Winning earned Mrs North a race named after her at yesterday's meeting –The Coral North Wins With The Yorkshire Post Maiden Hurdle – plus the opportunity to present the trophy to winning connections and to pick the best turned-out horse in her race. Wetherby Steeplechase Committee provided the trophy and Go Racing In Yorkshire awarded £50 to Monica Know-Crawford who was responsible for the best-turned out, High Profit. In addition Mrs Coral enjoyed a free £50 bet courtesy of Skybet.

In the thrilling finish the race went to the 13-2 chance Norman Beckett, one of 13 horses owned by the Bradford-based Bellflower Norman Beckett Partnership and ridden by Warren Marston. Second was The Honest Fiddler (7-1) and Fistral (5-1) finished third.

Joining Mrs North for her big day out were her daughter and son-in-law, Angela and Charles Jordan, with their daughter Olivia, who is six next week, and Bridget Houlston, from Harome, who ran the London Marathon in four hours four minutes to raise money for leukaemia research in memory of John North, Mrs North's late husband.

Bridget's boyfriend Dave Cullinane is a National Hunt jockey who recovered from a fractured skull to ride a winner on his first day back in action – Orpen Wide at Ascot on the Friday before the marathon.

It was Mr North who introduced his wife to racing shortly after they married in the mid-Sixties. "He took me to Doncaster for a Flat meeting," she remembers and that day on Town Moor, not far from where the Norths farmed at Moss, near Askern, launched an affection for racing which still burns although she confesses to a distinct preference for the jumping game.

She has been a member at Wetherby for six or seven years and travels up the A1 to as many meetings as possible although the demands of the farm come first. "We breed pedigree Texels and have only just got the lambs out," she said. "We have not yet left them out overnight – you have to nurture them a little, you know."

Mrs North has judged pony classes at shows and gymkhanas and with her husband had horses in training with the late Jimmy Fitzgerald at Malton. "Jack Berry bought us our first mare – Zamander - and she won six or seven hurdle races for us," she remembers.

"We bred from her and she produced Zamandra who finished third for us in the Royal and Sun Alliance Novices' Chase at the Cheltenham Festival in 1985; that was a brilliant day. Jimmy won the Gold Cup the following day with Forgive 'N' Forget."

There may not have been horses of that quality in action in Wetherby's all-hurdle programme yesterday – which, together with the fixture at Ludlow, marked the official opening of the 2008-9 National Hunt season – but that did not stop Mrs North and her party enjoying another memorable day at the races.

In the Yorkshire Post-Go Racing in Yorkshire competition readers were invited to match the names of the three people who did most to enhance racing in the region in 2007 as selected by a panel of racing journalists. The leading three were, in order, trainers John Quinn and Richard Fahey, and champion apprentice jockey Greg Fairley.