Red Rum at Aintree: The Legend of the Grand National

Red Rum was foaled in 1965, an Irish bay gelding who gave little indication in his early career that he would become the defining horse of his generation. His first race was on the Flat as a two-year-old, where he dead-heated for first place in a five-furlong seller at Aintree — a coincidence that feels more significant with hindsight than it did at the time. He went on to win again on the Flat but was always regarded as a moderate performer: useful enough to place, not good enough to attract serious attention.

By the time he was seven years old, Red Rum had passed through several owners and was being trained over hurdles and fences, building a record that was perfectly respectable without being exciting. He was bought by a used car dealer named Donald McCain — universally known as Ginger — for 6,000 guineas at the Doncaster Sales in August 1972. At that point, Red Rum had a significant problem: he was suffering from pedal ostitis, a degenerative bone condition in one of his feet that caused chronic pain and lameness. Any serious assessment of his prospects would have concluded that his career was effectively over.

Ginger McCain and the Southport Sands

Ginger McCain was not a conventional racing trainer. He ran a car showroom in Southport, a seaside town on the Lancashire coast, and trained his small string of horses in a yard directly beside the showroom on Upper Aughton Road. The training gallop he used was the beach at Southport — a long, flat stretch of wet sand where horses could canter at the water's edge, their feet meeting the hard sand with each stride.

This, entirely by accident, turned out to be precisely what Red Rum needed. The salt water and the firm wet sand worked on his damaged foot in a way that conventional training could not. The daily canters on Southport beach — with McCain himself riding out, alongside his wife Beryl and their young family watching from the dunes — strengthened Red Rum's legs and eased the pain in his foot. Within weeks of arriving at the yard, the horse was moving freely.

There was nothing scientific about it. McCain did not know, at first, that the beach exercise was curing his horse. He was simply using the facilities available to him. But Red Rum thrived under conditions that would have been considered entirely unsuitable for a serious National Hunt contender. The sands of Southport had found their horse.

The Jockeys

Two jockeys share the credit for Red Rum's Grand National career. Brian Fletcher rode him to his first two victories in 1973 and 1974. Fletcher was an accomplished National Hunt jockey who had already won the Grand National — he was aboard Red Alligator in 1968, the horse that finished third behind Foinavon in 1967 before winning the following year. He understood the National course, its demands, and its pace.

Fletcher and Red Rum developed a partnership built on mutual understanding. Fletcher knew the horse needed to be held up in the early stages and allowed to find his jumping rhythm, and Red Rum responded to that patience by travelling smoothly through the field and producing a decisive move at the critical moment. After the 1974 victory, however, the relationship between Fletcher and McCain broke down, and Fletcher did not return for 1975.

Tommy Stack took over for the final season. Stack was an Irish jockey who had ridden at the top level for years without achieving the profile his talent deserved. He rode Red Rum to second places in 1975 and 1976 before winning the Grand National together in 1977 — the third and most historic victory. Stack later became a successful trainer in Ireland, and his name remains linked to Red Rum's whenever the 1977 race is discussed.

The Character of the Horse

What comes through clearly from every account of Red Rum's career is his character. He was not a straightforward horse to deal with — he had strong opinions about how he wanted to be managed and could be stubborn in the stable — but he was essentially honest and courageous when it mattered. He loved the attention that came with his celebrity, taking to public appearances with apparent enthusiasm. Ginger McCain often said that Red Rum knew he was special.

His physical attributes on the racecourse were not immediately obvious. He was not a big, powerful horse in the mould of some Grand National winners. What he had was an extraordinary jumping technique — low, accurate, economical — that allowed him to get through the spruce-topped National fences efficiently without losing momentum. On the long 494-yard run-in from the last fence, he was relentless. He did not stop. He did not hang. He simply kept galloping.

That quality — the refusal to give in when the race should have been decided — is what separates him from nearly every other horse to have run in the Grand National.

Five Grand Nationals. Five top-two finishes. No other horse in history has come close to matching this record in the world's most demanding steeplechase.

