Red Marauder's Grand National: When Aintree took a gamble and won

Most years, the dust jacket of Timeform’s Chasers & Hurdlers annual would feature an action shot of a significant race that had taken place that season. But the cover photograph of the 2000/01 annual was a little different, capturing the mood of a remarkable race. It featured the two mud-spattered heroes of that year’s memorable Grand National moments after they had crossed the line. An exhausted-looking Richard Guest, with one of his two sets of goggles over his chin, has his eyes closed as he gives a grateful tweak of the left ear to his partner Red Marauder, one of only two of the forty horses to complete the course without mishap.

For those from a generation too young to have experienced the mayhem of the 1967 Grand National, the drama of the 2001 edition was the closest we have come to another Foinavon year. It might have taken place this century, but even a Grand National from 25 years ago seems to belong to another era – four and a half miles instead of four and a quarter, 40 runners instead of 34 (and just three of them trained in Ireland!), BBC coverage instead of ITV. And remounting was still permitted in those days too, an important factor, as it turned out, in the 2001 edition.

A whole generation of jockeys has hung up their saddles too since then – McCoy, Walsh, Johnson, Geraghty, Maguire, Willliamson, Culloty, Llewellyn, Thornton, both Andrew and Robert. Actually, there is one veteran of that Grand National who is still riding, though these days Jim Crowley is partnering blue-blooded Flat performers for Shadwell rather than rank outsiders in the Grand National; his mount, 150/1-shot Art Prince, one of ten saddled by Martin Pipe, fell at the first.

Another indication of how the Grand National has changed since early this century: with a BHA mark of 140, Red Marauder almost certainly wouldn’t have made the cut for the race these days. In fact, he wouldn’t even have been qualified to run in any case under the modern regulations – he had won a handicap hurdle over three miles at Market Rasen earlier that season but had never finished in the first four in a steeplechase over that trip or further.

Red Marauder hadn’t taken to the National course at all the year before, falling at Becher’s first time round having already survived a bad mistake, and while normally a safe jumper of regular fences, a heavy fall at the first at Haydock in his last race before the 2001 Grand National was hardly an ideal preparation. Still, despite Guest having said ‘We won’t be coming back here again’ after their experience the previous year, Red Marauder took his chance at 33/1. Guest wasn’t just speaking as Red Marauder’s jockey. He was effectively trainer too on behalf of permit-holder Norman Mason in whose colours Red Marauder ran.

The 2001 Grand National followed a miserable winter for jump racing. It started with record amounts of rain which wiped out many fixtures and then came the foot-and-mouth outbreak which put paid to the Cheltenham Festival. Any hope that Aintree could lift the gloom was soon dampened by more rain, and lots of it.

The wet forecast for Grand National week had me looking for a proven mudlark with plenty of stamina and Edmond, who had won the previous season’s Welsh Grand National on soft ground, looked the ideal candidate. As the rain came down at Aintree, so did his odds and by the off he was one of the 10/1 co-favourites. The going was already heavy for the first day of the Grand National meeting when only six completed over the big fences in the Foxhunters’, and only seven got round in the next day’s Topham, or John Hughes as it then was.

The fences soon took their toll on the Grand National field too. There were casualties, including another of the co-favourites, the gambled-on Inis Cara, at each of the fences on the run down to Becher’s, where another three departed, meaning 14 were already out of the race after six jumps. The Foinavon fence, scene of the chaos in 1967, caught out one of the outsiders, Merry People, but it was the Canal Turn which ended the race for many more.

With top-weight Beau leading Edmond at that stage, they and others towards the head of affairs cleared the fence safely but those further back weren’t so lucky. The blinkered Paddy’s Return, who had unseated at the third and was running riderless on the wide outside, suddenly veered left across the take-off side of the Canal Turn, colliding with Amberleigh House (whose turn would come three years later) and resulting in a total of nine more runners, including another co-favourite Moral Support, being put out of the race for good in the ensuing log-jam and a few others being left hopelessly behind.

It was therefore a much-depleted field which made it to The Chair where three more went, including, unfortunately for me, Edmond who decided he had enough by then, trying to refuse and taking a heavy fall. That wasn’t to be the end of his involvement in the race, however.

Just seven were therefore left going starting out on the second circuit; Beau, who was still going well in front under Carl Llewellyn, Tony McCoy’s mount Blowing Wind, Smarty, Red Marauder, the previous year’s winner Papillon under Ruby Walsh, Brave Highlander and Unsinkable Boxer. Edmond was one of the loose horses still with them and his antics at the 19th fence, an open ditch, reduced the field still further, baulking Blowing Wind who unseated McCoy in front of the fence and also bringing Papillon and Brave Highlander to a standstill, while Unsinkable Boxer refused independently.

While Beau again avoided the trouble, Llewellyn had his own problems to deal with, his steering having gone after both reins had ended up on one side of the horse’s neck following a mistake. At the next fence, an awkward landing caused Llewellyn to go out the side door, but he was quickly on his feet in a vain attempt to catch Beau and get back in the race. He was finally reunited with Beau at Becher’s where a policeman had caught him, but his jockey decided to abandon plans to remount.

So then there were two – Smarty, who narrowly avoided the trouble at the 19th and was jumping soundly for Timmy Murphy, and, somehow, despite a number of mistakes, Red Marauder. ‘With ten fences still to jump, the Grand National was no longer a race, it was a battle for survival’ said Chasers & Hurdlers.

The remaining pair taking it very steadily now, Red Marauder survived another scare on the approach to the Canal Turn where the riderless Paddy’s Return, still there from the first circuit, again ran across the fence, but Red Marauder managed to clamber over from Smarty. Meanwhile, commentator John Hamner was able to report that several fences back, Blowing Wind and Papillon were continuing together having been remounted.

Having been upsides each other, an awkward jump from Red Marauder four out handed the advantage to Smarty but the picture changed again for good after they’d crossed the Melling Road. Red Marauder regained the lead and began to draw right away from his very tired rival going to two out. Kept going on the run-in, Red Marauder won by ‘a distance’ from Smarty, making it just the third time in fifty years that no more than two horses had completed without mishap.

As well as Foinavon’s 100/1 shock, the other occasion was in 1951 when Nickel Coin, the last mare to win, beat Royal Tan, with the remounted Derrinstown the only other to complete in the so-called ‘Grand Crashional’ when a dozen had come to grief at the first fence.

After McCoy and Walsh had hacked round together, Blowing Wind and Papillon eventually completed for third and fourth, the first time since 1980, when Ben Nevis won in another mud-bath, that only four had completed. Most Grand Nationals these days are won in a little over nine minutes, but Red Marauder’s time was a fraction over eleven. ‘No Grand National has surely been run in conditions of such extreme meteorological misery or on going more taxing’ said Chasers & Hurdlers.

Which begs the question, should the race have taken place at all in such conditions? All forty horses and their riders returned safely, and while there seemed to be general agreement among trainers and jockeys that the decision to race was the correct one, opinion in the press was more divided.

On the one hand, the Racing Post described the decision to go ahead as ‘gutless, witless and utterly reckless’ but The Times saw things very differently as quoted by Chasers & Hurdlers:

'If the definition of a great Grand National is that it should live long in the memory, this one is up there with the best... Racing, bruised and bullied for weeks by the twin imposters of floods and foot and mouth, suddenly had a stage on which to perform. Was it conceivable to turn the lights out and ask the audience to come back another time? Aintree took a gamble and won.’

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