![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Not that riding half a ton of racehorse at high speed over giant fences had been his first brush with mortal danger. And it was that life-defining moment that thrust my father onto the path to becoming a successful writer. But what catapulted the name Dick Francis from the back to the front pages of newspapers was the sudden collapse of his mount, Devon Loch, just 40 yards from a glorious royal victory in the 1956 Grand National.Ī horse called ESB won the race, but who remembers that? And who cares? The story of Devon Loch’s Grand National, as the queen mother coined it, is still writ large in the annals of the world’s great sporting disasters. That alone made him quite famous in the world of jump racing. My father was the British champion steeplechase jockey in the year I was born, and he also rode the horses owned by Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mother. “What’s it like to have grown up with a famous father?” It is a question I am often asked and my reply is quite simple: What is it like not to? It is all I have ever known. ![]()
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