Aside from Cheltenham and Royal Ascot, one of Victor’s favourite race meetings was the Grand National Festival at Aintree, and he went up to bet there every year. The whole racing circus was staying away from home for three nights and there were so many characters to see, like the Graham Brothers from Belfast, and Sandy ‘Pickles’ Rice, who’d once looked after Uncle Ronnie in Ireland.
The Chandler family’s involvement with the big race went back to Victor’s grandfather’s day, while the quality of the supporting cards was getting better each year and all the big gamblers came out to play. In 1998, the firm would lay JP McManus a £130,000 bet on Istabraq at 8-13 in the Martell Hurdle, only for the champion to be beaten a head by Tony McCoy on Pridwell.
The atmosphere at Aintree was less intense than Cheltenham, and there was partying every night. Bill Tye fondly remembers the bomb scare in 1997, when the course had to be evacuated on the Saturday afternoon and a Blitz spirit ensued. The firm’s chauffeur at the time was an ex-policeman called John, but nobody was allowed back into the car park from the grandstand, so they all had to start walking.
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After a mile or two, “Victor found a bloke in a pub and gave him £200 to drive us to a station,” but Bill ended up staying over in Liverpool until the rescheduled race on the Monday, catching a game at Anfield along the way. On the Saturday night, all the jockeys, still in their riding silks, were in the Adelphi Hotel dancing until the early hours with a couple of girls on each arm.
Victor liked staying at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Southport, an easier drive to Aintree than from the city centre and long a favourite of the racing and coursing crowd. He always remembered his father’s friend Charlie Maskey – son of Charlie The Hammer – telling him of the time Victor senior lost his shirt at Altcar but managed to persuade a wealthy bookmaker called George Dexter to play poker with him – with Charlie looking on – in the bar of the Prince of Wales until the early hours. At which point, Dexter finally got up and said, “Have you got enough of my money now? And can I go to bed?”
The year after the bomb scare, there was a big security check as he and the boys were coming out of the car park, and there were extra-long queues on the way in. It looked as if they were going to miss the first race, so Victor “tapped a bloke in a high visibility jacket on the shoulder and offered him £50 to let us in a side entrance.
He turned around very slowly and I saw his jacket had the word ‘Police’ on the back. He thought it was very funny.” That ploy may have failed, but a further 50 yards along the perimeter, an enterprising Scouse chef had cut a hole in the back of a tent and, for a price, was permitting certain racegoers to pass through.
As well as Last Suspect in 1985, Victor backed the 1987 Grand National winner Maori Venture at 28-1, and at Aintree in April 1990, he landed a spectacular 100-1 touch on the first day of the meeting. The Sandeman Chase over two and a half miles was the sixth race on the card and there were 11 runners, including Multum In Parvo, who had finished second in the Cathcart Chase at Cheltenham, and Martin Pipe’s Rusch De Farges, who had cost the property developer so much money in the Cathcart the year before. Victor’s form man advised him to back a 100-1 outsider called Sure Metal, who was trained by Red Rum’s handler, the legendary Ginger McCain, and had been pulled up last time out.
The seven-year-old, who was getting weight from all the other runners, was said to need time “to properly warm up,” but if he got an undisputed lead, he was hard to catch. Victor had £50,000 to £500 each way three times, the bets placed by the ever-dependable Bobby Edwards, and Sure Metal made all the running and won by six lengths.
*Victor Chandler: Put Your Life On It. The authorised biography by Jamie Reid, published by Reach Sport, is on sale in paperback now from Amazon
