What a grand story
Apr 07, 2021
3 minutes
FORTY years ago, the Grand National was won by a gleaming chestnut gelding that had bounced back, spring-heeled, from serious injury and whose determined jockey had endured punishing cancer treatment. The story of Aldaniti and Bob Champion, immortalised in the 1984 film Champions, starring John Hurt, remains one of the most moving results in the history of a race that so often touches the public psyche.
The runners-up in 1981 offered nearly as good a story: the sporting Warwickshire farmer John Thorne came out of retirement
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