Racing: Pitman proud of his famous second

By MIKE DILLON

As a professional there is nothing worse than being best known for something you didn't achieve.

Former English jumps jockey Richard Pitman is famous for not winning the 1973 English Grand National on champion Australian steeplechaser Crisp.

Crisp, carrying a crushing 12 stone, was excruciatingly run down in the last two strides by the then virtual unknown Red Rum, to whom he was conceding 25lb.

Ask any Australian for their icon moment in jumps racing and they'll say Crisp's Grand National defeat.

But don't expect anything but humour about the race from Pitman, who arrived in New Zealand for the first time yesterday as special guest of the Auckland Racing Club for the Great Northern jumping carnival at Ellerslie this weekend.

He takes up the story the only way you would expect from someone who has spent the last 25 years in front of the television camera for the BBC's racing department.

"That was a fabulous experience for me. I quickly went from elation to despair and back to elation in moments.

"For everyone else, the owner Sir Chester Manifold, the trainer and those who backed him it was a terrible experience.

"But I had something money can't buy," he says with real feeling.

"To ride an out and out champion like him, a horse that laughed at fences, over a course like the Grand National and be in front until the last two strides, I tell you, was really something.

"Money can't get you that."

Pitman talks of Crisp with a reverence you rarely hear from jockeys.

"He used to eat fences. Unlike most horses who steady coming to a fence, Crisp used to accelerate into them.

"He had the ability to stand off any distance at any fence and not only get over safely with a low trajectory, but he'd accelerate away from the fence.

"And as soon as he landed he was looking for the next one to jump.

"He made my bum wink a few times from how far back he used to jump his fences."

Pitman copped plenty of criticism for a dashing ride in front in a race that requires so much dour stamina, but says that was Crisp's game.

"If I'd tried to hold him back he'd have been on the floor inside three fences."

Pitman says he will never forget how hard Crisp tried in the Grand National and how tired he was in the dying stages.

"He was so exhausted his legs were going sideways instead of forward.

"He had these big, floppy ears and they lay flat on his head. The strength had even gone out of his ears.

"You can't ask a horse to give more than that."

Red Rum may have been little known in 1973, but he retired as one of the jumping greats of all time.

"Crisp later beat him in a match race at level weights, but he bowed a tendon doing it and didn't race again."

Pitman didn't get to win a Grand National. He had seven rides in the famous race and finished second on another occasion.

"Plenty of better riders than me didn't win one either. In fact, there are good riders who have never completed the course."

Pitman's only racing experience in this part of the world is one Oakbank jumps meeting in Australia more than a decade ago, but he has seen on video a number of major jumps races from New Zealand in the last two years.

"What about that Ken Browne," he says with amazement.

"I saw your big race two years ago when Ken, 64 years old and all, was beaten by a 20-year-old. He's nine years older than me and I've been retired for 25 years. That's unbelievable."

Pitman's former wife Jenny became a real force as a jumps trainer and his son Mark is following the same path.

"Mark's mother retired recently and Mark has just bought the property for sterling 1.25 million.

"Jumps racing is really buoyant in England at the moment. A good horse is basically unable to be bought.

"Mark has a very good horse in Monsignor, who is unbeaten in six starts. They have turned down for him the sort of money talked about for a top flat horse."

Pitman joins rugby league commentator Graeme Hughes, cricket's Ian Smith, rugby caller Grant Nisbett and commentator Keith Haub in a sports and racing roast at Ellerslie tomorrow night.