Auroras Encore at Hexham: The Grand National Winner's Northern Home

A Long-Shot Grand National Winner

Auroras Encore was a bay gelding trained by Sue Smith at her Bingley yard in West Yorkshire — a Northern operation with a long and solid record of producing reliable jump horses for the top-level races and the demanding northern circuit. Smith, working alongside her husband Harvey, had won the Grand National before: Vintage Crop, Earth Summit, and other good horses had come through the yard. But Auroras Encore, at 66-1, represented a longer price than any of them.

The horse was bred in Ireland, a son of King's Theatre out of a mare by Supreme Leader. King's Theatre, himself a son of Sadler's Wells, produced National Hunt horses who tended to stay well and improve with age — exactly the profile that suits the Grand National's unique test of stamina, jumping ability, and sheer will to survive a four-and-a-quarter mile race over thirty fences.

Auroras Encore was seven years old in April 2013. He had been a consistent if unspectacular performer on the Northern circuit, winning races in the sort of company that proves quality without announcing it loudly. He was not a horse who had won a Grade 1 or featured prominently in the ante-post betting markets for the big races. He was a real, tough, honest chaser from a Northern yard — precisely the type that the Grand National occasionally elevates to immortality.

Sue Smith and the Northern Training Tradition

Sue Smith's yard at Bingley sits within an hour's drive of several of the Northern courses — Catterick, Wetherby, Ripon, and the further reaches of Hexham and Carlisle. Her horses ran on the Northern circuit as a matter of course, and Auroras Encore was no exception. He had competed at the tracks that Northern jump racing depends on: compact, testing, attended by crowds who know their horses and value the honest hard-trying animal over the flashy big-money prospect.

This background gave Auroras Encore the preparation that the Grand National rewards. He was a fit, hardened, well-schooled chaser with miles of good racing in his legs. When the Grand National field set off at Aintree in April 2013, he was not a horse who was experiencing serious jumping for the first time. He had been here — in atmosphere, in the rhythm of a long-distance chase — many times before.

Ryan Mania: The Jockey

Ryan Mania was 23 years old when he won the Grand National on Auroras Encore. He was one of the youngest jockeys ever to win the race, and the first from Scotland in more than a century. His background was Northern in the fullest sense: he had started his career in Scotland, developed it on the Northern circuit, and was based at Howard Johnson's yard in County Durham.

Mania had ridden at Hexham regularly. The course was part of his natural circuit — the tracks he drove to on ordinary racing days, schooled horses for, rode in conditions ranging from firm summer ground to winter mud. He knew Hexham's steep climb, its testing undulations, the way the track asks questions of both horse and rider at different points of each circuit.

His connection to Hexham was not peripheral. It was core. The Northern jump jockey without experience of Hexham is an incomplete picture; the tracks like this one are where the training happens, where the judgement develops, where a rider builds the feel for pace and positioning that makes the difference at Aintree when it counts.

The 2013 Grand National: 66-1

The 2013 Grand National field was competitive and deep, as Grand National fields tend to be. Auroras Encore was 66-1 with most bookmakers — a price that reflected his form on the Northern circuit, his trainer's smaller profile compared to the major operations at Nicky Henderson or Paul Nicholls, and the natural tendency of betting markets to underweight horses from outside the southern training establishment.

From the moment the tapes rose, Mania settled Auroras Encore into a rhythm. The horse jumped with the clean, economical style that Sue Smith's horses characteristically exhibit — not flashy, not spectacular, but accurate and consistent over fence after fence. As the field thinned, as the pace quickened and the final miles took their toll on horses who had exhausted their resources, Auroras Encore kept finding.

Nine lengths at the finish. Cappa Bleu second. The first Scottish jockey in 117 years to win the most famous horse race in the world, on a 66-1 shot from a Northern yard, who had been prepared on the circuits and tracks — including Hexham — where Northern jump racing lives.

For more on Hexham's terrain and its unique place among British racecourses, see our guide to Hexham as the highest racecourse in England.

Northern Circuit Appearances

Auroras Encore's race record before the 2013 Grand National was built on the Northern jump circuit — the network of tracks from the Scottish borders down through Northumberland, County Durham, Yorkshire, and Lancashire that provides the backbone of winter jump racing north of Birmingham. This is not a glamorous circuit. It does not attract the television coverage that flows towards Cheltenham, Kempton, or Sandown. But it is a real one, with real horses competing seriously for significant prize money.

