It was a pleasure last Saturday to see the graciousness and lack of vanity with which the trainer of Mon Mome, the (staggering 100/1) winner of the Grand National, acknowledged her victory.

Venetia Williams has qualities that would have allowed her to succeed in whatever career she’d chosen. She’s brave, independent and dedicated. She had been a good amateur race-rider herself until, within a fortnight of hitting the turf at Becher’s Brook in the 1988 National, she fell again at Worcester and broke her neck. It augured well that she came through a potentially fatal or seriously debilitating accident still able to walk and pursue the next phase of her life with horses.

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