THE victory of Tiger Roll in the Grand National was not only one of the closest in the history of the race, with the eight-year-old joined on the line by Pleasant Company having looked set for a comfortable success, but a remarkable one for a flat-bred gelding seemingly not built to be jumping fences at all, let alone the fearsome ones at Aintree.

Tiger Roll was bred by former Ballydoyle vet Gerry O’Brien out of Swiss Roll, a daughter of O’Brien’s foundation mare On Air, and is therefore a half-sister to Park Express Stakes winner Pollen and a full-sister to Berenson, who was second to Dubawi in the National Stakes.

Swiss Roll herself was second in the Vintage Crop Stakes, edging out none other than Solerina for that position, and it’s no surprise that her son, a handy-looking type was snapped up by Godolphin for a flat campaign.

Sadly for his new owners, Tiger Roll was not as precocious as he looked, and was sold unraced to former Grand National-winning rider Nigel Hawke for just £10,000 before winning on his hurdles debut as a three-year-old at Market Rasen. Hawke may have dreamed of training a Grand National winner in his own right, but business is business, and he knew he could make a handsome profit on his initial purchase, so the nascent hurdler was sent to Cheltenham where Mags O’Toole snapped him up for £80,000 on behalf of Gigginstown House Stud – a pleasing bit of business for both parties.

Tiger Roll’s success in the Triumph Hurdle a few months later was not a massive shock given the promise he’d shown, and with his pedigree supporting the notion that two miles over hurdles would be his bag. He was an early fancy for the 2015 Champion Hurdle, but it was soon clear he wasn’t going to cut it at the highest level, and it would have been easy for the 15.2hh Tiger Roll to spend his career competing in two-mile hurdles without achieving the same distinction.

A step up to three miles for the Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham was a failure, with Tiger Roll fading into 13th of the 16 runners.

DESPERATION

Several disappointments later saw the little gelding sent over fences, almost in desperation it seems, but he won at Ballinrobe on his debut and took the Munster National in the autumn of his novice season, but his form was so mixed that he started a relative outsider on his next visit to Cheltenham for the National Hunt Chase.

He surprised his detractors by winning despite struggling to cope with the big Cheltenham fences, and returned to the festival a year later after failing to finish twice in four disappointing runs; again he showed his appreciation for the big occasion to win the Cross Country Chase, but even then, he seemed an unlikely Aintree hero, for all a few made comparisons between him and Red Rum, who had once been a Triumph Hurdle contender after racing on the flat.

Both were eight-year-olds when winning at Aintree for the first time, but the most claimed similarity is a misnomer. It’s assumed that Tiger Roll and Red Rum are the same size, and much is made of how the latter was dwarfed by Crisp in the famous 1973 event, but Ginger McCain remained adamant that Red Rum was not at all undersized as a chaser, and gives his measurement as 16.2hh, which blows talk of him being a relative pony out of the water.

Nonetheless, switch the cheekpieces for a noseband and squint at the maroon silks, and you might convince yourself that this is another Rummy.

Time will tell.