Every Grand National runner has a good back story, but there is a clear fairytale horse among this year’s entries, one from Britain’s point-to-point fields.
This article first appeared in the Racing Post on Wednesday 21st February.
Latenightpass has all the ingredients to land the famous steeplechase, yet the team of people behind him have been rare visitors to the hallowed halls of Spring Festivals. Admittedly he is trained by Dan Skelton, a man who needs no introduction, yet he was created, formed, chiselled and polished by the Ellis family of Marton in Warwickshire.
Add in that he will be partnered at Aintree by amateur Gina Andrews, taking her first ride in the great race, and this is the best National story from the world of point-to-pointing since legendary hunter chaser Double Silk rolled off the Mendip Hills and started 6/1 second favourite 30 years ago. He fell when leading at the fence before the Chair, dashing the dreams of rider Ron Treloggen and owner/trainer Reg Wilkins and ending a pre-race public interest scrum by the media.
So who are the Ellises? Tony and Pippa (pictured above with son Tom and daughter-in-law Gina Andrews after Latenightpass's win at Cheltenham in 2019) are arable farmers and parents to two children, Tom and Laura, and two grandchildren. Pippa bred Latenightpass and four further foals from the difficult breeder Latenightdip, a “cranky mare” on whom Tom won three point-to-points, but who could be so scatty she was occasionally ridden around the farm in the dark.
Let’s get a quick flavour for Pippa’s feelings about her pet’s Grand National challenge. “It makes me feel sick,” she says. “Every time I think about it my stomach flips. I won’t be watching until after they have jumped the first fence.
“I feel I have impostor syndrome, and that someone is going to come along and say ‘What are you doing here?’. It’s a fantasy world. He’s my little homebred. I’m proud of what he has achieved and will do my utmost to enjoy this amazing journey, but my thanks must go to Tom and Gina. Without their dreams it would not have happened.”
Tom finished riding in 2015 with 126 winners on his CV, married Gina and focussed on farming and training, becoming British champion for the past five years while building up a yard of some 60 horses – a far cry from Reg Wilkins’s two. He first ran Latenightpass as a four-year-old, but it took the son of Passing Glance until his sixth race to break his duck. His rate of progression escalated and at six he won the intermediate championship hunter chase final at Cheltenham’s evening meeting and two years later finished fourth in the St James’s Place Festival Hunters’ Chase and second in the Randox Foxhunters’ Chase.
Tom swerved Cheltenham the following year to give Latenightpass every chance at Aintree and the plan worked perfectly with a comfortable victory, notable for the horse’s nimbleness and an apparent relish for the fences. Last year, after a bug affected the training schedule, he went back to Aintree and finished an honourable fourth, and, with little left to prove in hunter chases, was sent to Skelton for a crack at Cheltenham’s cross-country races, a sphere which Andrews was keen to sample.
Second of 13 at the course in November, he returned a month later and won impressively, prompting thoughts of a National challenge. On Saturday his final prep took place on heavy ground in a hurdle race at Haydock and he finished fifth.
Latenightpass (Gina Andrews) wins the Glenfarclas Chase at Cheltenham
With expectations in check, Pippa says of that run: “It was the first time I’ve watched him race and not cried,” while Andrews says: “He travelled well and got into the race nicely, but he stumbled badly on the bottom bend and never got going after that. Hurdling on extreme ground isn’t really his bag and I wasn’t hard on him.”
She has become point-to-pointing’s most successful female rider with nearly 400 winners and a record ten national championships which is very likely to become 11. Her younger siblings Bridget and Jack also won national titles in the sport, but both sides of their family have roots in it. Their father, Simon, won the 1988 Foxhunters’ Chase on Newnham in the days when you could hide a garden shed in the ditch at Becher’s Brook.
Bridget became a professional jockey, Jack tried it but reverted to being amateur, while Gina has become a colossus in pointing circles. Three years ago she became the first and only woman amateur to ride 75 winners over jumps and therefore to lose her claim.
For those who do not follow point-to-pointing and hunter chasing, but fancy a flutter on Latenightpass, do not be put off by the booking of Miss G Andrews. She may not have accrued Sam Waley-Cohen’s Aintree record, but she is every bit as good as that fabled amateur and she has completed the course on each of her six rides over the National fences in the Foxhunters’ Chase, winning and twice being placed in that race on Latenightpass. If further evidence is needed, study her two rides on the horse in Cheltenham’s November and December Glenfarclas Cross-Country Chases and decide if any professional jockey could have improved on the performance.
Pippa is in no doubt on that score, saying: “I know I’ve got the best person in the world on him – she knows him so well and she’ll give him a chance to see the fences.”
Phlegmatic to the point of ice-making on race days, a quality that hides an interior not free of emotion, Gina has ridden Latenightpass in 23 of his 25 races, stepping aside to let Bridget aboard when amateurs could not ride due to lockdowns in 2021. Gina says of the horse: “He has surprised us every year, but the first time we really thought he could be special was when my sister won on him [in a hunter chase] at Warwick, beating good horses.
“He had failed to win his first five races and I remember Jack saying he would be lucky to land a maiden race, but his jumping has been accurate from the start. He’s now shown he’s got a big engine and bigger heart, and he loves racing.
“He has to be out with first lot in the morning, otherwise he becomes a loony in the stable. After he’s done his work he’s as quiet as a baby.”
While holding an entry for the Glenfarclas Cross-Country Chase at the Festival the Ellises say their horse will go straight to Aintree. Andrews says: “It would be hard to run him over three marathon trips [the cross-country chases are 3m5½f] before the National. In the cross-country races you are always twisting and turning and jumping, which we felt gave him a better chance of staying the trip. Will he stay the National distance? I don’t know, but I’m more confident than I was a year ago.”
Andrews, who says she has been “obsessed” with riding horses at speed since a tot – her parents took their children to France to race ponies before such races became commonplace in Britain – has held National ambitions since first becoming aware of the race when Bindaree won in 2002. She says: “It’s good to have goals, but as time goes on some become unrealistic. To get a ride in that race as an amateur is nearly impossible. To get a chance when I’m closer to the end of my career, than at the beginning, is a good thing. I think you appreciate some things more when you have been waiting a long time.”
For Pippa the wait goes on in another area. She might have bred a special horse from the cranky mare, but she has not avoided all the pitfalls of breeding.
Latenightdip at the Ellises' farm with her first foal, Latenightpass
She says: “Latenightdip produced five foals, but only one filly, Latenightfumble [by Malinas], who is in foal to Passing Glance. I’m desperate for her to produce a filly to keep the family going, and if she did I would be tempted to put her back into training. I always felt she was better than her older brother and she’s only nine.
“Latenightdip would only get in foal every other year. On the two occasions she became pregnant back-to-back she lost the foal near the end. They were both fillies, and in the spring last year we lost the mare, too. She was 19 and about to foal a full-sister to Latenightpass.
“We’ve also got Latenightrumble who is seven and a good hand bigger than Latenightpass. He is by Sulumani and has now won three of five point-to-points. Jack, who rides him, has been quite rude about him and calls him the camel, but he was very complimentary about a recent win at Brocklesby Park. There is also an unnamed three-year-old full-brother to Latenightpass and a two-year-old by Dink.
Farming, point-to-pointing and breeding have been feeding jump racing in one way or another since early pioneers, many of them amateurs, first raced across a piece of flat countryside north of Liverpool. Latenightpass has links to those early strands, but he and Gina Andrews could become very modern British heroes.
