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Remember 'Captain Cock-Up', the starter who wrecked the 1993 Aintree Grand National by failing to control his starting gate?
Time to look away for those Frenchmen who sniggered at our embarrassment; the start of the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris was an action replay.
Remember Rose, everybody’s favourite to land his second successive 'Grand Steeple', shot Christophe Pieux through his ears as the starter jerked the starting tapes across the horse's nose.
The elastic missed by a whisker but caused Remember Rose to prop and deposit Pieux.
Marx (Karl not Groucho) said all great events reappear – the first time as tragedy the second as farce. That Grand National narrowly avoided tragedy – the champion jockey was nearly garrotted by the tape: Pieux’s pride was the only thing damaged by the farcical fall.
Tragedy was reserved for losing punters though to their credit the turfistes didn’t lynch the starter and clapped the crestfallen jockey sympathetically as he gestured - je ne sais quoi.
The race didn’t get much better. The starter had been distracted by Mayeb’s can-can imitation at the rear and this one failed to set off: Slingshot was dismounted and pulled out of the race on the track.
'Ten green bottles’ (another arrête on the circuit) were left standing when Francois Doumen’s Pommerol, travelling well and prominently, fell at the moyen open-ditch: much-loved Louping’d’Ainay succumbed to leg injury; so Polar Rochelais, “playing only for places” according to trainer Pat Quinton, came home alone - led by the riderless Remember Rose.
Still, this was an unforgettable day not least for the stallion Poliglote, sire of Group One Ferdinand Dufaure winner Saint Du Chenet, surely a star of the future; and of Young Poli in the Group Two Barka Hurdle.
The day’s foreign challengers, Thousand Stars and Deutschland, both trained by Willie Mullins never looked like adding to the Irishman’s Auteuil accomplishments.
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Frogwatch, by Rolf Johnson 
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