Racing: Teamwork and wonder paint launch steeplechase star

An unlikely support team allowed No Hero to stage a remarkable comeback to win the Grand National Steeplechase at Riccarton Park.

No Hero gave Paul and Carol Nelson the first owner-trainer Grand National Hurdles/Steeplechase double with Just a Swagger and No Hero since Ken Browne in 1981.

The grey set a modern record of seven successive steeplechase wins with a commanding performance.

Yet two years ago No Hero's career seemed in ruins after he bowed a tendon following three steeplechase wins on the trot.

Enter the team: Bill Henderson, whose wife Rosemary is the best performed female rider in the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree; Cambridge veterinarian Jonathan Hope, and Canterbury harness trainer, Warren Stapleton.

"It has become popular now to do implants on tendons with jumpers but we had not had a lot of luck with them," Paul Nelson said.

"Bill is a vet who was living in Hawkes Bay at the time and who had been in a practice in England where they used a direct injection into the tendon instead of implants. He first told us about it and Jonathan Hope had visited David Baron's stable in England which has had a lot success with the injections. He did the work. It was a risky operation."

In stepped Stapleton with his "magic potion", a leg paint widely known in harness circles in particular for its efficacy.

"We were down here with another horse when we met [harness trainer] Bob Negus and he recommended Warren's mixture. We really think it worked the oracle," Nelson said.

Stapleton was on hand to wish the Nelsons luck on Saturday.

"I have used it to win a Rowe Cup [Highwood] and a Dominion Handicap [Cedar Fella] so a Grand National would be a nice treble."

He developed the still-secret formula after studying nutrition and equine leg and muscle construction.

"I am in the process of getting it passed for commercial marketing through the Animal Remedies Act but plenty of people are using it."

The paint is applied several times a week when the horse is in work. No Hero has come through a searching winter campaign without any ill effects to his leg and rarely looked under pressure on Saturday.

Jonathan Riddell completed a meeting of sensational success by keeping No Hero closer to his only serious rival, Ultimate Game, than he had in the Koral on the first day and had the race won a long way out.

But Riddell pleaded for No Hero not to be remembered as an easy winner over a sub-standard field.

"We should all enjoy this horse. He is a superstar," said Riddell whose enormous strike rate on top jumpers at Riccarton makes him an expert judge.

He is the first jockey to ride the Grand National double in six years, the first to complete the Koral, Grand National Hurdle and Steeplechase treble and has now won three Grand National Steeplechases. The others were on Bodle (his sixth successive steeplechase win) and Eric the Bee on which he ran an unlucky second in the Grand National Hurdle.

The Nelsons farm near Hastings.

Hunting enthusiasts of long standing, they came to prominence in racing with Storm who won the 1987 Wellington Steeplechase ridden by Sue Thompson. The first woman rider to win a major steeplechase in New Zealand and a close friend of the Nelsons, she is still a key member of their training team.

The grey is headed for the spelling paddock and a possible tilt at the $1.9m Nakayama Grand Jump next March. He is to bypass the newly scheduled Great Northern Steeplechase next month.

Ultimate Game gave his all and his nifty jumping gave him some advantage over the higher leaping favourite but he had no answer to the latter's stamina over the final stages. His trainer, Joanne Moss, had some consolation that Crafty Decision, another former Kevin Myers horse she prepares, convincingly won the open sprint.

Myers scratched Lucky Tip from the race because of a stone bruise but topped a successful meeting otherwise when Brighton Pier and Our Maestro were successful, both in the hands of his niece Kelly Myers, who also rode Crafty Decision.

Kelly Myers rode with rare skill at the meeting, suggesting she was a rider with a big future.