Sporting Aspects
Grand National
By J. P. W. IVIALLALlEU HE East Lancashire road is fairly straight, almost flat, yet full of surprise. I think of Lancashire mainly as a series of blackened, red-brick towns, linked together by granite setts and interminable, glistening tram-lines. But if You take the East Lancs road, the few mill-chimneys you see are far away and the country through which you pass is farmland. True, the ploughed soil is, black, and the trees and hedges, at this time of year, are as stark as the black stone walls; but, whereas the great Flood itself might not manage to clean Oldham or Failsworth or Miles Platting, one touch of spring will make East Lancashire as gay and fresh as any Southern countryside. '
That is the first surprise. Then, just as you are used -to the idea of Lancashire as a mainly agricultural county, there, in the middle of ploughed fields and alongside red-brick farm- buildings, you see the winding-gear of a coal-mine. You see farm-hands and miners going to and from their work along the same paths, tractors and colliery trucks bumping through the same field.
There were other surprises about this road on Saturday. One was that it was alinost empty. A cup-tie road, even a road that leads to a big cricket-match, is usually jammed with coaches and cars and motor-bikes. Yet this,road, leading to Aintree and the Grand National, was almost as bare as the country- side through which- it passed. As I crossed the cold and motionless canal, trudged along the cinder path, passed through bedraggled turnstiles and came to the grey, moss-grown cement stand at the Canal Turn, 1 thought I knew why Lancashire people stayed at home. Yet on that I got the biggest surprise of all. If you go where the main stands are, you see the start and finish of -the National, and you see the horses as they come round for the second circuit; if you go, as we did, to the Canal Turn, you see the horses, come over Bechers Brook in the distance, over the thorn fence and over the Canal Turn itself. Then you have a back view of them as they take Valentine's Brook. - You see them do all this twice—perhaps sixty seconds all told of the Grand National. Of the other races which are, run at the far end of the course you see nothing at all. You leave home at half-past ten in the morning. You get back there around half-past five; and you get wet—for Lancashire's leaden clouds do not hang about up there for nothing. Yet it is all Worthwhile, or so I found.
Of course, it is not just the racing. There is, first of all, the business of picking the winner. My nephew goes through the complete entry, crossing out every fourth horse. He repeats the process with the remainder until he is left with only one horse—Desire. This system is beyond me. My wife talks to everyone she knows who knows about form, eavesdrops round the bookies' stands, studies the odds, puts all this through her head and it comes out quite naturally. This is too much like work. I go,. through the entry looking for some namevyhich, means something to me, and come out with Old KentuCky (my first job was on a Lexington newspaper), Dog Watch (1 served in the Navy) and Wait and See. (Asquith was the great hero of my childhood). I discard Old Kentucky and bog Watch, which was just as well, since, after the race, I found that neither had even started. I put 10s. on Wait and- See, which did start, butwhich was never heard of again. Mean- while, my sister-hi-law dabbed- about with a pin, my niece, by reasoning which I could not follow, laid claim to ten per cent. of any winnings, and my brother, as a business-man, took our money and agreed to put it on for us. That done, it was time to walk through the crowds. There.
were the tipsters—" My address is 24 Newmarket Lane, Epsom. The greatest trainer in Epsom lives one hundred yards away from me. He doesn't tell me anything. I don't tell him any- thing. Why should I ? He doesn't pay me. But if you put down 2s " There is the Open Air Mission—" This man in Hyde Park, he looked intelligent, but'.he stared up at me and said ' Rubbish ! ' Rubbish ? ' I said. YOu've got nothing in your head but rubbish. But my head is full of the love of God '." There are the bookies—Honest Joe this and Honest Joe that—taking bets on horses which have already been scratched and generally breathing benevolence on the fluttering crowds below them.
Then there are the jumps. There's the Canal Turn, where the horses must jump and then turn ninety degrees immediately. Years ago one horse failed to make the turn, leaped the crowd in front of him and landed in the canal itself. Above all there is Bechers Brook. Early pictures show Captain Becher's horse head first in that brook with his legs in the air. No horse could get its head into it today, since it trickles through an artificial channel barely afoot wide. But either horse or rider can kill himself here. The approach does not look very terrifying. There is the jump, some five feet high and nicely covered with smooth, slim branches from a fir-tree. But when horse and rider rise to that jump and see what awaits them on the other side they must want to 'shut their eyes. For, down at the bottom, perhaps twelve feet below the top of the jump, is the little, soapy brook encased in cement. Rising sharply from the brook to a height some five feet below the top of the jump is a murderous bank. The distance between the top of the jump and the highest point of the bank five feet below may be some four yards. If a horse gets straddled' n the jump as some do, ho can only get down by falling the full twelve feet to the casing of the brook. This should be enough to break his back. If he clears the jump but still falls short, he may drive his nose into the sharply rising bank, which would be enough to break his neck. Only if he flies through the air to the top of the bank beyond can he be sure of a reasonably safe foothold. After I had peered at this jump I -returned gravely to the Canal Stand and waited for the race to begin.
First time round, leading the field, came a horse whose rider wore a deep-red cap. He cleared Bechers unhesitatingly, cleared the thorn fence and thundered towards the Canal. As he leaped that jump, by some trick of the eye I saw him motionless in the air, his legs stretched out as in those sporting prints, his whole being extended in exultant, eager grace. Then he was over the jump, round the turn and away. It was as if a motion picture had become still for a second to point for us the exhilaration bf this race.
But now a bunch of horses took the jump together. One fell. Another crashed on top of him and, for agonised seconds, we watched as the stragglers cleared the fence and wondered if their flying hooves would also clear the motionless jockeys and , horses below. At last the field was past, both jockeys stumbled to their feet and one of the horses shook itself and trotted away. But the other horse lay still, right in the path where the race must come, on the second time round, in a minute or two's time. His jockey and a policeman came to this horse, tried to undo the girths, urged him to his feet while far away those still in the race began the second circuit. The horse whinnied, then unsteadily got on his feet, then stood there, shivering. The race came nearer. At last the horse moved a few paces, then sub- sided to the ground, just clear of the track when the few remain- ing horses came pounding for victory.
Yet it is not the picture of that frightened, shivering whinny- ing horse that is most clear in my mind now. Rather I see that first round leader, Ordnance, with his red-capped jockey gallop- ing at the Canal fence with reckless eagerness and taking it in full stretched ecstasy. On the way home that picture lightened the cheerlessness of the East Lancs. road. But I'm afraid that it did not lighten the face of my brother, who realised not only that his wife, with her pin, had pricked out Early Mist, but also that, with businesslike sagacity, he had carried her bet , himself instead of laying it on with Honest Joe.
Previous page
