WHEN pressed for our favourite racing memory, we should probably insist upon separate categories. The most emotional moment; the incident in childhood which ensured we were hooked for life; the result which made someone we love very happy indeed; the miracle bet which solved a few financial problems, if only for a while.

DAWN RUN

In my racing lifetime, the most emotional moment was unquestionably Dawn Run’s triumph in the 1986 Cheltenham Gold Cup. The spontaneous throwing of hats in the air belonged to a different era – the ‘white horse’ Wembley Cup Final of 1923, perhaps, when people went home with the wrong one, blissfully happy (especially if they came from Bolton) until her indoors noticed.

I’d never seen anything like that at the track but if you look back at the film of the Gold Cup, with Sir Peter O’Sullevan intoning the immortal words ‘the mare’s beginning to get up!’ you see the caps and various other titfers hurled skywards. Up they go, 20 yards before the line, down they come 20 yards after it. Who would want to be anywhere else on earth on such a day?

In nearly all other respects – and I appreciate many will take a very different view – Aintree shades Cheltenham for me.

FOINAVON

I was already in love with racing by the time Michael O’Hehir somehow managed to call everything correctly in the chaos at the 23rd fence in Foinavon’s year and I was already a committed punter when Red Alligator pulled clear 12 months later. One way and another, Red Alligator and his family have never stopped giving. Even now you can make a little on the side by challenging people to name the only mare in modern times to have produced two Aintree heroes; Miss Alligator was also responsible for Anglo, the winner in 1966.

I never made quite enough money at Aintree to wander down Lime St, looking for a latter-day Maggie May, but on the Friday night one year I did come third in a Billy Fury singing competition, my version of Halfway To Paradise being much admired by the locals. The taxi driver may have sensed the role played by Martell in the proceedings because we ended up halfway to Bootle by way of Birkenhead.

When I worked for BBC Radio in the early 1980s there were still ‘danger’ signs on the roof of the County Stand at Aintree and a public appeal was being set up to save the course from the developers until Ladbrokes and Ivan Straker of Seagram stepped in.

The year 1982 was unforgettable because, all in the space of an hour on the Friday night, animal rights protesters set fire to two of the fences, Ken Bates bought Chelsea for a pound – eat your heart out, Roman Abramovich – and Margaret Thatcher sent the troops to the Falklands.

COMMENTATOR

The late Peter Bromley, whom I liked and admired, was the commentator in those days and the following afternoon he was winding up for a typically power-packed finish as Grittar, heavily backed down to 7/1 favourite, started to go clear.

Suddenly, in this box which was at best rickety, John Oaksey, thrilled that Mr Dick Saunders was about to prevail for the amateur ranks, began prancing up and down in Peter’s line of vision.

It was funny, ‘the Noble Lord’ doing his little dance and Peter trying to peer round him, but the latter (whose bark was worse than his non-existent bite) threatened him with further action which seemed to take in everyone from Lord Reith downwards.

It was mid-evening before he calmed down. I was hugely fond of him; sadly, a particularly virulent cancer ensured there was to be no long and happy retirement.

The money came for West Tip (15/2) in 1986, as well. A P McCoy would run him close but Richard Dunwoody was the most obsessive jockey I ever met.

Retirement brought super-human feats of strength and endurance in far-flung corners of the world but not before a brief spell in a management company, which probably bored him to tears.

He brokered the deal which took Brett Ormerod, a workaday inside-forward, from Blackpool to Southampton. In those days (2002) the National was due off at 3.45pm, so everyone was straight into the directors’ lounge to see the race at half-time.

All except Richard, who remained outside and cut a solitary figure in the box because he couldn’t bear to watch if he couldn’t be part of it. I went and told him that Jim Culloty had followed up his victory on Best Mate at Cheltenham with Bindaree at Aintree. Then I had to go back and apologise because it suddenly hit me that he really, really didn’t want to know.

What will win this year? Well, I must say West Tip was fanciable in at least two respects – a nine-year-old with 10st 11lb.

If you go back through the records, nine has a handier advantage than you may have thought;10st 6lb in the original handicap has done well each-way in recent years and Saint Are has exactly that.

Having been placed twice, what he does between Nationals hardly matters and, on good ground or faster, he may not be far away again, even at the age of 12.