Having trained the runner-up in the Grand National twice – and once in the Topham Chase for good measure – Aintree gives me an annual dose of PTSD. But I’m drawn into our farm sweepstake every year as surely as the sailors in Greek mythology were lured onto the rocks by the Sirens.
This year’s draw, however, was tinged with sadness, as it was the first sweep since my mother died. And boy, did she like to win it. I first watched the National with her in 1968, when Red Alligator won. We were in Gatwick airport peering at a very small television, and I was pushed to the back and told to keep an eye on the bags. I was furious.
To psych myself up this year for the big race, I dropped into Oswald’s in Albermarle Street, my favourite club in London. I think I’m a member, but I never like to ask. We started with a Santa Maria Valley Chardonnay which my stomach would normally mistake for battery acid, but it slipped down nicely before we really leaned into the 2005 Château Lafite.
Zack Polanski’s plan to abolish the Grand National is of course more about political hatred
Sufficiently warmed up, Tom Parker Bowles, whose dog, Maud, joined us for lunch, announced that he was thinking of having a crack at the Foxhunters’ (for amateur riders) next year at Aintree. After all, his father Andrew rode in the Grand National in 1969 and Tom does Pilates once a week.
‘How far do you think I’ll get?’ he asked, holding back on his main course. I think he’s taking this riding challenge seriously.
‘I don’t think you’ll make it to the start,’ I replied. He looked rather affronted.
But Grand National fever was alive and well among us, with one exception: the former England cricket captain Andrew Strauss. ‘I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel the race has lost its position in the heart of the public,’ he mused. And that is a big worry, because 2026 will go down in history as the year when a major political party called for the abolition of horse racing along with pigeon racing, budgie racing and dog agility races.
It’s easy to write off Zack Polanski as a lunatic, but he is also the leader of the Green party, a rabble which no longer seems to place much emphasis on the environment but commands 17 per cent of votes in the polls. So there is every chance he could form part of a coalition government with Angela Rayner, the Lib Dems and the SNP. And to think we used to worry about Gordon Brown.
Polanski’s plan to abolish the Grand National is of course more about political hatred than it is about horse welfare. Sixty-three million pounds has been spent on horse welfare and research in the past quarter of a century. Racing has never been safer for its participants. That said, any activity, be it
hiking, cycling or riding horses, can never be 100 per cent free of risk.
A brief look at the comments on Polanski’s social media reveals he is playing the same game as Tony Blair when he banned hunting: currying favour by throwing his supporters a lump of red meat. Unless I’m missing something and the Grand National is in fact accelerating climate change.
While I hate to give an inch to these bigots, there isn’t much point pasteurising the Grand National fences in the name of horse welfare but not listening to the critical voices of those who are not, per se, against the sport.
And yet, when I ask teenage girls what they would do to make horse racing more popular, they cite the visual turn-off of the jockeys raising their sticks above their shoulders and beating the horses. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve assured them that it looks worse than it is and the whips don’t hurt the horses. But the fact that I’m trying to win that argument means I’ve lost it before it’s started. So when the winning jockey in the Grand National picks his stick up and wangs his mount six times round its arse after the last, as will surely happen one day while the rules allow, the £63 million that has been spent on welfare will have been wasted.
This year’s race was also a golden opportunity for participants in the sport to highlight the insane damage that affordability checks are inflicting, both on problem gamblers who are being driven into the arms of the black-market bookmakers, and on the returns to racing and the Treasury from betting turnover. The race was broadcast to more than 130 countries with an estimated 500 million people following it.
I advocated in the Daily Telegraph last week that all the jockeys should have dismounted two minutes before the start of the race and lined up along the starting line to force MPs to focus on the damage they are inflicting by allowing these checks to be introduced, even though the research suggests it will be counterproductive. And I was contacted by one very senior figure in the racing industry who thought this was an excellent idea. Done in a controlled manner, it would have been neither disruptive to the race nor detrimental to the horses’ welfare.
But given that the British Horseracing Authority is currently drifting rudderless without an elected chairman, I wasn’t surprised that such a golden opportunity was passed over.
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