In the mid to late 90's, all my friends summered in America. I eventually joined them in 1999. Me and a mate spent a week in New York before we headed to work in Wildwood, New Jersey. Wildwood was slandered by Darryl Hannah's character in the 1987 film Wall Street when she said it was the only place you could get a beach house for $400,000! Nowadays, you could get yourself a couple of late entries in the Grand National for that sort of money. It was an exciting time to be in the Big Apple as the New York Knicks were in the NBA Finals and despite losing the series, they became my basketball team.They haven't been close to reaching the finals since and currently have the worst record in the regular season. With only one camera between us, we did the sights - Statue of Liberty, Empire State and Times Square but it wasn't until shortly after the deadliest day in modern history that I realised I had no pictures of the Twin Towers from my only time in New York. We didn't do the Towers because we couldn't do everything but there are several pictures of me at the top of the Empire State with every part of Manhattan in the background except the part that housed the World Trade Center. I had bought twenty postcards for a dollar on the street, I was supposed to write them and send to family. They somehow made it home with me and ended up in a drawer but there were no Towers amongst them either. This was and still is the biggest news story to happen in my lifetime and I just wanted some record that I'd seen them but even though I was there when they were up, I have no personal memory of the worlds most famous skyscrapers. I've watched everything about 9/11, probably the saddest and most devastating day the western world has experienced in peace time, yet there are so many stories of heroes like Paddy Brown, the off duty Fireman who turned up at the disaster and went to work. I recorded documentaries about how the Towers were built and loved the story of Philippe Petit's death defying high wire act between them. The problem is, my memories are other peoples stories.
As a member of the Gordon Elliott Racing Club, there are a couple of stable tours in the year, one before Cheltenham and one in November, the start of the national hunt racing season. It's mostly to see our club horses out on the gallops and to meet other members but we get to see the superstars too. In February 2018, all the buzz was about Samcro and everybody wanted to get a picture of him. I asked Busty, Gordon's Assistant, where the star was and he cheekily replied "which one?". Samcro was in a box right in front of me albeit in a very busy area where the first lot of the morning were being dismounted and walked back to stables, the walker or the pool. At this time, Tiger Roll was merely a dual Cheltenham winner having claimed the Triumph Hurdle in 2014 then returning in 2017 to win the National Hunt Challenge Cup. I'm not sure if I passed his box and he wasn't there or the name didn't really register but he didn't even get a mention in my
blog. I got lots of pictures with Samcro and his neighbour Cause of Causes, who had a couple of attempts at the National himself. Six weeks later all anyone was talking about was Tiger Roll, the Cheltenham Cross Country and Grand National Champion.
In November 2018, Tiger Roll was now a household name following his Grand National success, I was looking forward to seeing him up close and getting some photos at the stable tour then I realised the date clashed with my sons 4th birthday party. Invites were out and venue booked so I would have to wait for the February one. However, the Equine Flu scare meant that one was cancelled. We had a club horse running at Navan on Boyne Hurdle day but I didn't get down until after he'd romped home at 25/1 in a two and a half mile hurdle race that was meant to be only a pipe opener, missing him again. Would I ever get to see this horse in the flesh? He was heading back to Cheltenham and I was going too. He arrived there as the Cross Country champion and was returning to defend his crown. It was his warm up race for the National in 2018 and he was going the same route again. The cross country is like no other race at Cheltenham or anywhere else as far as I can tell, it's like a giant showjumping course with lots of competitors all going at the same time and for the crowd it's the race where you are invited out into the middle of the course to watch from there. I walked out, getting selfies standing on the famous Cheltenham hill. By the time I got out to the middle, all the good, close, spots to take a photo were gone so I had to venture out a bit further to fence number 2 which was along the back straight. I got a fantastic vantage point to see the horses going over the fence. As the race began, we could see them coming round towards us until they disappeared into a dip or something. We couldn't see them but we could hear the thunder of their feet getting louder and next thing they were all jumping over the fence. Everyone in the crowd joined me in having their cameras ready and I repeatedly hit the button to take pictures. The horses were gone in a second. I checked my phone to see if I'd got a picture of Tiger, swiping left to right. I couldn't see his blinkered head or the Gigginstown colours of jockey Keith Donoghue. I'd have to wait until they came round again. Then I remembered the motion play feature, the still photo that is also 2 seconds of video.
I had him in that and I could freeze on any frame of those 2 seconds and make that a still photo.
In Gabriel Clarke's
brilliant film shown on ITV before this years National, Davy Russell talked about all the dots that had to join together to create the story of the greatest horse since Red Rum. On the 2nd June 2007, I had two epiphanies. The football team I played for travelled to Irvinestown, County Fermanagh to play an end of season friendly in memory of someone associated with both clubs. I was coming to the end of my playing days and was starting to think about going into coaching. I'd long been trying to get our team to stop playing piggy in the middle football and get the ball down on the floor. It's easy for me to remember the date because in the bar afterwards we watched the Epsom Derby and the winner that year was Authorized, who would go on to sire the most famous racehorse in the world. Somewhere, in the wake of a free bar, I also decided I could do without drinking. We got a lesson in playing out from the back that day and I vowed that when I became a manager that was how my team would play. When Tiger Roll was winning the Triumph Hurdle, I was coaching an U14 team to play the football I wanted to watch.
Back at Cheltenham and with photographic records captured, I headed towards the stands as the 2019 Cross Country continued. I could only see parts of it from the middle of the course with the big screens in the distance and the echoey commentary over the PA only giving me some idea of what was going on. It soon became clear the Tiger was absolutely pissing it, not even having to come off the bridle to reclaim his crown.
He won his back to back Grand National in almost exactly the same style.
Most horses are marked by their efforts in the Grand National. It's known for being the toughest of all jumps races but Tiger Roll has come back from winning it an even better horse. It's no mean feat to win a Cross Country on the Bridle but to win the biggest jumps race in the world, for the second successive year and emulate the immortal Red Rum, while still on the bridle going over the last, having made a couple of jumping mistakes late on, is something else. Saturday 6th April 2019 at Aintree was history, a different sort of history to what the world saw on that Tuesday in 2001. 45 years after the last horse to win successive Grand Nationals, we have ours and I have my story (and pictures) of the one and only, Tiger Roll.
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