Red Rum. Foinavon. Aldaniti. We should be used to it by now.
In its 183 years, the Grand National has made a routine of morphing the impossible into matter of fact. Twelve months on from Rachael Blackmore’s history-making success aboard Minella Times, the grey mare Snow Leopardess comes in search of a new National first.
It’s not her colour or gender that has headline writers hovering over their keyboards – Neptune Collonges became the third winning grey in 2012 and Nickel Coin the latest of 13 mares in 1951. No mare has ever captured the great race having first experienced motherhood.
“People have been finding out how many mothers have run in the Grand National,” says the 10-year-old’s trainer Charlie Longsdon. “We think something might have done 100 years ago, but not in recent living memory.”
Snow Leopardess is the fifth line of a generation curated by Marietta Fox-Pitt, herself the 80-year-old matriarch of the celebrated equestrian family. Son William is a three-time Olympic medallist and six-time Burghley Horse Trials victor and is married to ITV Racing presenter Alice Plunkett.
“The Fox-Pitts are an amazing family, and any horse coming from the Fox-Pitts was always going to be a character,” observes the Oxfordshire trainer. What they haven’t done in the equestrian world isn’t worth doing, and their horses seem to follow suit.”
Snow Leopardess was putting together a CV of her own – her race record included four wins, including a Listed bumper in Ireland and Newbury’s valuable Mares’ Final – when landing a valuable hurdle race at Auteuil in September 2017. But on her arrival from Paris the daughter of top National Hunt stallion Martaline had sustained a serious leg injury.
As her recovery hobbled, the decision was taken to mate Snow Leopardess with 2006 Derby winner Sir Percy. The filly, Red Panda, is now three years old.
“Very few people bring a horse back after having a foal,” adds Longsdon. “I don’t know why, but they always say they are never the same. I thought that, but my owner-breeder never thought that – bringing her back was a massive thing.”
After 794 days of combined sick and maternity leave, Snow Leopardess returned to the racecourse in November 2019, sitting out a further nine months before a first campaign over fences last term.
“She never jumped like a novice and our big aim this season was the Becher Chase with a view – if she took to it – to going down the National route,” reveals her trainer. “We expected her to love them – we couldn’t wait to go over the big fences – but until you jump them you never quite know.”
Her gluttonous appetite for taking on the famous obstacles lit up a filthy afternoon on Merseyside as Snow Leopardess breezed clear of 20 opponents on the final circuit of the three-and-a-quarter-mile National trial. Hill Sixteen broke from the pack in pursuit on the run to the winning post, but the leader fought on to edge the photo-finish by a nose.
“Aidan said he’d have shot himself if she’d got beaten,” recalls Longsdon, confident of his mare’s staying power over an additional one mile and 106 yards on Saturday. “She wasn’t tired. She just got lonely because she had been in front for two and a half miles into a driving headwind and driving rain.”
Her mastery of the fences has converted form experts and happenstance punters alike, and Snow Leopardess is now rubbing shoulders with the favourites at the head of the National betting.
“You name it, she’s done it,” says Longsdon, whose Pendra – 13 th in 2016 – fared best of his previous five National runners.
“She’s all the things that don’t normally pay off – she’s a mare, she’s a grey – but she came back from two leg injuries, she’s had a foal and there she is, back competing with the best.
“She’s been a special mare, and the Grand National loves a story – you’d love to hope she might be that story.”