1973: The Greatest Finish

The 1973 Grand National is one of the most dramatic races ever run over the National Course — and the finish it produced has never been surpassed in terms of sheer sporting tension.

Crisp, a brilliant Australian chaser trained in England by Fred Winter, set off in front at a ferocious pace. Ridden by Richard Pitman, Crisp jumped the National fences with breathtaking fluency and precision, building a lead that grew and grew as the field failed to match his relentless gallop. By the time Crisp turned out of the Country end and headed back towards the stands on the second circuit, he was an extraordinary 30 lengths clear of the field. At Becher's Brook on the second time round, he was still 20 lengths ahead.

Crisp was carrying 12 stone, giving enormous weight to most of the field. Red Rum, carrying 10st 5lb, was in third place around the Canal Turn with Brian Fletcher riding a perfectly judged race. The Australian's lead was insurmountable. Nobody watching thought the finish was in doubt.

At the second-last fence, Crisp began to tire. Those 30 lengths of lead — built on a pace that no horse was supposed to sustain over 4½ miles — were now a debt he could not repay. Red Rum, fresh and still travelling, began to close. Down the long run-in, Crisp was slowing with every stride. Red Rum, head low, ears back, was accelerating. The crowd noise built to something that barely registered as noise at all.

Crisp kept going. Red Rum kept coming. At the line — the very line at which Red Rum would one day be buried — the margin was three-quarters of a length. Red Rum had caught a horse that should have been uncatchable. The winning time was 9 minutes 1.9 seconds, a then-record for the race.

Crisp had run a heroic race and lost. Red Rum had won a heroic race that no-one had seen coming. It was an ideal introduction to a five-year story.

1974: Carrying History

Red Rum returned in 1974 carrying 12 stone — the heaviest weight any horse had won under in modern times. The handicapper, recognising what he had seen the previous year, had given him as much as the rules allowed. The message was that if Red Rum was going to win again, he would have to do so against every advantage the book could throw at him.

He won by seven lengths. L'Escargot, the Gold Cup winner who would beat him the following year, finished second. Red Rum travelled beautifully through the race under Brian Fletcher, never appearing in any difficulty, and made his move on the second circuit with the confidence of a horse that knew exactly where it was going.

The 1974 victory is sometimes overshadowed by the drama of 1973 and the history of 1977, but it may have been his finest performance. Giving weight to every rival in the field over 4½ miles of the National Course is a feat that requires not just talent but physical robustness that few horses possess. Three weeks after this Grand National, Red Rum won the Scottish Grand National at Ayr — the only horse ever to win both Nationals in the same season.

1975: Second to L'Escargot

In 1975, L'Escargot — an Irish chaser trained by Dan Moore and owned by Raymond Guest — finally beat Red Rum, with the two horses again in the frame at the top of the weights. L'Escargot won by 15 lengths, with Red Rum a clear second but not the dominant force he had been in his two winning years. The horse was not at his best, and the weight of carrying top weight again had its effect over the distance.

Second in the Grand National — from the horse that had won it twice — was an extraordinary performance in its own right. Most horses never finish in the top three. Red Rum's second place in 1975 was better than what most horses managed in their best year.

1976: Second to Rag Trade

The 1976 race was decided by weight allocation. Red Rum again carried top weight, while Rag Trade — trained by Fred Rimell — was given a considerably lighter burden. Rag Trade won comfortably. Red Rum finished second again. Tommy Stack, who had taken over as his jockey, rode with his usual patience and professionalism, but the weight difference was too much to overcome.

Four consecutive Grand Nationals, four podium finishes. The record was extraordinary. And yet, by the spring of 1977, Red Rum was twelve years old. Most horses are retired at ten or eleven. The general assumption was that this would be his farewell — a final run before retirement, a chance for the Aintree crowd to say goodbye.

1977: The Historic Third

The 1977 Grand National is the most famous race Red Rum ran and the one that secured his place in the permanent record of British sport. He was 12 years old. He had not won the race for three years. He had finished second in both intervening runnings. The weight he carried had been reduced from 12 stone to 11st 8lb, reflecting his age.

