EVERYONE remembers their first. If you have the slightest interest in horse racing, you will remember the first time you saw a Grand National.

Remember what Davy Russell last year: “This is the race. As a kid, when you got the first cut of grass, we always used to gather the cuttings and pretend they were Grand National fences.... all those people saying this is my first National - I’ve won it thousands of times in my head!”

We’ve all played ‘Grand National’. Mine was around the big hayrick that was in the centre of our big yard. There was anticipation that day like no other. Fences of old hay built, add a few pallets on the take-off side to make a Bechers Brook drop on landing, bribe the little brother to pretend to be a faller, cut the Canal Turn corner, do the commentary as well as they raced across the Melling Road, “and we hand back to Peter O’Sullevan...” to the long run-in up to the front door for a winning post. Such childish times, good times.

I have old diaries from a grandmother, recording day to day life in a country parish over 50 years ago. Among the daily weather updates, (yes, we were still obsessed with the weather 50 years ago!), local births and deaths, there were only two sporting events recorded each year. The Grand National winner and the All-Ireland winners were the only sports that got mentioned. Never a Gold Cup, or a Derby.

Read Chris Cook in The Guardian this week – “The National brings nine minutes of delicious confusion, even for those of us who imagined we were fully prepared.”

Richard Dunwoody wrote in an interview last year: –“When I was four or five, I remember two things. Arkle, his legacy, and how we all felt when he died..... The other thing was the National. It was always an obsession to ride in it one day.”

I was fortunate with that first National - everyone else remembers it too. That 1973 year was simply the best.

We had a previous winner of the Gold Cup and Champion Chase in the line-up, and lurking beneath them in the weights the horse who was to become the greatest stayer that ever graced Aintree.

Imagine the build-up if we could manufacture that nowadays, a Gold Cup winner and a Champion Chase winner heading the National weights on 12st. Al Boum Photo taking on Altior a few years after their big wins!

That first National taught a young racing-mad child plenty. How could you not feel Crisp deserved to win but lessons learned, sentiment accounted for nothing. As a child you revelled in the drama of the race, horses fell, spectacularly, jockeys went flying in the spruce, but a death in the afternoon was a possibility. It happened to the grey Grey Sombrero that year. But the Sunday papers carrying photos of the action were still eagerly awaited.

National days were the first you knew of betting - giving the neighbour £2 each-way. Backing horses because of their name - ignoring Specify carrying your lucky number for the nicer name of Black Secret! Yes, it was a neck.

There were other names that are remembered solely for their participation in the big race.

Drumroan and Peggy St Nolan ploughed a lone furrow in those days when Irish success in Britain was scarce.

Boom Docker was a great name for a horse who went Boom and dropped the mic. What did Senator Maclacury do apart from running in bright purple in the National.

There were gallant losers - names from the history books - Wynburgh, Freddie. Names from your own memory like Spanish Steps, The Pilgarlic, the family of What A Buck and Artistic Prince. Eyecatcher, Rough and Tumble, Brave Highlander, State Of Play and Alvarado

Gallant seconds, Greasepaint, Durham Edition, and gallant seconds a second time.

There were deaths, the dreaded part that became harder to bear as you got older. If Grey Sombrero was accepted with childhood innocence, but it also took Gold Cup winner Alverton among its casualities and by the time we had another grey in Dark Ivy in 1987, the times and the fences were a changing.

Bechers’ might have given those thrilling photographs but the clamour to change was growing. Scenes after the amateur ridden Brown Trix was killed at Bechers in 1989 and had to be dragged from the brook let to it being filled in.

Synchronised and According To Pete were the last straw and much as we saw something of the past go in the modified fences, it has become, necessarily safer.

JOCKEYS

The riders came in all sorts – the Corinthian amateurs of those early decades.

Lord Oaksey, with memorable descriptions of the 1967 pile-up, and before that in 1963, having to go sit down to write his account of the race for the Sunday Telegraph, less than an hour after defeat was snatched from victory.

“There are 494 yards between the last fence and the winning post in the Grand National and for 480 of them I was the happiest man in the world.... To my dying day, I shall never forget the sight of Ayala’s head beside my knee...”

Brough Scott - carted off to hospital, alongside the famed Duke Of Albuquerque. Dick Saunders on Frank Gilman’s Grittar. John Thorne’s valiant effort on Spartan Missile. Marcus Armytage - the frisky and the fast in 1990. It was a race that gave ordinary plenty. Sure Pat Taaffe, Dunwoody, Barry, Ruby, A.P. and Davy won it, but Francome and O’Neill didn’t. Johnny Buckingham did, Ryan Mania did, Derek Fox did.

There were things we might not want too see nowadays. Don’t look to close at Cheers and Geraldine Rees in 1982, the first lady but perhaps pushing it a step too far. Rosemary Henderson, Carrie Ford, Katie Walsh, Bryony Frost took it many steps further.

Female trainers have a fine record. Jenny Pitman and Des Lynam became a winners’ side show.

There was always a drama, always a story. Always a bit of intrigue to hook a child’s imagination. Did Caughoo hide for a circuit and only come from the fog at second Bechers? Did Dick Francis bring down the Queen’s horse! How could the whole field fall except a 100/1 shot?

Any type of horse could win it - place Red Rum, Party Politics, Seagram, Grittar, and Last Suspect in a line-up of the Usual Suspects and you’d struggle to pick a National winner, (Last Suspect’s Kaiser Soze!).

Where would you find such a diversity of owners - famous colours of Anne Duchess of Westminster, Raymond Guest, Jim Joel, and Teasy Weasy Raymond, Freddie Starr, J.P. McManus.

The spectacular fallers – Andy Pandy, Golden Rapper and Strands Of Gold – head first over Bechers. Rhyme N’Reason’s miraculous recovery. The race that never was in 1993. The race that perhaps should never have been in 2001. Amberleigh House’s closing run for Ginger McCain, trainers from such varied backgrounds, Jimmy Mangan, Gordon Elliott, Venetia Williams, Richard Newland.

Even now with better horses, modified fences and a manipulated handicap – an 100/1 shot has as good a chance as the favourite.

It’s simply the most thrilling nine minutes in sport.