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Fastest past the winning post
Steven LynchOctober 8, 2014
Which horses won the Derby and the Grand National in the fastest times? asked Kenneth Jones
Speed records don't mean very much in the equine world - so much depends on the underfoot conditions, which can be very heavy depending on the amount of rain in the lead-up to the race. And the punters don't care much about the time, only which horse gets past the post first!
Having said that, the times for the major races have been kept for many years: we have finishing times for the Derby from about 1850. The times for almost all the Grand Nationals since the first official one in 1839, one exception being 1873, when the stewards' watch stopped!
For many years the Derby record dated from 1936, when the Aga Khan's horse Mahmoud covered the mile and a half at Epsom in two minutes 33.8 seconds. That record stood for 59 years until Lammtarra beat it in 1995 (2:32.3). Then, in 2010, Workforce lowered the record time by another second, to two minutes 31.3 seconds.
The Grand National course is much longer, at about four and a half miles. The Aintree record currently stands at eight minutes 47.8 seconds, by Mr Frisk in 1990. That beat Red Rum's time in 1973 by about 14 seconds (Rough Quest in 1996 and Ballabriggs in 2011 have gone quicker than Red Rum since, but just failed to beat the nine-minute mark).
Just to show the importance of the conditions, Red Marauder won at a very wet Aintree in 2001 in 11 minutes 0.1 seconds - the slowest time since Zoedone in 1883.
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