Which was the last mare to win the Champion Hurdle?

The Champion Hurdle, run over 2 miles and 87 yards on the Old Course at Cheltenham, was inaugurated in 1927 and is currently the feature race on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival. Fillies and mares receive a 7lb allowance from their male counterparts but, remarkably, in 90 runnings of the two-mile hurdling championship, just five of them have won.

The first of them, African Sister, won way back in 1939, before the start of World War II, but it would be another 45 years before the most famous mare of them all, Dawn Run, completed the first leg of what would become an historic Champion Hurdle – Cheltenham Gold Cup double two years later. Thereafter, it would be another decade before the unheralded Flakey Dove, trained by Leominster husbandman Richard Price, lifted the spoils in 1994 and another twenty-two years before Annie Power – who was anything but unheralded – laid the ghost of her final-flight fall in the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle the previous year to rest in 2016.

However, the last mare to win the Champion Hurdle was Epatante, who justified favouritism on the 69th birthday of her owner, J.P. McManus, in 2020. Indeed, at the time of writing, Epatante is vying for favouritism with another mare, Honeysuckle, for the 2021 renewal of the Champion Hurdle so, like London buses, two or three may turn at once!

Which horse was the shortest-priced winner of the Grand National?

In 2019, Tiger Roll was heavily backed for weeks ahead of his historic attempt to become the first horse since Red Rum to record back-to-back victories in the Grand National. Available at odds as short as 7/2 at one point, the nine-year-old was mooted as potentially the shortest-priced National winner in history. Of course, win the National he did, but was sent off at 4/1, so while he ‘inflicted the most expensive result in Grand National history’ he did not, in fact, become the shortest-priced winner of the celebrated steeplechase.

That distinction still belongs to the 1919 winner, Poethlyn, trained by Harry Escott and ridden by Ernie Piggott, grandfather of Lester. Poethlyn had already justified 5/1 favouritism when winning the so-called ‘War National’ – an unofficial substitute for the Grand National, run at Gatwick Racecourse – in 1918 and, back at Aintree the following year, was sent off at 11/4 to do so again. Shouldered with the welter burden of 12st 7lb, Poethlyn tracked the leaders for most of the way, but Piggott bided his time, making steady headway from Becher’s Brook on the second circuit to dispute the lead crossing the Melling Road near the Anchor Bridge. Poethlyn was soon ahead, clearly so by the second-last fence, and won, easily, by eight lengths.

Why is ‘The Chair’ so-called?

One of just five ‘named’ fences on the Grand National Course, ‘The Chair’ is the penultimate fence on the first circuit of the Grand National and, along with the Water Jump, is jumped just once.
Neverthless,’The Chair’ stands 5’3″ high and is preceded by a 6′ wide ditch, making it both the highest and widest obstacle on the Grand National Course. Furthermore, the landing side is 6″ higher than the take-off side, so the fence is a spectacular, if formidable, test for horse and rider; its positioning, in front of the grandstand, is no accident.

Originally known as the ‘Monument Jump’, ‘The Chair’ took its name, quite literally, from the chair which, historically, stood on a concrete plinth alongside the fence. In the early days of steeplechasing, when races were run in heats, the chair was occupied by the so-called ‘distance judge’, whose job it was to gauge the distance between one finisher and the next. Essentially, any horse that had failed to pass the distance judge when the previous finisher crossed the winning line was declared ‘distanced’ or, in other words, beaten 40 lengths or more. Any such horse was considered a non-finisher and, hence, disqualified from participating in subsequent heats. Understandably, for safety reasons, the concrete plinth was replaced by a plastic replica in Nineties, but the original can still be seen in the Red Rum Garden at Aintree.

Which jockey has won the 2,000 Guineas most often?

The career of jockey James Robinson, popularly known as ‘Jem’, effectively came to an end when, in 1852, at the age of 59, he was thrown from a fractious two-year-old colt, by the name of Feramorz, at Newmarket and sustained a broken thigh bone in the fall. The bone was not set properly, leaving his left leg several inches shorter than his right and forcing him into retirement.

Nevertheless, Robinson enjoyed a stellar riding career, winning a total of 24 British Classics, including the Derby six times, between 1817 and 1836, and the 2,000 Guineas nine times, between 1825 and 1848. His Derby record lasted until the latter part of the twentieth century, when surpassed by the legendary Lester Piggott – who would eventually ride nine Derby winners in all – aboard Empery in 1976.

Even more remarkably, though, nearly a century-and-a-half after his death, in 1873, Robinson remains the leading jockey in the history of the 2,000 Guineas. For the record, his nine winners of the Newmarket Classic were, in chronological order, Enamel (1825), Cadland (1828), Riddlesworth (1831), Clearwell (1833), Glencoe (1834), Ibrahim (1835), Bay Middleton (1836), Conyngham (1847) and Flatcatcher (1848). Of jockeys still riding, Lanfranco ‘Frankie’ Dettori, 50, has three 2,000 Guineas winners to his name, while Ryan Moore, 37, has two, so Robinson’s record looks safe for a while yet.

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