Hexham sits within this circuit as one of its most distinctive venues. The track's altitude — 800 feet above sea level, on a ridge overlooking the Tyne Valley — gives it a character that is immediately apparent to both horse and rider. The ground tends to be firmer here than at lower-lying tracks; the wind across the ridge can be sharp even in spring; the view from the grandstands is magnificent in a way that nothing in southern England quite matches. These are not trivial facts. They shape what it means to race at Hexham, and to prepare horses for it.

Auroras Encore ran on tracks like this throughout his career. The Northern circuit was his home, and Ryan Mania's familiarity with it — with Hexham specifically — was part of the accumulated knowledge that made the partnership effective.

The St. John Lee Handicap Hurdle, 7 April 2013

The race that connects Hexham most directly to the Auroras Encore story was not run by Auroras Encore at all. It was the St. John Lee Handicap Hurdle on 7 April 2013 — the day after the Grand National — in which Ryan Mania was aboard Stagecoach Jasper when the horse fell.

Mania rode at Hexham the day after winning the Grand National. That fact alone says something about the Northern racing world and the people who inhabit it. He was 23 years old. He had just ridden one of the most celebrated winners in recent Grand National history. He was back at Hexham the following afternoon because that is what professional jump jockeys do — they ride at the meetings on the fixture list, they fulfil their commitments, they do their jobs.

Stagecoach Jasper fell in the St. John Lee Handicap Hurdle. Mania suffered neck and back injuries. He was taken to hospital in Northumberland and subsequently transferred for further treatment. The contrast — Grand National winner on Saturday, injured in a hurdle race at Hexham on Sunday — was sharp enough to make the national news, briefly, before racing moved on to the next meeting.

What the Hexham Connection Means

Racing tracks accumulate their histories from moments that arrive without warning. Hexham's connection to Auroras Encore and Ryan Mania is not a story of race victories at the course itself — Auroras Encore's most famous race was at Aintree, not in the Tyne Valley. It is a story about context: about the track that was home to the jockey who won the Grand National, the circuit that prepared him, the place where the drama of that April weekend reached its complicated conclusion with a fall the day after the triumph.

Northern jump racing understands this kind of story. The riders who compete at Hexham are not, for the most part, household names south of Birmingham. They are professional jockeys who ride hard in difficult conditions on testing tracks for competitive but modest prize money, building careers through consistency and courage. Ryan Mania was one of them — until Auroras Encore made him, briefly, the most famous jump jockey in Britain.

Hexham carried that story. The course was where he was on the day after the National. It was part of the world that produced him. And in the compressed drama of that April weekend — triumph and injury within 24 hours — it is Hexham, as much as Aintree, that defines the full picture.

For the full history of this notable course, see our history of Hexham Racecourse.

Saturday 6 April 2013: The Grand National

The start of the 2013 Grand National brought together a large field under sunny Aintree skies. Auroras Encore broke cleanly, and Ryan Mania settled the horse into the kind of relaxed but attentive rhythm that experienced National riders recognise as the correct approach for the early stages. The race is not won at Becher's Brook the first time. It is won — when it is won — by survival, conservation, and the gradual attrition of a four-and-a-quarter mile test that eliminates horses one by one.

Auroras Encore's jumping was clean from the outset. He met each fence on a good stride, landed without drama, and galloped on without losing momentum. The figure is rarely the biggest horse in a National field, and the small but athletic chaser was doing exactly what his nature and training had equipped him to do: jumping economically and accurately, staying on, making no errors when errors are catastrophic.

By the Canal Turn on the second circuit, the field had thinned. By Becher's Brook second time, it had thinned further. In the final mile, Auroras Encore was travelling strongly while others were visibly tiring. At the last fence, Mania drove him clear. They won by nine lengths.

The weighing room reaction at Aintree, the scenes with trainer Sue Smith and her team, the press conference in which Mania — unaffected and direct in the manner of Northern jump jockeys — answered questions about what the win meant: all of it was watched and reported nationally. The 66-1 winner, the 23-year-old Scottish jockey, the Northern training operation — it was a story that racing people and non-racing people alike understood as significant.

