Dream of repeat National win gone as Auroras Encore heads into retirement

Trainer Sue Smith’s stable star underwent surgery yesterday afternoon and will be a notable omission when entries for the 2014 Crabbies Grand National are published this morning.

The injury was diagnosed in the aftermath of the 12-year-old veteran’s 47th – and final – racecourse appearance in the Sky Bet Chase at Doncaster last Saturday.

Despite his advancing years, unsuitably heavy going and a formidably high mark in the handicap following his National win, Auroras Encore had jumped superbly for his regular jockey Ryan Mania before tiring in the home straight and coming home in a respectable ninth place.

The striking manner of this performance had initially suggested that the gelding – a shrewd £9,000 purchase from Doncaster Sales by the trainer’s husband Harvey, the showjumping legend, before Auroras Encore had even jumped a fence in public – was still on course to become the first horse to win successive Grand Nationals since the incomparable Red Rum recorded the second of his three triumphs 40 years ago.

Yet it became clear, as the reigning Yorkshire horse of the year was being cooled down in the unsaddling area, that he was suffering from lameness and had sustained a leg injury which required an operation to pin together a fracture to his off fore.

“These things happen. I just want him home to have a happy retirement,” the High Eldwick trainer told the Yorkshire Post as she came to terms with racing’s fickleness and unpredictability.

“He has had an operation to a repair a fracture. They got him up successfully after the surgery and he was staying overnight in the operating box. Fingers crossed – it’s still early days.

“He won a National for us. It doesn’t get bigger than that. He doesn’t owe us anything. This is a racing injury and I’m afraid that it is what you have to expect from the job on occasion.

“We have to expect these things and that’s all there is to it. I just want him back to his retirement.”

There was a poignancy to the 65-year-old’s carefully chosen words. This is the horse that she used to ride regularly on her stable’s gallops at High Eldwick. “He is not ready for his pipe and slippers,” she said when Auroras Encore had resumed training in the autumn.

Smith had nurtured him for the best part of a decade. She was also in the saddle when Auroras Encore was paraded at the Great Yorkshire Show last summer – horse and rider were perfectly composed as they took the acclaim of the packed crowd just minutes after this equine hero had done his best to imitate a ‘bucking bronco’ while being saddled.

As stable staff, riders and connections come to terms with the shock of this champion’s unforeseen injury and retirement, they will – in time – be able to reflect with pride on their association with an equine one-off who came from virtually nowhere to win the world’s greatest steeplechase in such spectacular style.

The first Yorkshire-trained horse to win the National since Middleham trainer Neville Crump’s Merryman II prevailed in 1960 under local jockey Gerry Scott, Auroras Encore’s unfancied odds of 66-1 at the off were not a true representation of his chances when sunny conditions, good ground and a lenient weight combined and played to the strengths of a horse who had an abundance of stamina and had only been beaten by a whisker in the 2012 Scottish National.

His victory may have been described by some as one of the biggest upsets in the history of a race first won by the aptly-named Lottery in 1823, but it was a not a great surprise to his owners Douglas Pryde, Jim Beaumont and David van der Hoeven.

Those close to Auroras Encore will never forget his final piece of work in a Siberian blizzard on his home gallops five days before producing the run of his life to record the eighth victory of his career.

This resilience was typical of the Smith team – and the horse. It is part of their DNA. If they had not managed to beat the weather and clear the gallops of snow after days of freezing conditions that had left the stables cut off from nearby Bingley, Auroras Encore would not have had sufficient fitness to pull an emphatic nine lengths clear of the much-fancied Cappa Bleu and allow the likable Mania to win the National at the first attempt.

The unflappable Mania, 24, had been so buoyant in the initial aftermath of the Doncaster race. He had suggested that “the old horse” had felt even better than last year for most of the three-mile contest.

Now he is simply hoping that Auroras Encore can regain sufficient fitness to go common riding, a popular pastime in the Scottish Borders where he hails from. It has been his dream since passing the Aintree winning post.

In the meantime, Mr Moonshine – pulled up in last year’s National – and second-season chaser Vintage Star are likely to be the two Smith entries in this year’s race when record prize money of £1m is on offer.

This, however, was a secondary consideration last night. As Sue Smith said, the whole team just wants Auroras Encore home, grazing in the lush fields and watching the stable’s young pretenders being put through their paces. That is all that matters to them.

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