{"id":133877,"date":"2025-05-26T18:14:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T18:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133877\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T18:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T18:14:14","slug":"sabotage-soup-and-steeplechasing-the-forgotten-story-of-the-first-grand-national-and-its-not-the-race-you-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133877\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabotage, soup and steeplechasing: the forgotten story of the first Grand National (and it&#8217;s not the race you thought)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-testid=\"Text__0__GlideArticleBody\">Through 2025, the Racing Post will be telling t<a target=\"_blank\" data-testid=\"Link__02__GlideArticleBody\" id=\"he-history-of-racing-through-the-stories-of-the-20-most-significant-races\" class=\"sc-b2c32ca0-0 dLKaTt\" href=\"https:\/\/www.racingpost.com\/news\/features\/series\/the-story-of-horseracing-in-20-races\/\" rel=\"noopener\">he history of racing through the stories of the 20 most significant races<\/a>\u00a0ever run. Lee Mottershead continues the series by recounting the tale of the first ever running of the Grand National<\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"Text__1__GlideArticleBody\"><strong data-testid=\"Text__11__GlideArticleBody\">Part one:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"Text__4__GlideArticleBody\">By the time the clock struck two, a crowd of maybe 30,000 people had assembled at what was, and still is, Aintree racecourse. On a beautiful spring afternoon they were waiting to see something the likes of which had never before been witnessed. It was the last day of February 189 years ago and a huge chapter in the history of racing was about to be written.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full story<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb0b4133-2 cgVXXE\">Read award-winning journalism from the best writers in racing, with exclusive news, interviews, columns, investigations, stable tours and subscriber-only emails.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to unlock<\/p>\n<ul class=\"sc-eb0b4133-5 hJkQDn\">\n<li data-testid=\"Text__SubscriptionFeature\" class=\"sc-eb0b4133-6 kCjOjY\">Racing Post digital newspaper (worth over \u00a3100 per month)<\/li>\n<li data-testid=\"Text__SubscriptionFeature\" class=\"sc-eb0b4133-6 kCjOjY\">Award-winning journalism from the best writers in racing<\/li>\n<li data-testid=\"Text__SubscriptionFeature\" class=\"sc-eb0b4133-6 kCjOjY\">Expert tips from the likes of Tom Segal and Paul Kealy<\/li>\n<li data-testid=\"Text__SubscriptionFeature\" class=\"sc-eb0b4133-6 kCjOjY\">Replays and results analysis from all UK and Irish racecourses<\/li>\n<li data-testid=\"Text__SubscriptionFeature\" class=\"sc-eb0b4133-6 kCjOjY\">Form study tools including the Pro Card and Horse Tracker<\/li>\n<li data-testid=\"Text__SubscriptionFeature\" class=\"sc-eb0b4133-6 kCjOjY\">Extensive archive of statistics covering horses, trainers, jockeys, owners, pedigree and sales data<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.racingpost.com\/subscriptions\/\" data-testid=\"Link__Subscribe\" class=\"sc-eb0b4133-7 yLNHi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"Text__Login\" class=\"sc-eb0b4133-8 gRoJBC\">Already a subscriber?<a data-testid=\"Link__Login\" href=\"https:\/\/www.racingpost.com\/api\/auth\/login\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Log in<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Through 2025, the Racing Post will be telling the history of racing through the stories of the 20&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-133877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114575498551892960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}