Grand National 2014: Pineau De Re wins Aintree race at 25-1
Pineau De Re, ridden by Leighton Aspell and trained by Dr Richard Newland, won the 167th Grand National at Aintree at odds of 25-1.
Whether you love racing or just simply adore horses, you will all have appreciated the superb Animal/Human Interlink that Pineau De Re and Leighton Aspell truly have. They were a pleasure to watch; truly poetry in motion; so calm and collected throughout the most gruelling race in the world, and equally as balanced and calm whilst walking to the winners enclosure, to the point where there was little or no evidence of the energetic pursuit they had just undertaken.
Pineau De Re’s trainer Dr Richard Newland has a small yard of horses, similar to the yard where the legendary Arkle was trained during the sixties; Arkle’s trainer Tom Dreaper had the same attitude towards animal training and structuring as myself, (See blog “In Their Time”); he had only a small amount of horses on his yard, and waited until a horse was ready for a given race, rather than train within a specific time-span. This resulted in the horses being absolutely at their peak when they raced, thereby giving them the best chance ever, resulting more often than not in a win; their progress and prowess usually having been “kept under wraps” from the knowledge of other competitors’ “prying eyes” This I believe is the situation with Pineau De Re, and his trainer Dr Newland, and look how it works! It is a pleasure to behold.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES
Animal Logic 