HARD luck stories and Irish sport have often crossed each others paths.
Thierry Henry’s handball in Paris, Harry Bradshaw’s ball landing in a beer bottle at Royal St George's or the Louth footballers in the 2010 Leinster Final.
But perhaps the cruelest of them all happened this week 30 years ago at Aintree racecourse in Liverpool when little known Wexford jockey John White passed the winning post first on Esha Ness in the infamous 1993 Grand National that never was.
It should have been the biggest day of White’s life but in chaotic scenes the race was declared void after two false starts had seen the world’s most famous race reduced to a shambles.
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UNSURPRISINGLY John White doesn’t care much for the 1993 Aintree Grand National.
30 years on, he admits he doesn’t remember much about it anymore either, but one nagging grievance does linger on with the quietly spoken 63-year-old.
“I don’t hold any grudges. They should have paid me my percentages though. I didn’t see any of that,” joked the Wexford native White.
Ten percent of the winners’ cheque of £115,606 in 1993 would have gone a long way to helping him set up as a trainer in the years afterwards.
30 years ago this week, White was centre stage in one of the most embarrassing and farcical episodes in the history of the Grand National and indeed British racing.
The innocent victim of a shambles that could have easily been avoided.
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White and his horse Esha Ness, a 10-year-old trained by Jenny Pitman, passed the winning post first only for the race to be declared void after two false starts, the last of which saw 30 of the 39 runners presume the race had started for real.
A television audience of 300 million people then watched White’s horrified face as he discovered the news seconds after pulling up his horse thinking he’d won — remaining one of the most vivid images in Grand National history.
A moment to match Devon Loch or Foinavon.
“It nearly seems longer ago”, says White, from his home in the parish of Bannow, at the very southern tip of Co Wexford.
“I still get people talking to me about it, but I really couldn’t care less. It’s a long time ago now. It’s history.
“There’s still a bit of disappointment when I look back. Don’t get me wrong. The horse did a very good time on the day. I think it was the second fastest time ever in an Aintree Grand National.”
The disastrous sequence of events began seconds before the race was due to start, when animal rights protesters invaded the track near the first fence.
They were spotted, and after a delay, the starter Capt Keith Brown (a former army officer on his last day in the job) asked the riders to line up again.
There were then two false starts caused by horses getting tangled up with the starting tape.
On the second false start, the recall flag, which signals riders to pull up once they have started, was not waved, and all but nine riders raced away.
It was subsequently discovered that a casual racecourse employee on just £28 a day, had failed to wave the recall flag 100 yards down the course on the second occasion and so the vast majority of the field believed the race had started.
But it wasn’t entirely his fault. Capt Brown’s red flag, which would have indicated another false start down the course, was raised - but did not unfurl.
A calamitous course of events that could have been so easily avoided with a walkie talkie or a bigger flag.
The jockey club were forced to void the race and Brown, dubbed Captain Calamity in the press afterwards, needed a police escort to leave Aintree with 50,000 racegoers booing and bookmakers facing £200 million in refunds.
White and Esha Ness’s position in the roll of honour never happened.
“The biggest trouble was they should have had a flag start after the first false start. The elastic thing going across the track was 200 years old or something. There was something always going to happen,” recalls White, who had been given the ride on 50/1 shot Esha Ness due to his excellent record of seven runs around Aintree without falling.
He had finished runner-up on The Tsarevich in 1987 and was fourth on Brown Windsor in 1990.
“The line going across was all wrong. I think it got caught in Richard Dunwoody’s neck the second time.
“I’d no inkling during the race that there was something wrong. If I had, I’d have pulled up. There’s a lot of things going on during a National anyway. If I thought there was something wrong I’d have definitely pulled up because we could be starting again.
"I could see there were only a few horses around, but I thought the others had fallen or something," White added.
“People that suggested I knew are f**king mad. If there was something wrong we might have re-started in half an hour or the next day. You’re not going to go around there in a record time just for the fun of it,” added White, who’s biggest win was the 1990 Cathcart at Cheltenham Festival on Brown Windsor.
“When it happened no one knew what was going on to be quite honest. I can’t remember that much about it but I can remember enough about it.
“We’ve gone around a circuit and they should have had more than one man telling us to stop. There’s so much going on you wouldn’t be looking for this thing. People hanging around at every fence. I didn’t see him because there was horses in front of me. They weren’t ready for what happened.
“The first I knew about it was when I pulled up. Dean Gallagher said to me ‘sorry John, this is not right,’ that’s the first I knew about it. That was straight away after going by the post. About 25 minutes later I knew for sure. That doesn’t sound long but when you don’t know what’s going on it’s a long time.
“After I pulled up my valet John Buckingham (who had famously won the National on the 100/1 Foinavon), was adamant that I should weigh-in because if you walk into the weigh-room without weighing in on any normal day you’d lose the race.
“We stood at the scales for a long time but the clerk of the scales wouldn’t weigh me in. It took them 25 minutes to decide that the race was void.
“It was chaos with no-one sure what was happening. I'm not sure who officially told me I hadn't won. I just got in the car and went home. It was a long journey.”
The BBC were covering the Grand National that afternoon and anchor Des Lynam interviewed a devastated White as the post mortem began in earnest.
“I was put in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. It all kind of went in one ear and out the other because I didn’t know what was going on. I wouldn't blame anyone. There are a lot of people to blame but it's history. At the end of the day there are more important things in life."
White soldiered on in the saddle and was reunited with Esha Ness for the 1995 renewal.
“I rode him again in 1995. He got a terrible fall and burst a blood vessel. He never ran again.
“1993 was his day. Everything was spot on. He was a big price but he shouldn’t have been because they fancied him for the Kim Muir at Cheltenham and things didn’t go right for him.
He returned to Ireland soon after and began training a handful of horses in Wexford.
“I think I’ve only watched the race once or twice since. It’s not that I don’t want to watch it or anything, it's just I couldn’t be bothered.
“They’ve never invited me back. It pisses me off a bit,” he jokes.
But after what White endured in 1993, you get used to disappointment.
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