Owned by Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, otherwise known as Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, trained by Peter Cazalet and ridden by Dick Francis, Devon Loch has the distinction of being arguably the unluckiest loser in the history of the Grand National. The world famous steeplechase is often won, or lost, in the last furlong or so, from the famous Elbow, halfway up the 494-yard run-in, to the winning post, but no-one could have predicted what happened in the closing stages of the 1956 renewal, which British Pathé News called “the most sensational Grand National Aintree has ever seen”.
The widely fancied Devon Loch was left in the lead by the fall of Armorial at the twenty-sixth fence and rejoining the racecourse proper had ESB, ridden by Dave Dick, for company. However, having safely negotiated all thirty obstacles and apparently beaten off the challenge of his nearest pursuer, Devon Loch set off up the run-in, with Dick Francis riding with just hands and heels.
A Royal victory looked assured until suddenly, inexplicably, 50 yards from the winning post, Devon Loch pricked his ears, half-jumped into the air and slithered to the ground in an awkward belly flop, with his forelegs out in front of him. Francis wasn’t unseated but, despite his best efforts, could only watch helplessly as ESB streaked past to win by 10 lengths. Devon Loch regained his footing, but almost collapsed again, so Francis dismounted. It’s an iconic image of racing, much in the same way that maradona’s ‘hand of god’ was in football, confounding football predictions for how that match would pan out.
Dick Francis, who died in 2010, aged 89, always maintained that Devon Loch didn’t rear up, or try to jump, but was simply overwhelmed by the wall of noise from the Aintree crowd. He once said, “I’ve looked at the newsreel time and time again and just as we were approaching the water jump, which he jumped on the first circuit, you see the horse prick his ears and his hindquarters just refused to work.”
Another popular theory was that Devon Loch caught sight of the water jump on his left and, in his distressed condition, instinctively took off. The newsreel to which Francis referred does appear to show his front feet leaving the ground at, or around, the take-off point for the water jump, but whether his collapse was caused by cramp, exhaustion, noise, or simply slipping on a muddy patch of ground, non-one will ever really know.
While the 2026 Grand National can hardly be said to be just around the corner (it’s 7 months away) the months soon pass. The inevitable process of picking a winner (which will be the talk of every pub goer, and office worker around the time of the race) will soon begin. The sweepstakes too, where you never know if you’re going to be handed a near ‘sure thing’ or a 100-1 outsider. The beauty of the Grand National is that ‘anything can happen’. That moto has bitten bookies hard on occasion, and that’s always a punter pleasing outcome. Let’s take this time to look back at a few Grand Nationals from the past where punters came out on top!
At the time of his retirement, on medical advice, in December, 1999, Richard Dunwoody was the most successful National Hunt jockey in British history, with 1,699 domestic winners to his name. The Ulsterman won the National Hunt Jockeys’ Championship three times, in 1992/93, 1993/94 and 1994/95, and also had the distinction of winning the three ‘flagship’ races in the National Hunt calendar, namely the Champion Hurdle, Cheltenham Gold Cup and Grand National.
The Grand National is arguably the most famous horse race in the world and, according to the BBC, attracts a global television audience of approximately 600 million. In the last decade or so, the Jockey Club, which owns Aintree Racecourse, has invested heavily in safety changes and, based on its own research and a number of independent studies, announced further measures to be implemented before the next running of the Grand National on April 13, 2024.