Sport: 11-Year-Old Stallion

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In Liverpool's Adelphi Hotel sporting men in loud checked waistcoats kept their confidence up by the bootstraps as they waited last week for the running of the Grand National Steeplechase. In progress was one of the greatest bookies' panics in years; for if the ''favorite," Blue Shirt, should win, the bookies stood to lose £1,000,000. Actually, few racing men seriously believed Blue Shirt would win, but there was always an off chance that the public might for once be right. Bookies, like frightened stockbrokers, forced odds down to 8-to-1 to save their skins. Among knowing racegoers, however, the most likely winners were considered to be Royal Mail, winner last year; Delachance, the likeliest American-owned starter; and Cooleen, hope of Irishmen because she ran second last year.

Because last week was the 100th running of the Grand National, the old-legend of the founding of steeplechasing was retold more frequently than usual—how one hot night in the early 1770s a befuddled country squire led his guests out in their night-shirts, mounted them, and led them in a wild race over hedge, fence & field to distant Nachton Village Church steeple. A view of the finish of that first steeplechase was engraved by John Harris in 1839, the year of the first Grand National. That year and for over two decades afterwards all steeplechases had a faintly unsavory character. Gentlemen of the Jockey Club supervised flat racing, but any toffer could ride a nag in a hedgehopping race. Long before last week, however, the steeplechase Grand National had taken its place with the flat Derby as social tops in English horse racing. Into the little marmalade-manufacturing town of Aintree poured 250,000 spectators, cockney sports, peers of the realm, ambassadors, socialites, to witness the 100th running.

Day before the race the crowd observed the custom of tramping afoot around the world's most dangerous steeplechase course. They swarmed past Becher's Brook—named for the Captain Becher who, spilled by his mount in the 1839 running, dived into the stream to escape being trampled by following horses—past Valentine's, past the deadly Canal Turn, where as many as 22 horses have failed in a single race, round to the water jump before the stands. Next day 36 horses started to make the same circuit twice. Only 13 succeeded.

A small Irish jumper, Sir Francis Towle's Airgead Sios, raced ahead of the field at the start. Jump after jump he took beautifully until the tenth fence, just beyond Valentine's Brook, there he fell and threw his jockey. Delachance, the American favorite, swept into the lead, was still pacing the pack over the water jump before the grandstand, when Rock Lad, only Canadian-owned horse in the race, fell. He crawled out with a broken back. An ambulance drove out on the track to destroy him and remove his body, as Delachance led 18 survivors of the 36 into the second lap.