Foinavon by David Owen

Author:David Owen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

As the 41 survivors galloped towards the six-foot-wide ditch guarding this fence, Princeful, Castle Falls and Penvulgo were leading the way. Foinavon was no longer prominent. ‘I took a pull after the first fence,’ Buckingham recalls, ‘and they were gone like bats out of hell.’

In around eighth or tenth place going over the obstacle was a horse called April Rose ridden by Major Piers Bengough, an Eton-educated cavalry officer who would go on to serve as the Queen’s representative at Ascot racecourse. The pairing had finished 11th in 1965. Indeed, April Rose had jumped more than 200 Aintree fences over the years without once falling. According to Bengough, the horse had ‘the most economical action jumping a fence. He would hardly pick his legs up, yet somehow the Liverpool fences suited him.’ The 12-year-old gelding, who was trained by Bassnet’s trainer Alec Kilpatrick, looked to have negotiated yet another Aintree barrier. A stride or two past the fence, however, the tall black-and-silver-clad figure of Bengough toppled over the horse’s right shoulder, leaving his sure-footed mount to carry on without him.

With a fence so formidable, you can encounter big trouble if your horse doesn’t take off from the correct distance away from the ditch, as two more jockeys discovered to their cost. John Edwards, another amateur rider, says that his mount, Dun Widdy, took off a stride too soon, yanking the reins out of his hands and sending them flying over the horse’s head. He took a further stride on landing and trod on one rein, detaching it from the bit. ‘I only had one rein and no steering,’ Edwards recalls. ‘I was a total passenger. All I could do was go with the others.’ Edwards managed somehow to stay in the saddle for one full circuit and to pull the horse up after the water-jump. The story has a silver lining: having run only half a National, Dun Widdy was fresh enough to win a race at Cheltenham on Edwards’s 21st birthday five days later.

Richard Pitman’s mount Dorimont would normally have been partnered by owner Bill Shand Kydd, a keen horseman and powerboatracer who was related, via their respective marriages, to Lord Lucan. But Shand Kydd – who had loaned Pitman a white Rolls-Royce to transport his bride Jenny to church on their wedding-day – had recently broken a collarbone twice in the space of a fortnight and was out of action.

In a symptom of his inexperience and, no doubt, excitement, Grand National debutant Pitman had forgotten that the fence he was approaching at speed was an open ditch. He remembered ‘too late’. Dorimont stood off a stride, launched himself and ‘to my horror started his descent before the fence had been reached. The noise was deafening as we crashed to the ground.’ Afterwards, Pitman remembers wishing, like a cricketer bowled out for a duck, that time could be wound back, ‘just so that I could have a second chance to prove myself.’

Pitman would get his second chance – and complete the course – 12 months later.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.