'We knew we had a National horse' - Monty's Pass and a monster Aintree gamble

Ireland editor Richard Forristal caught up with the connections of Monty's Pass, the 2003 Grand National hero, earlier this year. Monty's Pass has died at the age of 29 and this interview remembering the Aintree star has been made free to read for users of the Racing Post app and billed as our Sunday Read. Members' Club Ultimate subscribers have access to fantastic interviews like this every week. Click here to sign up.

Monty's Pass ambles in from the field with Mary Mangan at his head, the 2003 Grand National hero's ageing frame still demonstrating the casual swagger and aura of an equine boss. He is 29 years old and will always be the man around here.

When you drive into Conna, the sleepy north County Cork village that skirts the Waterford border, to this day you are greeted by a sign that proclaims it the home of Monty's Pass. The signage has been updated over the years, but that eponymous honour remains. This is his domain.

Next spring, Monty's Pass will turn 30 just over six months earlier than trainer Jimmy's celebrity daughter Jane. Her parents, as hard-working and affable as ever, have not been caring for him quite as long as they have her, but these days the horse demands more attention than the high-profile television personality child. Just about.

"Monty's has been here since he was four years old, and he has never left the yard other than to go racing," Mary says gleefully. "When he finished racing I didn't give the owners an option – I told them I was keeping him!"

Jane Mangan (centre) with Ted Walsh and Robert Hall on RTE in 2020

Monty's Pass is proud and alert in the autumn sunshine. He looks in good fettle, and you wouldn't know at a glance that he was beginning to ail, save for his coat beginning to turn with the season.

Wednesday marks the 20th anniversary of his emphatic Kerry National triumph under Barry Geraghty, one of many heady days during a near eight-year career under the Mangans' stewardship. That Listowel coup, 12 months after he had finished second to More Than A Stroll, was sandwiched between his two other marquee victories.

A year earlier, in the lost Denny Gold Medal Chase at the now defunct Tralee, he had slammed Quinze and More Than A Stroll. The following year, he achieved immortality at Aintree.

He stands here now, the oldest living Grand National winner, hardly regal but far from shook.

The main deterioration in his advancing years is that his cheek molars have lost their structure, leaning out at oblique angles and rendering his teeth of little use for masticating hay. Hence the half barrel of coarse mix and nut pellets for him to digest at his leisure.

"It just ends up balling up when he gets it in his mouth," Mary explains of his struggle with hay. "His teeth are pushed out and loose, and they've been that way for a while. There isn't anything we can do with it. That doesn't help his condition, but he is pretty healthy and he was never a fat horse anyway."

One curiosity about Monty's Pass when you consider him and what he achieved is the extent to which he bucked convention, or at least when considered in a retrospective prism.

First of all, he had a heart murmur, an ailment that prompted Henrietta Knight to dismiss him when she came to see him after he won a point-to-point.

He was all of four years old before being sent to the store sales, and followed a now unconscionable route of forging a career in point-to-points and hunter chases before graduating to the highest level. His conformation isn't great, yet he was at his best on hard ground and "was the soundest horse in the yard". The day he won the Kerry National, the official going was firm.

Moreover, he ran a lot, averaging 11 runs a year during his four busiest.

'It's impossible to compete'

"He was always a very easy horse to keep," Mary says. "He never had a snot in his nose or a bandage on his leg. Physically, he was hardy, but several bloodstock agents came and wouldn't buy him.

"He has small feet and he used to hop off the fast ground. We had two horses, himself and Stroll Home, who won the Galway Plate, and I'd say they'd win nothing now with all the watering."

Jimmy intervenes when asked if modern watering policies have softened the breed.

"I don't know, but something has gone wrong anyway," he says.

"I'll never forget the 2004 Grand National. I told Barry the horse was in fierce form, and he finished fourth. When he came back in, I said to Barry that the weight beat him. 'No,' he said. 'It didn't. I knew I was beaten going to the start. The ground was overwatered and only for that I'd have won'. That's the way it has gone ever since."