Tommy Stack gave him a faultless ride. Red Rum jumped with the precision and economy that had always defined his National Course performances — unhurried, accurate, never wasting energy. Around the first circuit he moved smoothly through the field. At Becher's Brook on the second pass, he was travelling better than anything else in the race.

He came to the final fence in front and jumped it cleanly. Down the run-in — 494 yards, the longest in jump racing — he did not slow. He did not look for another horse to come upsides. He simply lengthened his stride and ran to the line.

He won by 25 lengths. The crowd noise at Aintree that afternoon was unlike anything the course had ever produced. The horse that had been expected to be running in his farewell race had won the Grand National for a third time, at the age of 12, by the widest winning margin of his career.

Peter O'Sullevan, commentating for the BBC, captured the moment: "He's coming to the elbow now... He's coming up to the line... It's Red Rum! Red Rum wins the Grand National!"

No horse had ever done this before. No horse has done it since.

Five Grand National appearances produced five great moments, but some stand above the rest — races and sequences that defined not just Red Rum's career but the wider story of horse racing in 1970s Britain.

The Run-In in 1973: Sport's Greatest Finish

You can still watch it. The footage is clear enough, the commentary is precise enough, and the drama is so tightly constructed that each viewing feels as urgent as the last.

Crisp gallops down the long Aintree straight with a lead that makes the race look over. Richard Pitman crouches low on his neck, driving, but the horse is running on empty after that searing early pace. The time elapsed and the distance covered have combined to extract more from Crisp than any horse should have been asked to give.

Behind him, Brian Fletcher has kept Red Rum switching off through the early stages, conserving energy, positioning patiently. Now Fletcher is pushing, and Red Rum — far from tired — is accelerating. He passes the elbow at the top of the run-in already closing fast. With 100 yards to go, the gap is still two lengths. With 50 yards to go, it is a length. The crowd is screaming at both horses simultaneously, as if they can push Crisp home and pull Red Rum forward at the same time.

At the line, three-quarters of a length. Red Rum had run the last mile of the Grand National faster than the previous leader. That last piece of the race, from the second-last fence to the winning post, remains one of the greatest sustained passages of effort in National Hunt history.

The Double Scottish in 1974

Three weeks after his second Grand National victory, carrying 12 stone, Red Rum lined up in the Scottish Grand National at Ayr. Nobody expected him to win. The Grand National takes a significant physical toll on a horse, and repeating a similar performance three weeks later — over a similarly gruelling distance — was not supposed to be possible.

Red Rum won the Scottish Grand National by six lengths. He became the only horse in history to win both the Grand National and the Scottish Grand National in the same season, a record that still stands. The achievement clarified something about his physical condition that had perhaps not been fully appreciated: the Southport beach training had not just eased his pedal ostitis. It had made him extraordinarily fit and strong in a way that conventional training did not.

The 1977 Farewell That Wasn't

The atmosphere at Aintree on Grand National Saturday in 1977 had a particular quality. The crowd of 65,000 had come partly to say goodbye. Red Rum was 12 years old. His two second-place finishes suggested the three-time winner was declining. The narrative was already written: a farewell run, applause from the crowd, a dignified retirement.

Red Rum had not read the narrative.

The ovation he received as he walked into the Parade Ring before the race was the loudest that had been heard at Aintree in years. Ginger McCain — who never disguised his fondness for the horse — was visibly emotional. Tommy Stack, who had ridden him to two second places and knew the horse better than almost anyone, was quietly confident.

When Red Rum crossed the line 25 lengths clear of Churchtown Boy in second, the reception was extraordinary. Decades later, people who were there that afternoon still describe it as the loudest sustained noise they have ever heard at a sporting event. The horse stood in the winner's enclosure receiving the cheers, apparently quite comfortable with the attention.

Ginger McCain's Loyalty

Throughout Red Rum's career, one constant was the relationship between horse and trainer. Ginger McCain was not a man given to sentimentality about racing — he was a practical, grounded figure who ran a business alongside his small training operation — but he was entirely open about what Red Rum meant to him.

