How many times has J.P. McManus won the Grand National?

How many times has J.P. McManus won the Grand National? Irish billionaire John Patrick ‘J.P.’ McManus is, far and away, foremost owner in National Hunt racing, with hundreds of horses in training on both sides of the Irish Sea. However, for all his pre-eminence, McManus has won the Grand National just twice, his two winners coming over a decade apart. Those winners were, of course, Don’t Push It in 2010 and Minella Times in 2021.

Both Grand National victories were emotional for McManus, but for different reasons. Don’t Push It, trained by Jonjo O’Neill and ridden by Sir Anthony McCoy, was a first winner of the celebrated steeplechase for owner, trainer and jockey after many previous attempts. Minella Times, trained by Henry De Bromhead and ridden by Rachael Blackmore, was, if anything, even more notable for the fact that, in 172 previous runnings of the Grand National, the highest placing achieved by a female jockey had been third. However, the victory was tinged with sadness, coming as it did shortly after the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and, more pertinently, in the wake of the sudden death of McManus’ 40-year-old daughter-in-law, Emma, on New Year’s Eve while on a family holiday in Barbados.

Can Hollie Doyle really become Champion Jockey?

Can Hollie Doyle really become Champion Jockey? When she made a winning racecourse debut, as a 16-year-old amateur, in a lowly 0-65 lady riders’ handicap at Salisbury on May 5, 2013, few could have predicted that, eight years later, Hollie Doyle would be quoted at a top-priced 5/1 to win the 2021 Flat Jockeys’ Championship. However, Doyle who stands just 5′ tall and can ride at the minimum weight of 8st 0lb – hence her nickname, ‘The Pocket Rocket’ – has enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top of her profession.

In November, 2017, Doyle rode the 95th winner of her career, thereby riding out her claim. Two seasons later, in 2019, she became just the third female jockey, after Hayley Turner and Josephine Gordon, to ride a hundred winners in a calendar year, setting a new record with 116 wins. The following October she broke her own record and went on to rack up a total of 151 winners in 2020 as a whole; between the Guineas Festival at Newmarket and British Champions Day at Ascot, she rode 94 winners, finishing fourth in the Flat Jockeys’ Championship.

In July, 2020, Doyle rode her first Group winner and was offered a retainer by owner Imad Al Sagar. In August that year, she rode five winners on the same card at Windsor and, having ridden her first Group One winner on British Champions Day in October, did so again at Kempton in March, 2021. With 53 winners, so far, in 2021, Hollie Doyle must have every chance of becoming the first female Champion Jockey.

Which was the last filly to run in the Derby?

Which was the last filly to run in the Derby? Theoretically, there’s nothing to stop fillies running in the Derby, but the trend among modern trainers is to run them against their own sex, in the fillies-only Oaks, rather than against the colts, from whom they receive a 3lb allowance. Interestingly, in 2021, the Derby is worth £1,125,000 in guaranteed prize money, while the Oaks is worth just £375,000, but prize money is not the only consideration.

Of course, a Derby-winning filly would be a valuable commodity as a broodmare, but not nearly as valuable as a Derby-winning colt would be as a stallion, granted that the latter could cover hundreds of mares a year, potentially at hundreds of thousands of pounds per covering. Anyway, whatever the rationale behind the dearth of fillies in the Derby in recent years, the last filly to line up for the ‘Blue Riband’ event was Cape Verdi in 1998.

Trained by Saeed bin Suroor and ridden by Frankie Dettori, the daughter of Caerleon had previously justified favouritism in the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket, beating subsequent Oaks winner Shahtoush by 5 lengths. Consequently, she sent off favourite for the Derby, but seemingly failed to stay a mile and a half, weakening two furlongs from home to finish ninth, 12 lengths behind the winner, High-Rise.

Which is the longest horse race run in Britain?

Which is the longest horse race run in Britain? Although it has not been run over its traditionally advertised distance of 4 miles 4 furlongs since 2012, the longest horse race in Britain is still officially the Grand National at Aintree. In 2013, the National Course underwent a physical change when, in the name of safety, the position of the start of the Grand National was moved forward by approximately one hundred yards. The thinking behind the move was two-fold; in the first place, the revised start position meant that participants were further removed from the grandstands and distracting crowd noise and, in the second, reduced the distance over which horses could build up a ‘head of steam’ on the run to the first fence.

Consequently, the advertised distance of the Grand National was reduced to 4 miles 3½ furlongs and stayed that way until 2016, when it was further reduced to 4 miles 2½ furlongs, or 4 miles 2 furlongs and 74 yards, to be precise. The National Course did not change, but Aintree, along with every other National Hunt racecourse in the country, was re-measured along a line two yards from the inside rail, rather than along the middle of the track, thereby reducing the overall distance of the Grand National.

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