Leighton Aspell retired from the saddle, for the second and final time, on February 23, 2020, after failing to complete the course on Ventura Dragon, trained by Oliver Sherwood, in a handicap hurdle at Fontwell. By that stage, he had ridden a total of 909 winners under National Hunt rules in Britain, but is best remembered for winning back-to-back renewals of the Grand National in 2014 and 2015.
On the first occasion, Aspell steered Pineau De Re, trained by Dr. Richard Newland, to a victory in the Aintree showpiece and said afterwards, ‘Even to get a ride in the Grand National is a great thing, but to get one with a live chance is even better.’ Little did he know that he would be presented with his next ‘live chance’ just 12 months later, in the form of another 25/1 chance, the doughty Many Clouds, also trained by Sherwood, on whom he had already won the Hennessy Gold Cup (now the Coral Gold Cup) at Newbury the previous November.
Born in County Kildare on June 12, 1976, Aspell moved from Ireland to Britain as a 16-year-old, where he followed in the footsteps of the likes of Pat Eddery, Kevin Darley and Walter Swinburn by becoming apprenticed to Reg Hollinshead at Upper Longdon, Staffordshire. He rode the first of his 11 winners on the Flat, Prime Painter, trained by Roger Fisher, in a four-runner apprentices’ handicap at Hamilton on May 26, 1993 and the last, C’Est No Mour, trained by Peter Hedegr, in the Jump Jockeys’ Derby Handicap at Epsom on September 14, 2017.
Always destined to become a National Hunt jockey, Aspell opened his account ‘over the sticks’ on Karar, trained by Richard Rowe, in a novices’ handicap hurdle at Huntingdon on May 17, 1995. Thereafter, he racked up aound 400 winners, with high-profile victories in the Swinton Handicap Hurdle at Haydock and the Welsh Grand National (twice), before announcing his shock retirement, aged 31, in July 2007. Having originally said that he ‘just wasn’t getting much of a kick out of it any more’, he joined John Dunlop as pupil assistant, but found the lure of the Grand National impossible to resist and was back in the saddle 18 months later.
