AS all eyes turn to Aintree for this year’s Grand National spectacle, an American author is marking 100 years since a Donegal-bred farm horse shocked the racing world by taking home the top prize.
On March 28, 1924, the 11-year-old thoroughbred ‘Master Robert’ ridden by jockey Bob Trudgill had 25/1 odds and beat a field which included the event’s last three winners.
With King George V among an estimated 250,000 spectators, the winning prize was £5,000 – the equivalent of over £380,000 by today’s value.
New Yorker Francis X Murray (57) has written a book on Master Robert after he discovered a family link to the story when visiting Ireland in 2013.
Finding a third cousin, he was told about the legendary horse once owned by his great-grand uncle.
“I was aware the Grand National, I grew up around horses, my father was a breeder. I just thought that was a really cool story,” he told the Liverool Echo.
His Irish relative, Patrick Murray, had owned Master Robert just before the famous 1924 win and had kept him at Bryson’s pub in Magherafelt.
His research uncovered that Master Robert was bred for racing by Robert McKinlay in Castlefinn, Co Donegal, before he spent time in Strabane, Magherafelt and Moy before being moved to England.
The victory was all the more unlikely as Master Robert struggled with lameness in the weeks leading up to the event and the pedigree of horses he was up against – three previous champions in Sergeant Murphy (1923), Music Hall (1922) and Shauyn Spadah (1921).
His normal jockey even refused to ride him, paving the way for Bob Trudgill.
Injured himself after a fall the previous day, he took part in the race against doctor’s orders.
The paper previously reported how “on the verge of collapse as he dismounted, his stitches having split open, he weighed in before being stretchered to hospital.”
Master Robert was trained by Aubrey Hastings, credited as the most well-known National Hunt trainer of the day – who successfully navigated the horse’s rehabilitation for the final race.
Mr Murray said the status of the Grand National as the biggest sporting event in the world in those inter-war years encouraged him to tell the story.
“If you put yourself back in 1924, you can imagine this was during a very challenging time and history for Ireland and a very colourful history in England, after the First World War and before the depression so a very Gatsby-esque period and it was at the height of the British Empire, so Britain was influencing everything around the world at that time and so the Grand National was so popular,” he said.
“I think this is right up there with the best horse stories I’m aware of and I think anybody who enjoys a horse story of overcoming a perseverance of determination, of human support, this has all the elements.”
Further information on the Master Robert book can be found online at www.masterrobert.horse
