Long-retired greats of jump racing have been sharing their memories of Brian Fletcher, the jockey most closely associated with Red Rum and three times a Grand National winner, who has died aged 69. Remembered as an undemonstrative man whose career was cut short by repeated head injuries, Fletcher was hailed by his fellow National winner Gerry Scott as “an excellent horseman who quietly got the job done”.
“He was a quiet lad and a really good jockey,” said Ron Barry, a champion jump jockey of the early 1970s who, like Fletcher, was based in the north and often rode against him. “He was brilliant, actually.”
Of all his exploits in the saddle, Fletcher will be remembered most of all for Red Rum’s first Grand National victory in 1973, when the pair reeled in the long-time leader, Crisp, in the final 100 yards, having had something like 20 lengths to make up at the final fence. Barry remembered Fletcher’s race-winning move as being made fully a mile from home, at which point Crisp seemed to have gone off far too fast in front.
“We were going down to Becher’s and he was the only one that left the gang of us behind and went off after Crisp,” Barry said. “I thought he was mad, we all did. Crisp was never going to get that far, we were sure he would stop. We thought Crisp was mad and Brian was bonkers, going after him. But he was right and we were wrong.”
It was a moment that typified Fletcher’s career, Barry said. “He just got on with the job, did his own thing.”
Another champion of that era, Stan Mellor, remembered Fletcher as “a great lad, a character” who probably should not have been allowed to take part in the 1968 Grand National, which the 20-year-old eventually won on Red Alligator.
“He had a fall the day before and he didn’t know whether it was Christmas or Easter,” Mellor recalled. “Everyone in the weighing room felt sorry for him. We were sure he wouldn’t be riding the next day and these days he wouldn’t be. He was a good rider, just a bit accident prone.”
“Brian was a great horseman and horses jumped very well for him,” Peter Scudamore told the Racing Post. “It wasn’t easy to make a living round the northern tracks and you had to be very brave in those days. The National was a very tough race; you used to wake up at 4am on the day worrying about it.”
Meanwhile, Scudamore’s son, Tom, who won the King George VI Chase aboard Thistlecrack last month, has become the most vociferous opponent of the Jockey Club’s plans to close Kempton.
“Kempton works,” Scudamore Jr wrote in his Coral blog on Thursday. “It is a money-making racecourse. If this announcement had been made by ARC or another independent racecourse, everyone would be going bananas, they’d be up in arms, and rightly so. So we need to make our voices heard and try and oppose this awful decision.
“If they can show us why this is the only way and it has to be done for financial reasons, just as the French did when they were forced to close Evry, well at least then you could understand it. But as far as I can see there has been no consultation, nobody has been shown the financial figures behind the plan, and we’re just being told it has to be done to preserve the heritage of racing. Well that’s clearly total nonsense.”
The Jockey Club pointed, however, to more supportive responses issued on Thursday by three Grand National-winning trainers, Jonjo O’Neill, Nigel Twiston-Davies and Kim Bailey.
O’Neill said: “I’d be sad to see Kempton close but you have to move on and £500m [in planned investment] is not to be sniffed at. If a big chunk of that can go into jump-racing prize money, then everyone’s a winner.”