Sunday 7 April 2013: The Fall at Hexham

The next day, at Hexham, Mania rode Stagecoach Jasper in the St. John Lee Handicap Hurdle. The horse fell. Mania was taken to hospital with neck and back injuries.

The reaction across British racing was a mixture of shock and something that racing people recognise as characteristic of the sport: the awareness that the game continues, that the circuit moves forward, and that the fall of the day after the greatest win of a career is not an exceptional occurrence in the sense of a warning sign — it is simply what happens when a professional jump jockey keeps riding.

Mania recovered. He returned to race-riding after a period of rehabilitation. His career continued on the Northern circuit, at the tracks where he had built it. But the 48-hour sequence of Saturday at Aintree and Sunday at Hexham remains one of the most vivid illustrations of what jump jockeys experience — the proximity of glory and danger, the matter-of-factness with which they inhabit both.

What the Hexham Story Adds

The significance of the Hexham connection to the Auroras Encore story is not in the formal achievements — the race victories, the prize money, the headline moments that end up in the record books. It is in what it reveals about the Northern racing world and the people who make it work.

Ryan Mania at Hexham the day after the Grand National is an image of the sport at its most honest: a jockey doing his job, at a track that is part of his daily professional life, on the afternoon after the most celebrated day of his career. The course could not have anticipated the role it would play in this narrative. Hexham was simply the next fixture on the calendar, the next place on the Northern circuit where horses ran and jockeys rode.

In being that — in being the ordinary venue that became part of an extraordinary sequence — Hexham earned its place in one of the most memorable chapters of recent Grand National history.

Hexham and the Northern Jump Jockey

Hexham Racecourse sits at the apex of a circuit that has always required its jockeys to be tough, adaptable, and willing to ride in conditions that the southern tracks do not regularly impose. Eight hundred feet above sea level, with an undulating track that demands physical effort from horse and rider alike, Hexham does not forgive those who treat it as a routine engagement. The course has a way of making the experienced look well-prepared and the ill-prepared look out of their depth.

Ryan Mania was prepared. His familiarity with Hexham — with its gradients, its ground conditions, its particular atmosphere on cold Northern afternoons — was part of the foundation that allowed him to ride as effectively as he did at Aintree. Grand National winners are rarely produced from nowhere. They come from circuits and training grounds where the fundamentals have been laid in, race by race, track by track. Hexham was part of that foundation for Mania.

The legacy of the Auroras Encore connection at Hexham, then, is partly a story about what Hexham represents in the Northern jump racing ecosystem. It is a proving ground. A place where careers are built in ordinary races that barely register in the national coverage, but that add, cumulatively, to the stock of experience that a jockey needs when the biggest moments arrive.

A Course That Shapes Its Horses and Riders

The horses who run at Hexham and win there have earned something. The course's testing configuration — the long climb home, the undulating back straight, the way the track sits exposed to the Northumberland elements — ensures that honest, real performance is required. There is no hiding place on the ridge south of Hexham.

This has shaped the character of the racing at the course for more than two centuries. Since 1793, when the current site began to be used, Hexham has offered jump racing of a particular quality: demanding, scenic, and attached to the rural communities of Northumberland that have always supported it. The Hexham Gold Cup, the Heart of All England Chase — these are races with history behind them, run on ground that rewards horses with the right combination of jumping ability and stamina.

Auroras Encore's story adds a different kind of chapter to Hexham's history. It is not a story about a horse who dominated the course the way a great champion dominates their home track. It is a story about a jockey, a Northern circuit, and a 48-hour period in April 2013 that illustrated the world of jump racing with unusual clarity.

The Enduring Picture

Ryan Mania, age 23, winning the Grand National on a 66-1 shot, then riding at Hexham the following afternoon and ending up in hospital with a fall that knocked him off the front pages as quickly as the Grand National had put him on them — this is the picture that Hexham contributes to the Auroras Encore story.

It is the picture of jump racing as it actually is: glorious and brutal in almost equal measure, practised by men and women who accept both aspects as the terms of the life they have chosen, and played out on courses from Aintree to Hexham where the sport's full range of experience is always available.

For visitors to Hexham, this story is one of many that can be recalled while looking out over the Tyne Valley from the grandstand, watching the Northern circuit go about its business in one of the most beautiful racing settings in the country. For more on visiting Hexham, see our Hexham day out guide.