Cheers rang loud and long for rees
Geraldine Rees has vivid memories of the events of 25 years ago, when she made headlines around the world by becoming the first woman to complete the course in the Grand National.
The housewife’s achievement in conquering Aintree’s fearsome fences on her willing partner Cheers captured the public’s imagination.
The reception she received, despite being last of the eight finishers, was as rousing as that given to the winner Grittar and amateur Dick Saunders, who at 48 was the oldest jockey to take the prize.
“It was absolutely thrilling. It was the most wonderful feeling to finish. I was pretty exhausted, but it was a fantastic day,” she said.
Four women before her had failed to get round Aintree in the National, starting with Charlotte Brew in 1977.
Three more, however, have since followed Rees’s example – Rosemary Henderson (1994), Carrie Ford (2005) and Nina Carberry (2006).
It was not plain sailing for Rees, 26 at the time, as she had hoped to ride Gordon’s Lad, trained by her father Captain James Wilson. But he was injured three weeks before the race.
His owners were then underbidders when Cheers went under the hammer at Doncaster Sales less than a fortnight before the National.
All was not lost, however, as the new connections were impressed by Rees’s determination to ride in the National and gave her the mount.
“The first I heard about it was from the Press,” she said. “I sat on him just the once before Aintree when I went down to Charlie Mackenzie’s at Newmarket and popped him over a couple of fences. I was thrilled to bits with the way he jumped.”
Rees had anxious moments even before the race started.
“I couldn’t get Cheers to line up,” she recalled. “Everything else was standing, but he had rooted himself. I quickly turned him away and trotted him in a circle. I trotted him back round and the starter let us go.
“Ron Barry had very kindly told me to go alongside his mount (Coolishall). When we got to the third fence, that great big open ditch, his horse jumped diagonally, straight into Cheers, and the collision knocked poor Ron out of the plate!
“I felt as if you couldn’t relax. If it wasn’t the problem of the course and the 30 fences, it was loose horses and other horses falling about you.
“It was just a tremendous thrill, but it was four and a half miles of complete, draining exhaustion.”
She went on: “I had decided I didn’t want to get too far behind or else I’d get into the debris of everything falling about me. The horse was absolutely fantastic and he jumped brilliantly.
“I felt I was going to complete the course once I managed to get over Becher’s the second time. As we approached the fence there were two loose horses that had been running about for most of the second circuit, and I had been thinking to myself that they might cause mayhem.
“I guessed right by pulling to the outside. The two horses stopped and turned left and ran across the fence towards the inside. They caused a mini pile-up, with four or five horses wiped out.
“After that there was just Pat O’Connor, riding Three Of Diamonds, and me on Cheers on our own to complete the last part of the course. He and I were more or less jumping round together because the other six horses were quite a way in front of us.
“Then as we came to the Melling Road his horse just pulled away and I was on my own jumping the last two.
“It was unbelievable. I could not get over the roar of the crowd. It was like going into a tunnel of noise, and everyone was willing us on all the way.
“It was pretty frenzied immediately afterwards. I wanted a quick Press conference as I was riding in the next race, but it got to the point that I didn’t know if I was coming or going.
“I felt very lucky to have had the opportunity to ride in the race, and to get round was fantastic.”
Rees had to have another go 12 months later, but got no further than the first on Midday Welcome.
“He jumped the fence really well but didn’t get his undercarriage down in time,” she said.
Her career as a jockey all but ended after she broke her pelvis in March 1987, and in 1998 she took over the reins from her father at their Moor Farm stables in Tarleton, near Preston.
“We don’t train a big string, but we have a nice small operation of about 14 to 16 horses and we’ve also got broodmares,” she added.
She will be rooting for a North-West triumph in this year’s National with Idle Talk, trained by the legendary Ginger McCain’s son Donald.
“I see Idle Talk has joined young Donald McCain. There’s a great National heritage there and I think he’s an interesting prospect,” she concluded.
