all those toffee-nosed people, you can have your Cheltenham with all your county-set types and tweeds. But this is the people's race.'
Ginger recalls that he first came to Aintree in 1938 or 1939, watching the race from the embankment on the canal: 'Never saw a horse. Heard the crack of the fences, saw some caps go by, but it was all part and parcel of the magic of this game. The turf is torn, the spruce from the fences has been kicked all over the course and in those days there'd be three jockeys coming back on one horse, or one jockey coming back leading two horses ... '
Owner John Halewood is a Merseysider too. These days he has his own box, but he remembers coming with his father, who died soon after, early in the 1980s. They went round to the Canal Turn because they could not afford the members' enclosure, and his father said to him, 'One day you might own a horse.'
As for Ginger McCain, ruddy of face, forthright in his opinions, with a twinkle in his eye and appreciative at 73 of the skimpily wrapped curves on offer at Aintree last Saturday, he is part of what racing is all about. Trainer Mick O'Toole once declared, 'Racing is a game of makebelieve. If people didn't think they had horses that were better than they really were, National Hunt racing would collapse.'
You have to have that dream, as John Halewood did when he paid 90,000 punts for his National winner, even if Ginger, now based in Cheshire, did have doubts when Amberleigh House arrived in his yard. 'It was three o'clock in the morning, teeming with rain, and I was in dressinggown and slippers. The horsebox driver let down the ramp and there was this little tiny horse shivering in the corner of the box, no rug, no head collar, and I said, "That's not him. That's not the Amberleigh House I saw win at Punchestown." You know how the Irish like to stitch up us English trainers. But what a grand little horse he's been.'
Many thought Ginger, who has been insisting for three years he had another potential National winner even when the horse was so lowly handicapped that he could not get into the race, reckoned he was dreaming a dream too far. He thought his best chance might have gone when Amberleigh House was third last year. But he is happy to take older horses to Aintree, reckoning that, while they may be beaten by younger animals round some of the easier park courses, the challenge of the big Aintree fences revives them by making them think where impetuous younger horses blunder their chances away.
As for no French-bred horse winning the National since 1909. 'Everyone goes on about French-breds. You'd think there was something magic about buying them. But Ryan Price bought them, Eric Cousins used to buy them. They talk about them being taught to jump when they're two years old and all that, but they don't last, They're not like a big store-bred four-yearold that you get and break in with no mileage on the clock. Horses are like cars. You've only so much mileage in them and when that's gone you've got nothing.' And that from a man who used to combine a
garage business with his training on the Southport sands.
McCain, who is clearly no Liberal Democrat voter, goes on: 'They bring in this Yogi Breisner [the Scandinavian jumping guru much in demand with southern trainers]. He's not a bleeding Englishman, he's not even an Irishman. Any trainer that has to bring in a foreigner to teach his horses how to jump should hand his bloody licence in because he's not entitled to it,' That should cause a few winces over Lambourn's breakfast tables.
But if Ginger was entitled to do a little sounding off after such a victory, others played their part. notably Amberleigh House himself, who, said his jockey, was baulked so badly that he virtually took Becher's from a standing start. And jockey Graham Lee deserves enormous credit for his coolness. So often races are given away by premature moves. Even though Graham and Donald McCain, the trainer's son, had planned for him to ride a waiting race, the mayhem ahead of him had ensured that Amberleigh House was much further behind the leaders than they had hoped. When the horses came back into the straight with Amberleigh House still apparently out of contention, Lee did not rush to make up his ground as he felt a strong headwind. When I felt I should have been going for him I thought, "Well, I'll count to ten first because he's only got one run." ' He let the others come back to him. As a result, Amberleigh House's run came just as Clan Royal and Lord Atterbury, punch drunk, were beginning to roll all over the course. That was a ten-second delay that probably won a National.
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