The Grand National, held annually at Aintree racecourse near Liverpool every April, is the world's most famous handicap steeplechase for thoroughbred horses, but did you there are a couple of surprising connections between the extended four-and-a-quarter miles race and Japan?
Horse racing is as popular in the Far East as it is in the western world, yet the links between them are few and far between. Although most of the high-profile events in Japan are on the flat, they do have a couple of Grade 1 international steeplechases at Nakayama in the Grand Jump during mid-April and Daishogai held in late December.
Fujino-O landed four renewals on the spin of that latter race held over just more than two and a half miles during the 1960s, but his owners developed even bigger ambitions for this star Japanese jumper.
They set their sights on Grand National glory and shipped him off to the UK to be trained by top National Hunt handler Fulke Walwyn at his Lambourn stables for the 1966 race. Fujino-OÂ was thus briefly attached to a stable which included great British contemporaries Mill House and Mandarin.
Walwyn had enjoyed recent Grand National success with Team Spirit in 1964, but the handicapper did Fujino-O no favours at all by allotting him top weight of 12 stone. It presented connections with a real challenge and bookmakers clearly had doubts about whether the Japanese horse would get around as he was sent off at a starting price of 100/1.
Carrying the welter burden, Fujino-O refused at one of those unique spruce covered fences and never truly got competitive in the race which was won by Anglo for trainer Fred Winter. That Grand National was run with Aintree's future hanging in the balance as the land the racecourse is built on was almost sold to a housing developer by the Topham family.
Racing on Merseyside was preserved, however, and continues to this very day. The other link between the Grand National and Japan is jockey Tsuyoshi Tanaka who rode in the 1995 renewal.
Trainer Jeremy Scott booked him to ride The Committee, a horse that finished a narrow second in the Kim Muir Challenge Cup for amateur riders the previous year. Preparations for Aintree were far from ideal as he was pulled up in the Midlands Grand National at Uttoxeter on his prep run.
Bookmakers again gave Japanese connections little chance of victory by making Tanaka's mount a 75/1 chance at the off. The Committee didn't last long in the Grand National either as he fell at the first fence.
Kim Bailey's Romany King famously finished in a dead heat for fifth place in this running of the race and the trainer saddles The Last Samuri again this year, who over at William Hill looks another live each-way chance at 16/1 on his third Grand National appearance.
Tanaka and The Committee were no worse for taking that tumble in the race that was won Royal Athlete, who thus became trainer Jenny Pitman's second victory in the Aintree showpiece.
Japan and the Grand National may literally be half a world away from one another, but the fact these links between them exist shows just how globally significant the race really is.
