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YouTube has been keeping me going during the long weeks without racing(it was One Man’s Champion Chase during breakfast today). And it got me thinking.
Was there ever a better hour in horse racing than on the afternoon of 2nd April 1977?
2.35 Night Nurse and Monksfield dead heat in the Templegate Hurdle.
3.15 Rummy wins his third National.
Cheltenham March 16th, 1989, although you probably had to be there to get the full effect, as it was the emotional scenes in and around the winners enclosure that made it so memorable.
First Three Counties, ridden by Katie Rimell, wins the Foxhunters for her grandmother Mercy Rimell, prompting a huge crowd of locals round the parade ring and tearful embraces for the connections.
Then Desert Orchid wins the Gold Cup in dramatic fashion, producing an ever bigger and noisier crowd response.
The official shouting ‘horses away’ after both races had as much effect as King Canute did with the tide.
The last three legs of Dettori’s Magnificent Seven was an incredible hour. I do not expect that will be repeated.
The atmosphere at Ascot that day must have been something else.
If someone could have measured the crowd roars which Gold Cup would have created more decibels, Dessies or Dawn Run’s?
Well, the Germans had their best 60 minutes ever back in 2002 on Oaks day. That was when Boreal (Fallon/Schiergen) won the Coronation Cup followed shortly by German bred Kazzia who won the Oaks for Godolphin under Frankie.
Can’t think of anything better for them within 60 minutes. But that is still miles away from the above mentioned opening post.
Rummy winning his third National is a personal favourite of mine, as the username suggests, others are those coming late to win as they really get the heart pumping like Amberleigh House in the 2004 version or Zenyatta winning the breeders cup 2009.
Remember One Man well, they tried a few times at the Gold Cup, but he failed to stay then they tried at the Queen Mother Champion Chase and he got his well deserved victory at the Cheltenham Festival.
You've got to accentuate the positive.
Eliminate the negative.
Latch on to the affirmative.
Don't mess with mister in between.Good call Patriot1, I remember watching those races. Am I right in that Night Nurse was giving Monksfield 6lb? And the next year Monksfield won, giving Night Nurse the same? The best hurdlers seemed to meet each other more regularly then, not sure why that seems to have changed, maybe it’s my rose-tinted glasses.
You’re spot on with the weight concession in 77 Befair as recalled in this excellent article
http://www.angelfire.com/planet/greatraces/templegate.html
This takes me back to my earliest memories of watching racing which were seeing that golden generation of hurdlers, Night Nurse, Monksfield, Sea Pigeon, Birds Nest etc.
Just as an aside does it demonstrates just how bad things were at Aintree in the late 70s that the BBC only covered two races on each of the first two days of the 77 National meeting?
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1977-04-01
And open to correction here, but I think Skymas won the 2-mile handicap chase preceding the hurdle, coming from nowhere to get up in the last strides, under top weight. That handicap chase was a much bigger race then.
Skymas was a real warrior. Trained by Brian Lusk, he mixed the flat, hurdles and chases, came 2nd in an Irish Grand National (which also was a bigger race then) and won 2 Champion Chases at the age of 11 and 12I was fortunate enough to be present on that day at Aintree.
Something often overlooked is that the opening two mile handicap chase was won by the top weight Skymas,who on his previous run had won the Champion Chase. There was no Melling Chase equivalent back then, making the handicap the only realistic option if you had a horse who’d ran in the Queen Mother.
It might not be for modern purists,but I preferred a narrower fixture list where connections of top class national hunt horses had no option but to run them in their fair share of handicaps.
In fact,the wonderfully gritty Monksfield would be a prime example. He seemed to run week in week out, often shouldering 12st. After winning the Aintree race outright 12
months on,(after his first Champion Hurdle success), he narrowly failed to give away a full 2st to Royal Gaye in the first staging of the Royal Doulton Hurdle,a race that almost certainly attracted the best field assembled for a handicap hurdle – also including Night Nurse, Sea Pigeon, Bird’s Nest and Beacon Light.In stark contrast,Istabraaq had a modern, molly coddled programme of conditions races to take in. I certainly know which of these two animals I have more respect for.
Coincidentally, both achieved a Timeform rating of 180, joint second behind the organisations top rated ever, Night Nurse on 182, which was achieved on the basis of the Aintree dead heat.Christ, I was writing mine before you published yours – thus the ‘ something often overlooked ‘ should be crossed out.
Another memory from that day revolves around a horse called Prince Poona who finished fourth carrying top weight in the penultimate amateur riders handicap hurdle. He’d had one previous race in this country when winning at Sandown the previous month – before that he’d been running in the likes of Sweden, which is probably why he stuck in the memory – it being unusual. He was also carrying eye catching colours – think it was white with huge black spots and bright orange sleeves. Do still have the race card but it’s somewhere in one of many packed to the brim 1990’s style Tesco bags.
I envy you Cancello, that would have been quite a day. I saw it on TV. It’s a shame there is no video available of that 2-mile chase, or more than the final stages of the hurdle; as I recall they went at it like hammers from the start
The infuriating aspect is that you will sometimes see ITV racing showing clips of races from the 1970’s – even from the likes of Teeside Park, which indicates that they must still have a full archive. I wish they’d make the archive accessible – they harp on about seeking to attract and keep hold of new audiences that will bet and contribute to the levy- well,once someone takes up a genuine interest in the sport they will be punters for life. Only worrying thing reg that Templegate is that it was BBC material and with them washing their hands of the sport it would not be a surprise to discover that they’d ‘lost’ their archive.
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