Aintree 2024

 As the voice of Owners, the ROA are consistently promoting the impact and benefits of ownership whilst working to make ownership more rewarding.

Once again we will be hailing our popular “ROA Owner of the Day” for the Aintree Grand National Festival, which showcases an owner with a runner at the meeting. We are also proud sponsors of the Aintree Festival Leading Owner Award. Both initiatives will be championing Owners’ successes and their contributions to the sport.  

Today’s (Thursday 7 April) ROA Owner of the Day is the Megson family from Leeds. They own Global Citizen, who was due to contest the Close Brothers Red Rum Handicap Chase (4.40pm), the final event of ITV Racing’s coverage of day one of the Grand National meeting at Aintree. Unfortuately the gelding has knocked a joint and is now a non-runner.

The Megson’s remain our Owner of the Day for Thursday. They also have a runner on Friday, with Severance lining up in the final race on the card, the Park Palace Ponies Handicap Hurdle. We wish them the best of luck! Read more about their ownership journey below.

Five years on from costing his owners an eyewatering sum, Global Citizen brought tears of joy to the Megson family when triumphant in the Grand Annual Chase at the Cheltenham Festival. Could he do it again at Aintree?

The Ben Pauling-trained ten-year-old kept on strongly under Kielan Woods to spring something of a surprise at Cheltenham, the 28-1 shot beating favourite Andy Dufresne by three lengths. In doing so he was chalking up a seventh victory for the Megsons - he won his bumper and has mixed and matched successfully over hurdles and fences - while he also has a handful of placed efforts to his name.

He faces another big-field handicap chase assignment on the first day of the Grand National meeting, but looks set to be among the market leaders this time.

The big spring festivals would certainly have been on the mind of his owners from the get-go, given it cost them £275,000 to acquire him from Willie Murphy - for whom he had landed a point-to-point at Bellurgan Park by four lengths - at the 2017 Tattersalls Ireland Cheltenham April Sale.

Recalling the purchase, Andrew Megson says: “Matt Coleman from Stroud Coleman had seen him. We watched his point-to-point in Ireland on a video - which looked like it had been filmed on a hand-held mobile! - and he had won it very impressively.

“We weren’t at the sales but Matt was there, with Jonjo O’Neill, who we were with at the time, and we were dialling in. I was on the phone, and we had the live stream on, but that’s about 30 seconds behind what is actually happening.

“As the price was going up, I popped into a different room from where my wife was watching. She didn’t think it sounded too bad but I could hear the numbers rocketing up! We got him on the last bid and were delighted to.

“It was a slight shock to Jane when I said how much we’d paid. We thought the maximum he would go for was £175,000, and clearly we were £100,000 out!”

Global Citizen couldn’t have made a better start for his new connections, winning a Worcester bumper by seven lengths, but, as is almost inevitable over the course of a 23-race career thus far, there have been some downs to go with plenty of ups. 

Megson says: “When you pay that sort of money you’re expecting a really good horse. He started off fantastically well, winning the Dovecote in 2018, which stands out as he took apart a really strong field.

“He’s won The New One Hurdle, the Wayward Lad Chase, but whilst he looks as strong as a bull, he needs to be on form. He’s not a horse who can give his best if he doesn’t feel quite right. 

“He ran well in the 2020 Arkle Chase and came a really creditable fourth, especially considering Brewin’upastorm fell in front of him. But that obviously took a lot out of him, because last season he just didn’t finish a race. He ran only three times and ended up in the County Hurdle, in which he was pulled up after about a mile.

“However, Ben was convinced there was still a really nice horse there, he’s been so patient with him, nurtured him back. He’d lost his confidence.”

His owner continues: “He started this season by running okay at Ascot, where he showed plenty of speed, and then moving on he did well at Haydock in a Grade 2, coming second to Tommy’s Oscar, who went on to run in the Champion Hurdle, and was then third to Goshen at Sandown, where he would have been second but for hitting the second-last flight, which was no disgrace.

“Ben then said he wanted to put him back over fences and into the Grand Annual, as he thought he was off a great mark. Which of course culminated with that run.

“We did expect a big run. Did we expect him to win that well? No. It was a day I will never, ever forget. It was unbelievable and I actually cried when he’d won.

“Jane and our daughter Lily, and her partner Tom, were there. Lily doesn’t watch, and her older sister doesn’t go jump racing as she can’t bear to see it. Lily just looks away, but then when she realised we were jumping and screaming she joined in.”

A Cheltenham Festival winner would be pretty hard to beat but, having started favourite for the Grade 1 Top Novices’ Hurdle at the National meeting in 2018, there might even be a sense of unfinished business at Aintree and a follow-up victory would be sure to spark more delirium.   

“He’s come out of Cheltenham fantastically well, where he won on ground that really didn’t suit him,” reports Megson. “Ben thinks he might even be in better form. He’s a lot stronger horse than he was two or three years ago, and we still think he’s off a favourable mark.

“But it’s a competitive race and he’s 7lb higher. We’d expect him to run the same race under Kielan Woods, who we believe is a fantastic jockey.

“Ben has worked miracles getting him back to where he is, and we’re very excited but still nervous. It will be incredibly nerve-racking come Thursday morning.”

