Connor King needs a little persuading that his attempt to win Saturday’s Grand National with Oscars Brother has the potential to be one of the most remarkable tales in the 187-year history of the world’s most famous and storied steeplechase. “It’s probably hard [to see] when you’re in the situation,” the trainer said this week. “When you’re looking in from the outside, it might be easier.”
The Grand National, it’s true, amplifies everything: triumph, despair, drama. Even by the standards of what has always been a race apart, however, King’s journey to Liverpool from his tiny stable in County Tipperary skirts the border between implausible and absurd.
He is a 29-year-old with just two horses in his stable and his training career extends to fewer than 30 runners. King’s brother, Daniel, will ride Oscars Brother on Saturday. And to complete the sense of an artificial intelligence-written film script with the believability filter switched off, Oscars Brother was originally picked out at the sales, for just €8,000 (£7,000), by their father, Richard.
There are jumps fans who feel that the Grand National’s heart and soul have been extinguished by a steady stream of changes to the course and the race conditions over the past 20 years, which have in turn seen the quality of the runners improve out of all recognition to the doughty plodders that once made up the majority of the field. There is, they claim, no place for the underdogs and dreamers any more. Oscars Brother is a compelling argument against.
The last time that Connor King went to Aintree, as a 22-year-old jockey in 2018, there were about 8,000 spectators scattered around the enclosures. He finished fifth of eight runners in a hurdle race aboard a 25-1 chance. It will be a 65,000 sellout when Oscars Brother goes to post on Saturday afternoon, and the eight-year-old is prominent in the latest betting, at around 16-1.
“It’s unreal, so I’m just trying to take it all in and enjoy it as best I can,” King says, “because it doesn’t happen every day. But it’s why you get into the game. If you’re a jockey, you want to ride the winner of that race, if you’re a trainer and you’re buying a store horse, you’re thinking that’s the biggest goal.”
One major obstacle has already been avoided, as Oscars Brother’s horsebox managed to avoid the traffic chaos around Dublin on Thursday caused by protests over fuel prices.
“We managed to avoid all that,” King says, “and on Saturday we’ll try to treat it like any other day, more or less. You’d like to think he’s got a chance, but it’s a very competitive race and some really good horses, so hopefully he’ll just have a bit of luck on the day and everything will go well.”
The second day of Aintree’s Grand National meeting yesterday was marred by a fatal injury to Gold Dancer which was sustained as Willie Mullins’ gelding jumped the final fence on the way to victory in the Grade One Mildmay Novice Chase, but did not become apparent until after the line.
Paul Townend, Gold Dancer’s jockey, told a subsequent stewards’ inquiry that his mount “had made a mistake at the last fence after which it had taken a stride or two to gather himself before, in his opinion, running on in a straight line to the winning line”.
Townend added that it was “only rounding the bend towards the pull up area that the gelding’s action changed … after which he immediately dismounted from the gelding”. His explanation was noted by the officials.
James Given, the British Horseracing Authority’s director of equine, safety and welfare, also gave evidence to the track stewards, saying that in his view, Gold Dancer’s action had been “typical of a three-mile chaser in the final stages of a race and supported the evidence of Townend”. Greg Wood
Oscars Brother was King’s first runner in Britain when he lined up for the Brown Advisory Novice Chase, a championship event for young steeplechasers, at Cheltenham last month, and he outran his starting price of 18-1 to finish fourth. It was interesting, too, that he was staying on best of all in the final quarter mile, which suggests that he could improve over the marathon four-and-a-quarter-mile trip at Aintree on Saturday.
The same could be said, of course, for many of the runners on Saturday, and it is one of the quirks of a modern Grand National that it is far less predictable than the races of yesteryear that critics of the changes, and the softening of the fences in particular, remember so fondly. Once, it was possible to put a line through at least half of the field on the basis they were either carrying far more weight than their true handicap mark, or stood little or no chance of getting around, never mind doing so in front. Now, there are perhaps half a dozen in the 34-strong field that can be ruled out with confidence.
There is already evidence, though, that younger chasers, and even runners in their novice season, such as Oscars Brother, stand more of a chance now that a minor mistake is survivable. Noble Yeats, at 50-1 four years ago, was the first seven-year-old winner since 1940 and also the first for many decades to win in his first season over fences. Two of the next three have been eight-year-olds, and since 2015, a total of 164 horses aged 10 or above have gone to post for the National and not one has returned as a winner.
In a sense, King is a winner simply by having a runner in Saturday’s race, as the exposure and attention have already been priceless for a young trainer starting out in the game, and the Grand National itself is a winner too, with Oscars Brother in the field. It is a different event these days, without doubt. Yet still, it retains its ability to come up with a runner and a backstory that would seem utterly ridiculous – if this were anywhere but Aintree.
