Red Rum

In an extraordinary fairytale triumph, the 2004 Grand National was won by the veteran trainer Ginger McCain with his horse Amberleigh House - long after he had ever expected to win a major race again. But the charismatic McCain is best known for training one of the greatest racehorses ever: Red Rum. Now Aurum follows its successful reissue of Ivor Herbert's classic biography of Arkle with his equally classic book on the career of Red Rum. But the story of Red Rum was not, unlike Arkle's, that of a racehorse born to achievement and pre-eminence. His is a remarkable story of courage, suffering and triumph very much through adversity. As Herbert shows, Red Rum began as an unsuccessful flat-racer, endured a succession of unsuitable trainers and what amounted to prolonged maltreatment, chronic problems with his feet, and was perhaps the last horse thought capable of winning a great race. But then Ginger McCain took him on, sent him off training by galloping in the sand on Southport Beach, and this plucky little horse went on to win first one, then two, then a historic three Grand Nationals.