Scottish Grand National Memories: Young Kenny powers to victory

Young Kenny clears a fence at Haydock

Keith Melrose revisits the career of Young Kenny, one of the most popular recent winners of the Scottish Grand National.

As I write this, we are arriving upon the time of year when jumps turns to Flat, and the twice-annual discussion about the relative merits of gallop racing's two codes once again creeps up on us. As far as discourse goes, it's pretty much the antithesis of politics and religion, with the two sides' cases long since known and seldom changing, the whole charade being ritualistic rather than revelatory. The jumps fan may complain that the Flat is too commercial, but that would be to argue in a negative sense: jumps followers should celebrate their chosen code's positives rather than the shortcomings of the Flat. The relative (albeit still diminishing) Corinthian spirit of the winter game is very much part of its appeal: it's this that gives us Sam Waley-Cohen, whose standing as an amateur is probably unique in modern sport, while the thriving point-to-point circuit, which can and frequently does produce champions under Rules, is something that National Hunt racing should be proud of. 

Stars to emerge from the pointing field aren't always equine, either: recently, Lawney Hill in particular has fashioned a very respectable (and still blossoming) career as a National Hunt trainer having started with point-to-pointers, but Hill and others have a ways to go before their achievements match that of one of pointing's most celebrated alumni, Peter Beaumont.

Beaumont remains associated with pointing as he stayed fairly true to those roots, right up until his retirement in 2010. Even after winning the Gold Cup with Jodami in 1993, Beaumont retained a small string of just 25 horses the following season, while most of his best performers were strapping staying chasers, the type you could quite easily find at Cottingham or Bedale. Jodami might have been Beaumont's best, but arguably the greatest embodiment of his style came in the form of Young Kenny.

Young Kenny was one of the most popular chasers of his day, for all the reasons you'd imagine: a bold-jumping horse that almost always raced prominently, he made his name carrying big weights in handicaps, something his imposing physique lent itself especially well to. But Young Kenny was much more than just a workaday Denman, amassing more than a quarter of a million pounds in prize money and winning some of the most illustrious handicap chases on the calendar.

As might well have been expected, Young Kenny was slow to come to hand. A home-bred who never raced in points, he evidently took the eye of Timeform's racecourse reporter when he lined up in a Carlisle bumper in November 1995 ('a likeable type that should have more of a future than most of these'), but it wasn't until deep in his second season that Young Kenny's form started to match his build, with him ultimately winning the Prestige Novices' Hurdle, then held at Chepstow, in 1997.

It was over fences that Young Kenny promised to flourish, however, and although a chipped bone in his foot reduced his novice campaign to a single, successful outing, he would more than make up for lost time in 1998/9. He won the Lincolnshire National at Market Rasen on Boxing Day then took the Grand National Trial at Haydock (a week after unseating at the first when 9/4 favourite for the Eider) and a month later the Midlands Grand National at Uttoxeter. Young Kenny wasn't among the entries for that year's Grand National, in which he'd have had to carry the equivalent of 2 lb higher than he did in the Midlands National, but he was entered in the Scottish National a week after Aintree.

Allowed to race off the same mark as he had at Uttoxeter, Young Kenny was unsurprisingly a strong favourite for the 1999 Scottish Grand National, at 5/2. Against him were a number of the regulars from the staying handicap ranks, including Leopardstown Handicap Chase and Eider winner Hollybank Buck, Agfa Diamond Chase winner Clever Remark (second favourite at 7/1), the prolific The Next Waltz and the seemingly omnipresent Full of Oats, whose finest hour up to then had arguably been a fourth-placed finish in the 1998 Irish National. It mightn't have been the classiest renewal of the Scottish Grand National- Young Kenny carried top weight of 11st 10lbs from a BHB mark of just 140- but it was certainly competitive, at least in theory.

Partnered by Brendan Powell, who had won the race 10 years earlier on Roll-A-Joint 12 months after taking the Aintree equivalent aboard Rhyme 'N' Reason, Young Kenny was a bit sluggish over the first couple of fences, as he could often be, but by the time the field cleared the first ditch he and Powell were in the first four and finding a rhythm. The field was being led by Full of Oats, with Scotby his main pursuer initially. Although the pace was a fairly strong one, a number of the field came and went from the front rank: Tell The Nipper was guided to the front by AP McCoy as they passed the winning post for the first time, while 33/1-shot Peter made a brief appearance before dropping away, but Full of Oats and Young Kenny were the only constants. 

As the field started out on their final circuit, the race was beginning to take shape. Full of Oats and Young Kenny still contested the lead, but Hollybank Buck had moved onto their heels, while The Next Waltz and Clever Remark were both making smooth headway past the struggling pair of Tell The Nipper and Scotby. 

Down the back for the final time, Powell was having to consistently ride Young Kenny into fences, his mount pricking his ears and inclined to go right, seemingly oblivious to the looming threat of Hollybank Buck, who was by now in second ahead of the ridden Full of Oats, with nothing else looking likely to take a hand in the finish.
 
By the last down the back, Young Kenny seemed to be getting himself into gear, emphatically out-jumping Hollybank Buck there and forcing Norman Williamson to ask for a bit more from the Irish challenger. After Young Kenny leapt out of Powell's hands four out, you sensed there was only one winner and so it proved, the top weight galloping and jumping with real verve all the way up the straight to win by nine lengths, with his jockey never having to go for everything. Hollybank Buck was a gallant but well-beaten second, while Full of Oats won his private battle with Clever Remark to take third.

It might have been far from the best performance to win the Scottish National (already this century, four horses have won the race from BHB/BHA marks higher than 140), but Young Kenny's victory was always destined to go down as one in which the style outweighed the substance: a weight-carrying performance from a bull of a horse whose major attributes were jumping and galloping. It's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect of a horse taken from the pointing field.

It was widely expected that Young Kenny would go on to be a high-level staying chaser, but it wasn't quite to be. His 1999/2000 season proved decidedly up and down, a defeat of Welsh National winner Edmond at Uttoxeter and a creditable third-placed finish to Paris Pike when defending his Scottish National were punctuated with a number of flops, including when he unshipped Brendan Powell at the Canal Turn in Papillon's Grand National. 

Young Kenny had always appealed as the type for Aintree, though, and the following season, now in the colours of Sir Trevor Hemmings, he would win an eventful renewal of the Becher Chase. That run, in which he beat would-be course specialist Ardent Scout by a hard-fought half-length, suggested he was well worth another shot at the big one and was soon installed as 14/1 favourite. However, there was to be a tragic end to his story. Running in the Grand National Trial at Haydock the following February, Young Kenny broke his near-hind forelock on the flat and had to be put down. 

The great underdog tale of Peter Beaumont didn't exactly die with Young Kenny- big-race winners Hussard Collonges and Hunters Tweed were to come- but the yard did start to decline soon after, to the point that in Beaumont's final season only one horse from his 21 runners over jumps so much as placed. Beaumont couldn't have wished for much more from his career given his humble beginnings, however, and you can bet that there are trainers who have handled 10 times as many horses yet would have killed to train just one like Young Kenny.