When the horse retired after the 1978 Grand National — he developed a tendon injury before the race and was pulled out at the last moment, his competitive career ending without ceremony — McCain kept him at Southport. Red Rum remained part of the operation for years, making public appearances, greeting visitors, and appearing at Aintree on Grand National days long after his racing career had finished.

The relationship between Red Rum and Aintree Racecourse during the crisis years of the mid-1970s is often underestimated. Aintree was fighting for survival, owned by a property developer who had no interest in racing and who had tripled admission prices, driving crowds away. Red Rum's three victories — and his two second places — gave millions of people a reason to care about this course and this race. He was the argument for Aintree's continued existence, played out in real time across five Grand Nationals.

That Aintree was eventually saved in 1983 has many causes. But Red Rum's existence — the living proof that the Grand National produced stories of a quality no other race could match — was central to the public and political will to preserve it.

For the full story of the crisis that nearly ended Aintree, see our history of Aintree Racecourse.

Red Rum retired in 1978 after a tendon injury prevented him from running in what would have been his sixth Grand National. He was thirteen years old. His competitive career ended without a final race — no farewell lap, no ceremonial last run. The injury came too close to the race for there to be any alternative.

He spent the next seventeen years as the most famous horse in Britain.

A Life After Racing

Ginger McCain kept Red Rum at Southport after his retirement. The horse became a working celebrity: opening supermarkets, appearing at events, greeting visitors who made the journey to see him at the yard beside the car showroom on Upper Aughton Road. He received fan mail — addressed simply to "Red Rum, Southport" — and it found him. School groups came to visit. Members of the public turned up unannounced hoping to see him. McCain, characteristically, usually accommodated them.

Red Rum appeared at Aintree on Grand National day most years, led round the parade ring to the reception he had always received at the racecourse. The crowd response never diminished. As the years passed and newer horses won the race, Red Rum remained the name that racegoers of a certain age cited when asked about the Grand National. He was not a memory. He was still there, still visibly the same horse, still alive in a way that gave the abstract record — three Grand National victories — a physical presence.

He died on 18 October 1995, aged 30. The news made the front pages of national newspapers. Television bulletins reported it with the gravity normally reserved for a public figure. In a sense, Red Rum was a public figure. His relationship with the public over more than twenty years — through his racing career, his retirement, his appearances, his enduring physical presence at Aintree and Southport — had given him a place in popular consciousness that few athletes of any species achieve.

At the Winning Post

Red Rum is buried at the Aintree winning post. Not near it — at it, precisely at the spot where he had crossed the line as a winner three times. The decision to bury him there was a recognition of something that could not simply be marked with a plaque or a statue: that Red Rum and Aintree's winning post had a relationship that no other horse and no other location shared.

His grave is accessible to visitors on race days and at other times throughout the year. Many people who attend the Grand National make a point of walking to the winning post to see it.

The Statues

There are two statues of Red Rum. The first stands at Aintree, in the Red Rum Garden — a bronze figure captured mid-gallop, head low, in the pose associated with his long runs-in along the Aintree straight. It was unveiled in 1988, during his lifetime. The second stands at his former yard in Southport, outside the site where Ginger McCain trained him on the beach exercise that cured his foot and turned him into the most famous horse in racing history.

The Record That Stands

Tiger Roll won back-to-back Grand Nationals in 2018 and 2019, reviving memories of Red Rum's consecutive victories in 1973 and 1974. The comparison was made enthusiastically, and Tiger Roll deserved the attention — he was a small, gutsy horse who had captured something of the same public affection. But Tiger Roll won two. Red Rum won three.

The five-consecutive-podium record has never been approached. Every subsequent Grand National, when a horse performs well over multiple years, the comparison is made. None has matched the sequence. The Grand National's inherent unpredictability — the large field, the unique fences, the sheer distance — makes finishing in the first two in five consecutive runnings a statistical near-impossibility, let alone winning three of them.

That record will define Aintree's Grand National for as long as the race is run. For the full story of what it takes to win the National today, see our Grand National Day guide. For how to approach betting on the race, see our Aintree betting guide.