Red Rum's trainer was never in the first rank of his profession but will forever be associated with the famous Aintree race
Over the last century and a half of Grand National history, just two trainers have saddled the winner on four separate occasions. One, Fred Rimell, was steeped in National Hunt racing from birth, and a champion over jumps both as a jockey and a trainer. It is a testament to the Grand National's quixotic nature, however, that the other, Donald "Ginger" McCain, who died on Monday two days before his 81st birthday, was a former taxi driver and used-car salesman who trained his horses on a beach near Southport.
McCain became the founder of a racing dynasty, as his son, Donald junior, started out as a jockey and is now a highly successful trainer with a Grand National victory of his own, thanks to the victory of Ballabriggs at Aintree five months ago. At the traditional winner's homecoming the following day, Ginger McCain glowed with as much pride at his son's success as he did after Red Rum's three victories in 1973, 1974 and 1977, and again when he saddled Amberleigh House to win the National in 2004.
There was no racing in his genes, though, when he was born in an ordinary backstreet in Southport in 1930, the son of an office worker with, on the face of it, next to no chance of finding a life in racing. Yet Southport is just a few miles from Aintree and, at the age of nine, McCain went on a day out that changed his life when an aunt took him to watch his first Grand National, standing between the Canal Turn and the Melling Road.
Horses were already part of his life, thanks to the horse-drawn floats that were a common sight in the streets of Southport, and McCain's first job was driving one. He taught himself to ride in return for mucking out boxes and had a few jobs in stables before taking out a permit ? one rung below a full trainer's licence ? in 1953. But years later, he still needed to sell cars and drive his taxi to make ends meet and one of his regular fares was Noel le Mare, who would soon join the McCain story as the owner of a horse called Red Rum.
Three victories in the Grand National, an achievement without precedent, would have made Red Rum famous wherever he was stabled. Yet his celebrity grew to something beyond mere fame and, by the time of his third success in 1977, Red Rum had burrowed his way deep into the affection of the British sporting public too.
That was undoubtedly due in part to the rich story he carried with him and the fact that his trainer was not part of the jump-racing's country aristocracy, but an ordinary, no-nonsense grafter who had worked for everything that he had.
McCain was never a 'top' trainer in the normal sense of the word. Even in Red Rum's glory years in the mid-1970s, he never troubled the two Freds, Rimell and Winter, in their annual battle for the trainer's championship. The rich prizes at Cheltenham every March always passed him by, because the race around two circuits of Aintree's big fir fences on the first Saturday in April was, in McCain's eyes, the only one that really mattered.
McCain already had the National in mind for Red Rum when he bought him at Doncaster sales for 6,000gns. He jumped the bidding from 4,600gns to 6,000gns in one leap to secure him, a trick, he said later, he had learned at car auctions.
The National can seem to delight in frustrating those who pursue it too urgently, but McCain's single-minded dedication paid off in 1973 and soon both he and Red Rum were synonymous with the Grand National in the public consciousness. These were difficult times for the race, with falling attendance and the growing likelihood that Aintree would be sold for housing. It needed heroes to revive its fortunes and Red Rum and McCain certainly played their parts as work continued to save the track and the National.
McCain's colour and passion made him a perfect match for the Grand National and his famously plain-spoken nature also meant that he did not care who he offended when called upon to comment on the race and defend it against its critics. He was bitterly opposed to modifications introduced after two fatalities at Becher's Brook in 1989 and also caused controversy in 2005 when he suggested that a woman jockey would never be able to win the race.
McCain, though, was a man who had to be taken as he was and his most enduring characteristic was his lifelong passion for Aintree and the Grand National. Donald junior was too young to remember much about Red Rum's victories, but he does remember the grand parties at the McCain house the night before the National each year, even if most of those in attendance did not.
For Ginger McCain, the Grand National was everything and he not only won the race four times and helped to preserve it, he also passed on his passion to a new generation of racing McCains. That, perhaps, was the achievement which gave him the greatest pleasure. His contribution to the history of the Grand National cannot be underestimated and will never be forgotten.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/sep/19/ginger-mccain-appreciation-grand-national
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