Amberleigh House, who won that 2004 National, was foaled by the Mangans for Bobby McCarthy at Conna Stables, while Bindaree, the 2001 winner, was bought by Jimmy as a yearling before being traded on. His father Paddy also foaled down Dawn Run on the farm and bred the 1956 Champion Hurdle winner Doorknocker.

The yard remains a pleasingly rustic, no-frills operation, and breeding and trading are still at the core of what the Mangans do, but they know how to train when the chance arises. These days, with the money on offer for winning pointers and staff so hard to come by, those chances are not as plentiful.

Remember, as well as Monty's Pass's haul, Mangan also saddled Stroll Home to win that Galway Plate in 1997, won the 2008 Grade 1 Powers Gold Cup with Conna Castle and emulated his father by sending out Whinstone Boy to plunder the Thyestes Chase in 2010. Monty's Pass was a mainstay on the staying chase circuit, also finishing second in a Galway Plate in 2000.

Theirs was always a yard that prioritised point-to-points but one that was emblematic of how small-scale trainers could compete for the sport's big prizes. For the most part, those days are gone.

"It's very hard for lads to keep going," Jimmy muses. "I'm lucky I'm not depending on training. If I was, I'd be out on the road. I wouldn't have a hope. It's impossible to compete, and part of it is because the big trainers now hoover up all the staff, so that makes it even harder."

Mike Futter, the larger than life bingo hall boss and gambler, headed up the five-man Dee Syndicate that owned Monty's Pass during his halcyon years. Before that, a bunch of locals from Kildorrery made a novice's mistake buying him at the sales, having not heard his heart murmur announced as he entered the ring.

"That turned out to be lucky for me," Jimmy quips.

Sitting pretty: Monty's Pass takes the Chair under Geraghty alongside Gunner Welburn (left) and Barry Fenton

Mary remembers the son of Montelimar wasn't always the happy stalwart we grew to love. "He was fairly sour when we got him," she recalls. "The first day he ran at Dungarvan he actually pulled himself up."

"He rode the jockey rather than the other way around," Jimmy snorts, poor James Sheehan's ears burning over the road in Dungourney.

"If he was a human, he'd have drawn the dole all his life if he could get away with it. I had a lad in the yard here at the time called Davy Nugent, he had wicked problems with his weight but he was mad to be a jockey.

"He had two big shovels for hands, so I put him up on Monty's the day he ran on my own course here in Tallow. I told him in no uncertain terms not to spare him, and he didn't. He made a man of the horse that day – he made him for me."

Futter eventually secured the purchase of Monty's Pass for IR£35,000, unperturbed by his dicky heart.

"And because of the people who owned him, we had a free hand," Mary interjects. "I even remember the lads who sold him saying after he won at Aintree that he'd have never done that for them, because they couldn't have afforded it. So we were lucky with the owners we had."

An £800,000 long-range touch

It's fair to say the owners were lucky with the trainer they got as well. After finishing second to Time For A Win in the 2002 Topham Chase the plan was hatched to go for gold a year later.

"The day he finished second in the Topham," Jimmy says, "I told the lads, 'We'll be back next year for the National, but we're not going to Cheltenham'. He had finished fifth in the Cathcart and even we were tired going back to Aintree, but we knew we had a National horse.

"I even remember telling Jim McGrath the plan, that we'd be training him especially for the National and that I thought he could win it, and he told the story afterwards on television!"

It's a story that never gets old. Backed by Futter from 66-1 in January all the way through to a 16-1 SP at Aintree, Monty's Pass eventually landed him over £800,000 in bets when dancing 12 lengths clear of Supreme Glory under Geraghty.

It was one of the most exquisite long-range gambles in modern times, executed in that transitional phase when the Aintree fences were still fearsome and a better class of horse was being proactively lured to compete. The first line of the Racing Post analysis described it as "one of the strongest fields ever assembled for the race".

Yet, as Jane Mangan observes while sipping tea in her parents' kitchen: "He wouldn't win the race now, because he wouldn't even get into it."

It was a different era, for sure. And it was all the better for it.

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