The late Joshua Thomas ‘Josh’ Gifford, who died from a massive heart at his yard in Findon, West Sussex on February 9, 2012, was a force majeure in National Hunt racing for 40 years. As a jockey, he rode a total of 693 winners and won the National Hunt Jockeys’ Championship four times, in 1962/63, 1963/64, 1966/67 (with a then record 122 winners) and 1967/68 and, as a trainer, he saddled a total of 1,587. However, for all his success elsewhere, to a wider audience Gifford will always be best remembered as the trainer of the fragile, but hugely talented, Aldaniti, whose ‘fairytale’ victory in the 1981 Grand National under cancer survivor Bob Champion became the subject of the 1984 film ‘Champions’.
Born on August 3, 1941 in Huntingdon, Gifford rode his first winner, Dorsol, trained by Syd Mercer in a maiden handicap at Birmingham on July 30, 1956. Indeed, he would ride 50 more on the Flat, including Trentham Boy in the Manchester November Handicap in 1956 and Curry in the Chester Cup in 1957, before weight problems forced him to turn his attention to the National Hunt code. In that sphere, he rode his first winner, Kingmaker, in a novices’ hurdle at Wincanton on December 17, 1959.
Gifford had the distinction of winning four of the first five winners of the Schweppes Gold Trophy (now the Betfair Hurdle), on Rosyth in 1963 and 1964, Le Vermontois in 1966 and Hill House in 1967, with all four winners trained by Ryan Price. He never won the Grand National, but his mount, Honey End must surely have beaten bona fide 100/1 outsider Foinavon in the 1967 renewal had he managed to avoid the now infamous melee at the twenty-third fence. He did, however, have the consolation of winning the Topham Trophy, over the National fences, twice, on Dagmar Gittell in 1962 and Walpole in 1966.
