The famous dead-heat between Night Nurse and Monksfield
Following the dead-heat in Saturday's Betfair Fighting Fifth, we look back to when two top-class hurdlers shared the spoils at Aintree in 1977.
In an age when photo-finishes can be now be decided by a pixel or two, dead heats are rare enough events in Flat races, let alone over jumps where lengthier races tend to mean horses finish at wider intervals. But after two miles and 46 yards, it proved impossible to split Not So Sleepy and Epatante in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at a snowy Newcastle on Saturday.
Despite the poor weather conditions, there was no suggestion that they had played any part in being unable to determine an outright winner, but that wasn’t the case a year earlier in another race on terrestrial TV at Cheltenham.
In a controversial finish to the concluding Listed mares’ bumper which was fought out in near-darkness, to almost universal surprise the official verdict was given as a dead-heat between Elle Est Belle and Ishkhara Lady after the latter had traded at 1.01 on the Betfair Exchange. The same contest had a similar outcome four years earlier when My Khaleesi and Irish Roe shared the spoils.
Well... err... that's pretty conclusive 😳 pic.twitter.com/1lpqegvyrx
— Racing TV (@RacingTV) November 14, 2020
Until this weekend, the biggest race to have resulted in a dead-heat in recent seasons over jumps was the Ladbroke Handicap Hurdle at Ascot in 2015 when Sternrubin, who had made the running until headed by Jolly’s Cracked It just after the last, rallied in the final strides to get back up for a share of the prize on the line.
The most memorable dead-heat over jumps in the Timeform era, though, was surely the one between Night Nurse, himself a former Fighting Fifth winner, and Monksfield in the 1977 Templegate Hurdle.
It was a momentous day’s racing at Aintree all round, in fact, given that Red Rum won his third Grand National later on the card. But not even Red Rum could topple Night Nurse when it came to voting on the Racecourse Association’s ‘National Hunt Horse of the Year’ award. The 39 votes were split between the pair of them 23-16 in favour of Night Nurse (who got Timeform’s vote) as he took the award for the second time.
Night Nurse went to Aintree after winning the Champion Hurdle for the second year running, though heavy ground at Cheltenham had raised doubts about Night Nurse retaining his title – he’d gone through the previous campaign unbeaten in eight starts without encountering ground any softer than good. Also, after ten straight wins, Night Nurse had his winning streak ended by Bird’s Nest who beat him by 15 lengths in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle and consequently started a hot favourite at Cheltenham.
But after making most of the running, Night Nurse ran on strongly up the hill to win his second Champion Hurdle by two lengths and the same from Monksfield and Dramatist (who’d beaten Night Nurse and Bird’s Nest in a close finish to the Christmas Hurdle), with Bird’s Nest only fifth.
Nowadays, the Aintree Hurdle, as the Templegate Hurdle has become, is a Grade 1 contest run at level weights, but Night Nurse had to give 6 lb to Monksfield at Aintree which, in theory, should have been enough to turn the tables.
In a golden age of hurdlers, the five-year-old Irish-trained entire Monksfield was a top-class and tremendously tough hurdler himself, though physically the pair were an apparent mismatch, with the small, light-framed Monksfield contrasting with the big, strong Night Nurse . A close second in the previous season’s Triumph Hurdle, Monksfield showed improved form when chasing home Night Nurse at Cheltenham, keeping on gamely after the winner had put in the better jump at the last.
Here's how Chasers & Hurdlers described their next meeting at Aintree:
‘…both horses gave everything they had in as protracted and stirring a finish as that famous one between Flat racers Grundy and Bustino [in the King George] at Ascot; in that neither Monksfield nor Night Nurse deserved to lose, some people might even have found the finish at Liverpool just a shade the more satisfactory, seeing the spoils were shared. Monksfield, close up throughout, joined Night Nurse at the front soon after the latter had made a hash of jumping the third last, and from then on it was nip and tuck with, if anything, Monksfield seeming slightly the more likely to prevail. But it was a toss-up which was in front on the post. The pair drew well clear of the rest.’
Apart from being ‘as thrilling a race as anyone could ever hope to see’, the Templegate Hurdle was a hugely significant one from a ratings point of view, with the 6 lb Night Nurse was conceding the 176-rated Monksfield earning him a rating of 182 which remains the highest for a hurdler in Timeform’s experience.
As well as a photo-finish, there was also a stewards inquiry after the Templegate Hurdle into possible interference but it did not alter the result. Modern-day stewards might also have had something to say about the use of the whip from Paddy Broderick on Night Nurse and Dessie Hughes on Monksfield.
But this was a different era as was evident from the observation in Night Nurse’s Timeform essay that season that ‘unlike some of their feather-bedded counterparts on the Flat, jumping’s top horses are rarely allowed to rest on their laurels.’
Just ten days after Aintree, Night Nurse was turned out again for the Welsh Champion Hurdle at Chepstow which he won conceding weight to Dramatist, while Monksfield, who had been having his 12th race of the season at Aintree, showed no ill effects of his hard race either, he too winning next time out, two weeks later on the Flat.
In the longer term, Monksfield, who was to earn a peak Timeform rating of 180, won the following season’s Champion Hurdle (with Night Nurse back in third), along with the next two Templegate Hurdles, while Night Nurse later became top-class over fences as well, finishing second in the 1981 Cheltenham Gold Cup.
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