Who is the only jockey to have won the ‘Spring Double’?

What used to be widely known as the bookmakers’ ‘Spring Double’ involves coupling the winner of the Lincoln Handicap at Doncaster with the winner of the Grand National at Aintree. Obviously, both races still exist but, in the heyday of ante-post betting, many column inches were devoted to landing the ‘Spring Double’ and, thereby, the potentially astronomical odds on offer.

Of course, the Lincoln Handicap and the Grand National are vastly different races, run under different codes, so for any jockey to win both during his/her career is a distinctly tall order. Nevertheless, David Victor ‘Dave’ Dick – not to be confused with his father, David Purves Dick, also a National Hunt jockey and, later, a trainer – did so.

Remarkably, for a man who would eventually stand 6′ feet tall, Dave Dick partnered outsider Gloaming to a four-length victory in the 1941 Lincolnshire Handicap, in the days when it was still run at Lincoln Racecourse, before his burgeoning weight put paid to his career as a Flat jockey. As a National Hunt jockey, Dick went on to complete the Grand National Course a record nine times, but won the National just once, under extraordinary circumstances, in 1956.

Dick and his mount, E.S.B., trained by Fred Rimmell, were the principal beneficaries when Devon Loch, owned by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, inexplicably collapsed, just yards from the winning post, with the race at his mercy. Dick confessed to being a ‘very lucky’ winner, but nonetheless won the second leg of a long-range ‘Spring Double’, 15 years after winning the first leg.

Who is Rachael Blackmore?

For the benefit of anyone without access to public access broadcasting, Rachael Blackmore is an Irish National Hunt jockey who has climbed to the pinnacle of her profession and achieved a series of notable ‘firsts’ along the way. Tipperary-born Blackmore, 32, rode her first winner as a professional, Most Honourable, trained by John Joseph ‘Shark’ Hanlon, at Clonmel in September, 2015. The following season, 2016/17, she was Irish champion conditional jockey with 32 winners.

However, it was when she joined Waterford trainer Henry de Bromhead as stable jockey that her career really took off. Blackmore rode her first Cheltenham winners, A Plus Tard in the Close Brothers Novices’ Handicap Chase and Minella Indo in the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, in 2019 and the rest, as they say, is history.

At the 2020 Cheltenham Festival, Blackmore won the Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle on Honeysuckle, but would win the Champion Hurdle on the same horse in 2021 – making her the first female jockey to do so – and again in 2022. At the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, she rode a total a six winners, thereby becoming the first female jockey to win the Ruby Walsh Trophy, which is presented to the leading jockey during the week.

Three weeks later, Blackmore became the first female jockey to win the Grand National, on Minella Times and, at the 2022 Cheltenham Festival, also became the first female jockey to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, on A Plus Tard. Blackmore has yet to win the Irish Jump Jockeys’ Championship, but has finished runner-up twice, in 2018/2019 and 2020/2021, with 90 winners and 92 winners, respectively, so another ‘first’ is probably only a matter of time.

Who is, or was, the youngest jockey to win the Grand National?

The man credited with being the youngest jockey to win the Grand National was Bruce Robertson Hobbs. Hobbs was born on December 27, 1920 and, thus, was just 17 years and three months old when he partnered Battleship to victory on March 25, 1938. The diminutive 11-year-old, who stood just 15.2 hands high – coincidentally, the same height as Tiger Roll – was owned by renowned Virginia horse breeder Marion duPont Scott and trained by Hobbs’ father, Reg, in Lambourn, Berkshire.

Sent off at 40/1, Battleship nearly unseated rider at the seventh fence, now known as ‘Foinavon’, but Hobbs was helped back into the saddle by fellow jockey Fred Rimmell, and nearly fell after a bad mistake at the third last. Nevertheless, despite being forced wide on the run-in, ran on well to pip the big Irish horse Royal Danieli, who had led by 2 lengths at the final fence, by a head. Hobbs said later, ‘I thought it was half a length, but they gave it as a head and all the Irish said if there was a photograph I would have been second.’

Bruce Hobbs was not only the youngest jockey to win the Grand National but, at 6’4″, far and away the tallest. Battleship, for his part, was the first American-bred horse to win the Grand National and the first entire to win since Grudon in 1901; indeed, no entire has won the Grand National since.

Which Grand National winner allegedly jumped only one circuit?

On March 29, 1947, on heavy going, with thick fog reducing visibility to a hundred yards, a mammoth field of 57 runners assembled for the Grand National. The race was won by 100/1 outsider Caughoo, owned by Dublin jeweller John McDowell – who reportedly bought him ‘for his mother’ for £50 – trained by his brother, Herbert, and ridden by Edward ‘Eddie’ Dempsey.

The race was covered by Gaumont British News and the newsreel footage clearly shows Caughoo tackling long-time leader Lough Conn soon after the Anchor Bridge Crossing and, despite a mistake at the final fence, drawing away in the closing stages to win, very easily, by 20 lengths. Remarkably, Daniel McCann, jockey of Lough Conn, accused Dempsey of loitering in the fog near the twelfth fence, thereby missing out an entire circuit of the Grand National Course, and rejoining the race when the field passed that point for a second time.

Dempsey denied the accusations, McCann took legal action, and lost, but rumours of wrongdoing rumbled on for years afterwards. Indeed, Dempsey and Caughoo were not finally absolved until 1999, when the ‘Irish Mirror’ revealed photographs on the horse jumping Becher’s Brook twice during the 1947 Grand National. Dempsey did, at one point, confess to having ‘hidden behind a haystack’ – of which there were none at Aintree – on Caughoo, but may have concocted a fanciful version of events, by way of raising funds.

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