Grand National - Grand National Legends

In 2009 the race sponsors John Smith's launched a poll to determine five personalities to be inducted into the inaugural Grand National Legends initiative. The winners were announced on the day of the 2010 Grand National and inscribed on commemorative plaques at Aintree. They were:

• Ginger McCain and his record three-time winning horse Red Rum;
• John Buckingham and Foinavon, the unlikely winners in 1967;
• Manifesto, who holds the record for most runs in the race, eight including two victories;
• Jenny Pitman, the first woman to train the winner of the race in 1983; and
• Sir Peter O'Sullevan, the commentator who called home the winners of fifty Grand Nationals on radio and television from 1947 to 1997.

A panel of experts also selected three additional legends:

• George Stevens, the record five-time winning rider between 1856–1870;
• Captain Martin Becher, who played a major part in bringing the National to Liverpool, rode the winner of the first precursor to the National in 1836 and was the first rider to fall into the brook at the sixth fence, which forever took his name after 1839; and
• Edward Topham, who was assigned the task of framing the weights for the handicap from 1847 and whose descendants played a major role in the race for the next 125 years.

In 2011, nine additional legends were added:

• Bob Champion and Aldaniti, the winners of the 1981 Grand National;
• West Tip, who ran in six consecutive Nationals and won once in 1986;
• Richard Dunwoody, the jockey who rode West Tip and Miinnehoma to victory and who competed in 14 Grand Nationals, being placed in eight;
• Brian Fletcher, a jockey who won the race three times (including Red Rum's first victory in 1973, and finished second once and third three times;
• Vincent O'Brien, who trained three consecutive winners of the race in the 1950s;
• Tom Olliver, who rode in nineteen Nationals, including seventeen consecutively, and won three times, as well as finishing second three times and third once;
• Count Karl Kinsky, the first international winner of the race, and at his first attempt, on board the mare Zoedone in 1883;
• Jack Anthony, three-time winning jockey in 1911, 1915 and 1920; and
• Peter Bromley, the BBC radio commentator who covered 42 Nationals until his retirement.

John Smith's also added five "people's legends" who were introduced on Liverpool Day, the first day of the Grand National meeting. The five were:

• Arthur Ferrie, who worked as a groundsman during the 1970s and 1980s;
• Edie Roche, a Melling Road resident, who opened her home to jockeys, spectators and members of the media when the course was evacuated following a bomb threat in 1997;
• Ian Stewart, a fan who had travelled from Coventry every year to watch the race and was attending his fiftieth National in 2010;
• Police Constable Ken Lawson, who was celebrating thirty-one years of service in the mounted section of Merseyside Police and was set to escort his third National winner in 2010; and
• Tony Roberts, whose first visit to the National had been in 1948 and who had steadily spread the word to family and friends about the race, regularly bringing a party of up to thirty people to the course.

A public vote announced at the 2012 Grand National saw five more additions to the Legends hall:

• Fred Winter, who rode two National winners and trained two more;
• Carl Llewellyn, jockey who won two Nationals including on Party Politics in 1992, the only horse to have won the Grand National and the Scottish and Welsh Nationals;
• Fred Rimell, the trainer of four different National winning horses, including Nicolaus Silver, one of only three greys to have ever won the race;
• Michael Scudamore, rider in sixteen consecutive Grand Nationals from 1951, finishing first in 1959 and also achieving a second and a third place;
• Tommy Carberry, the jockey who stopped Red Rum's attempt at a third success in 1975 by winning on L'Escargot, also finished second and third before going on to train the winner in 1999.

The selection panel also inducted three more competitors:

• Tommy Pickernell, who rode in seventeen Grand Nationals in the 19th century and won three. He allegedly turned down a substantial bribe during the 1860 race from the second-placed jockey and instead rode on to win;
• Battleship, the only horse to have won both the Grand National and the American Grand National, and his jockey Bruce Hobbs, who remains the youngest jockey to win the Aintree race;
• George Dockeray, who alongside Ginger McCain and Fred Rimell trained four National winners, starting with Lottery in the first official Grand National in 1839.