Red Rum prevailed on three occasions during the Grand National in the 1970s to earn a special place among the pantheon of horse racing greats.
The Irish gelding, trained by Ginger McCain, carried Brian Fletcher to glory in 1973 and 1974, in the first instance setting a new record time of nine minutes and 1.9 seconds in the gruelling race.
Red Rum backed up his 1974 triumph with victory in the Scottish Grand National, remaining the only horse to win both in the same season.
He finished runner-up in both 1975 and 1976, where Tommy Stack was installed as the horse’s jockey following a fallout between Fletcher and McCain.
Despite concerns that Red Rum’s best days were behind him, he continued his love affair with Aintree by galloping clear of the pack to claim a historic third title in 1977.
Injuries led to Red Rum’s retirement days before the following year’s Grand National and he died on 18 October, 1995, aged 30.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here