The Megsons have a Doncaster-based business, My Pension Expert, a financial services company, and live in north Leeds, so win, lose or draw at Aintree, they won’t have far to go. 

That applies to Friday too as Global Citizen's stablemate Severance contests the conditional jockeys’ and amateur riders’ handicap hurdle. 

“He came fourth in the Morebattle last time, where his wind caught him out and he’s had an op since,” reports Megson.

So that’s Thursday and Friday at Aintree - will they attempt to get the hat-trick up on Saturday?

“I have been to the National in previous years but we’re not going this time -  there’s only so much the liver can take!” answers Megson.

The family has several horses with Pauling, and their thirst has certainly not yet been quenched.

Megson says: “We’ve got Harpers Brook, who has had a few issues but we think is a really nice horse. We’ve also just bought a horse from Willie Murphy, who sold Global Citizen, called Rock On Cowboy, who we’re hopeful about, and one from Adrian and Sabrina Maguire, Joe Dadancer, who fell in his point-to-point but had looked a winner all the way.”

Winners or decent runs aside, asked what other aspects of ownership particularly appealed, Megson replies: “The relationship with the trainer and the yard is really important. There’s an awful lot said about horseracing, but the horses love it. It is great fun and you do meet some fantastic people.”

As the voice of Owners, the ROA are consistently promoting the impact and benefits of ownership whilst working to make ownership more rewarding.

 We are proud sponsors of the Cheltenham Festival Leading Owner Award as well as the daily ROA Owner of the Day award, both of which will be championing Owners’ successes and their contributions to the sport.

 Today’s (Friday 18 March) ROA Owner of the Day is Olly Harris from Leatherhead. He owns Porticello, who contests the JCB Triumph Hurdle (1.30pm), the opening race on Cheltenham Gold Cup day.

 There were no British-trained horses at all in the first Festival contest on Thursday, the Turners Novices’ Chase, but despite the presence of Vauban, Pied Piper and Fil Dor in Friday’s opening race, a few owners and trainers are stepping up to the plate.

 To say the Triumph Hurdle of two years ago could have been a luckier race for Gary and Jamie Moore is an understatement, with the jockey extremely unfortunate to be unseated at the last when ten lengths clear and favourite backers about to cheer them home.

 The duo are back for more here with Olly’s Porticello, who will be joined in the Grade 1 line-up by stablemate Teddy Blue, the mount of Jamie’s brother Josh.

 Porticello looks set to go off the shortest-priced of the British challengers, having proved a shrewd private purchase by Olly and his trainer after winning at Auteuil for David Cottin last April.

 The son of Sholokhov has won three of his four starts, including the Grade 1 Finale Juvenile Hurdle at Chepstow, and was a close second to fellow Triumph challenger Knight Salute at Doncaster on the other occasion.

 Due to Covid-19 restrictions, his owner was unable to be at Chepstow for his top-flight success over Christmas, though was elated all the same, but there’s nothing like being there and, like all owners, Olly is hopeful we have seen the worst of the pandemic and its effects on everyday life and sport. 

 Olly, speaking from Cheltenham on Thursday lunchtime, where he has been enjoying the racing all week, says: “Porticello has been doing really well and to be doing what he’s doing at his age is phenomenal, as he is more of a long-term staying chaser prospect.

 “To win first time out at Auteuil, when he was so big and weak, was incredible, and all he’s done all season is improve, as he fills out and grows, and Gary has done a great job with him.

 “With the watering and the rain, I think he’s got a massive chance. The Mullins and Elliott horses [Vauban, and Pied Piper and Fil Dor] have got a bit more tactical flat speed, and realistically our horse’s future does lie over further - two miles will be a bit sharp for him - but it’s a stiff track and soft ground, and he’s not slow. If they go a right good clip, which they normally do in that race, I think he will be bang there.

 “He’s my first runner at the Festival, we’ll be at the track nice and early and go and see him, and hopefully he runs a big race.”

 Olly has had 13 individual horses run in Britain in his yellow and dark blue silks this season, while he had seven run on the Flat in 2021. Funding his racing passion is his job as a fund manager, as the owner of a private equity firm.

 He has been an owner for six years, and an ROA member for three, and with business having gone well he has been able to enhance his hobby by improving the quality of horse he has had.

 “I’ve got three trainers, Joseph Parr does all my Flat horses, and then there’s Neil Muholland and Gary over jumps, and the horses are all Tote-sponsored,” he says.

 “Tomorrow will be Porticello’s last run of the season - we’d never run him on good ground - but In The Air, who won at Newbury, might go to Aintree. 

 “I’ve also got a couple more French horses I purchased who haven’t been out yet. One of them, Iskar D’Airy, is running at Kempton on Saturday, but I’m happy to give my horses plenty of time and be patient.”

The collection of four-year-olds gathering at Cheltenham on Friday for the Triumph will mainly have their best days ahead of them. Porticello is certainly one such, but a second Grade 1 win as a juvenile hurdler before he is put away to fill his frame would be celebrated like there is no tomorrow. And what a result that would be for an owner with his first Festival runner.