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Is Red A Winning Name?
If I was fortunate enough to own my own race horse I think I would do worse than to give him a name that contained ‘Red’ within it! Why you may ask? There was after all only one Red Rum, and as renowned as he is, there is unlikely to be another like him – he truly was one in a million. But there are other Reds who have also done well.
Red Splash was the first ever horse to win the Cheltenham Festival Gold Cup in 1924, even though he was not even yet the modern day prerequisite five years old. Aside from his jumping, which was considered to be extraordinarily good, he was admired for staying on so resolutely, given that he was sharply tackled by Conjuror II on the tiring bit of rising ground that tends to defeat a lot of Gold Cup competitors. Unfortunately his success of 1924 was never to be repeated and even though there were grand hopes for him with the National, it was never to be.
Another Red that did well was Red Alligator, who was the comfortable winner of the 1968 Grand National, winning by twenty lengths just as his half-brother Anglo had done two years beforehand. In winning, Red Alligator provided the first of three National-winning rides for his twenty year old jockey Brian Fletcher. Red Alligator was bred by William Kennedy near Downpatrick in Northern Ireland. Sired by Magic Red, he was out of Miss Alligator who had finished sixth in the 1949 Oaks and still had been sold for only seventy guineas at the Dublin sales in 1952. Miss Alligator became only the second mare to produce two Grand National winners, the first of which was Miss Batty, dam of Emblem and Emblematic. Unfortunately for Mr Kennedy he made no profit from breeding two National winners – he sold Anglo for £140 when he was still a foal and sold Red Alligator at the yearling sales for 340 guineas. Eventually trained by Denys Smith, it was soon realised that Red Alligator was both a sound steeplechase jumper and stayer, which was clear to see in the 1967 National, where after a mass disaster at the twenty-third, he was put back three times at the fence before giving chase so well that he finished third. Red Alligator won eleven chases but saddled with an extra thirteen pounds following his glorious 1968 Grand National victory, he never came close to winning the race again.
Red Marauder was another Red to win the National, a 33-1 shot who was one of only four of forty runners to complete the course, two of those having been remounted. His rider, Richard Guest, afterwards stated that he was ‘probably the worst jumper ever to win a National’. This may well have been true as prior to the race the Jockey Clubs safety panel put him under extensive scrutiny, and he only won acceptance to the race on a casting vote – see, there just might be something in the name Red!!