Grand National

Visiting Washington last week, the Right Honorable Alderman Alfred Byrne, Lord Mayor of Dublin, sat down to listen to a radio broadcast of the 97th running of the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree. A reporter asked him who he thought would win. Lord Mayor Byrne called for pencil & pad, puffed out his cheeks, wrote down his selections: 1, Reynoldstown; 2, Blue Prince; 3, Thomond II. The announcer said: "They're off."

In the enormous (300,000) crowd at Aintree were the Prince of Wales who climbed down an embankment from his train to escape the crush; a boisterous young farmer named Agnew who tried to clear the 16-ft. water jump in front of the grandstand and fell in; John Hay

("Jock") Whitney who has been trying to win the Grand National since 1929. Whitney's Thomond II, at odds of 9-to-2, was one of last week's favorites.

More of a favorite than Thomond II was the horse that beat him last year. Betters all over England and the world last week thought so well of Miss Dorothy Paget's Golden Miller that the odds against him were only 2-to-1. lowest in Grand National history. Turf experts estimated that British bookmakers would lose $9,600,000 if Golden Miller won. The knot of people at the first fence after Valentine's Brook, one of the easiest on the course, last week saw Golden Miller's jockey, Gerry Wilson, fall off. To the crowd this event was a calamity. Next day it became a national scandal when the London Daily Express published, pointedly without comment, a series of pictures of Golden Miller taking the jump perfectly and contradicting Jockey Wilson's explanation that his horse had tried to refuse, lumbered into the top of the fence. Also next day, to show her faith in him. Miss Paget let Jockey Wilson ride Golden Miller again in the Champion

Steeplechase. Jockey Wilson fell again, at the first fence.

Hardest steeplechase in the world, the Grand National is 4. 1/2 miles, twice around a course laid out over dreary, treeless flats near Liverpool, over 30 jumps, huge hedges & ditches wide as little rivers. Only the 300 yards in front of the grandstand are clearly visible to most spectators. Things most of the crowd missed seeing last week were Castle Irwell's blunder at the Canal Turn; Royal Ransom's jockey being unseated at Valentine's Brook; 21 other mishaps that cut the field, smaller than usual, to six horses at the finish.

That the Lord Mayor of Dublin should have been asked to pick the winners of the Grand National last week was less inappropriate than it seemed. Irish steeplechasers are the world's best. The race decides one of the three huge annual lotteries of the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes Committee. Last week while the race was being run, hundreds of optimistic individuals who had bought sweepstakes tickets sat glued to their radios in the U. S. If the Lord Mayor's prediction, of which they were entirely unaware, came true, it meant $143,000 to a Bronx housewife, a Philadelphia bartender who had signed his ticket "Five Glasses," the wife of a hotel proprietor of Olney, Ill., a Toronto x-ray technician and one Ann Goldberg of Philadelphia, as well as smaller prizes for hundreds of others whose names', addresses and reactions the U. S. Press was last week waiting eagerly to investigate.

At Aintree, two horses came to the last fence together, Thomond II got over first but faltered as he landed. Reynoldstown cleared neatly. In that moment, the result of the Grand National was decided. The Whitney horse, a flat racer trained to jump but lacking the stamina of a born steeplechaser, slowed down so badly that Lady Lindsay's Blue Prince, at 40-to-1. passed him in the stretch and took second place by three lengths.

Major Noel Furlong's Reynoldstown, a big black steeplechaser, bred by his modestly well-to-do owner in Ireland, was ridden by Major Furlong's son, a onetime officer in the Ninth Lancers, who finished second in the Grand National of 1933. In need of the ,-L-6.570 first prize for his forthcoming wedding, Gentleman Jockey Frank Furlong galloped strongly through the last heart-breaking uphill 300 yards. At the finish, Reynoldstown was first by three lengths. Said Frank Furlong: "I don't know how I won. . . ."

In Washington, reporters gaped at the Right Honorable Alfred Byrne, against whose predictions any bookmaker would gladly have bet at odds of 1,000-to-1. Said he, less modest than Frank Furlong: "Anyone with half an eye could see that Reynoldstown would win."

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