How outsider Auroras Encore romped to nine-length Grand National 2013 triumph
It’s V for victory for Team Smith as Auroras Encore shocks the field at Aintree - The Sunday People's chief sports writer reflects on a memorable win
Rank outsider: Auroras Encore clears the last to win the John Smiths Grand National
Getty
An ageing rebel show-jumper, most famous for losing a major prize when he flicked a V-sign at the judges.
A jockey who had grown so disillusioned with the sport that he jacked it all in to become a whipper-in for the Fife hunt.
And a co-owner who used to work as a bellboy at Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel.
The connections of 66-1 shot Auroras Encore are an unlikely bunch, who prove why the Grand National is not only the greatest steeplechase on the planet but just about the most unpredictable event in sport.
Harvey Smith, who trains the winner along with wife Sue, is the world’s bluffest Yorkshireman, who frisbeed his trademark flat cap across the press conference room at jockey Ryan Mania as a mark of respect.
Mania, who quit racing for six months in 2011 after his previous employer lost his licence, was riding in his very first National.
And Jim Beaumont, one of three owners of the rank outsider, was left recalling the days when he would receive a few shillings in tips from National owners in his days working in the lobby of the city’s famous old hotel.
Nobody could have predicted this. The form book was put through the shredder. Only the pin-stickers and lucky sweepstake entrants were cheering.
Auroras Encore did not just win, he romped home by nine lengths from Cappa Bleu, as betting slips totalling £150million were torn up the length and breadth of the land.
Smith was a world-beating show-jumper but is chiefly remembered for the V-sign which cost him the 1971 British Derby.
But his fingers were reversed yesterday. It was V for victory rather than an ‘up yours’ salute.
Smith’s wife Sue holds the trainers’ licence at their base in Bingley, West Yorkshire, where the couple were snowed in for three days during Aintree preparations.
But it is a husband-and-wife team operation – with the 74-year-old Harvey insisting he will carry on training until he gets his telegram from The Queen.
Smith said: “People have asked how this compares to show-jumping. I won my first major championship in 1956, when most people here weren’t even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes. I conquered the world at that.
“I’ve had a good life with horses. We started messing about with racehorses more than 20 years ago and got sucked into it. It keeps you young and I won’t be retiring. I was chatting to another trainer the other day and his father always told him, ‘There are two chairs that will kill you, the electric chair and the armchair.’
“I’ll have to keep going until I’m 100 now!
“We’ve always fancied the horse for this race. He was only beaten by a whisker in the Scottish National and he was given a lovely ride here.
“You don’t win a big ‘un every day. We bought him out of Doncaster sales, broke him, made him, that’s what we did. We’re over the moon.”
Wife Sue paid tribute to her other half, saying: “We do it all together. Harvey’s a hard man – he keeps everyone working, even the horses.”
Scotsman Mania may have a surname that suggests frenzied excitement but his career had been stop-start and low-key until yesterday. When 10-1 shot Teaforthree made an error at the last, on its way to a third-placed finish, Auroras Encore hit the front and Mania did not look back until after the race, when he reflected on how close he had come to quitting racing for good.
Mania, 23, explained: “I was riding for Howard Johnson and he lost his licence. Opportunities are very limited and I didn’t know what I was going to do.
“I took six months off and worked in hunt service but after a couple of months, I thought ‘what have I done?’ – I was lucky Sue and Harvey gave me the opportunity to come back.
“I couldn’t quite believe my luck When I was crossing the Melling Road, I thought ‘this is great, I could be in the first four or five’ – then the front two stopped in front of me at the last. It was unbelievable.”
The 79-year-old Beaumont, who bought the horse along with Douglas Pryde and David van der Hoeven last Christmas, was a popular hometown winner. Van der Hoeven was holidaying in Greece when Auroras Encore became his very first winner – obviously sharing the opinions of bookies and punters about Auroras Encore’s prospects. There was no fairytale for Katie Walsh, the first woman jockey to ride a National favourite after Seabass had been backed in to 11-2, as she finished 13th.
And while Sir Alex Ferguson may win the title race by a country mile, the two National entrants he co-owns, What A Friend and Harry The Viking, did not go the distance here.
After fatalities on each of the first two days of the Aintree meeting and two deaths in each of the past two Nationals, there was relief that all 40 horses survived unscathed – with only two horses falling, six unseated and 17 finishing, with the rest pulled up.
Smith applauded the race organisers, saying: “Full marks to the Aintree set-up. It’s onwards and upwards now for the Grand National.”