National winner Aspell retires from race riding

GRANDFATHER of the weighing-room, 43-year-old Leighton Aspell announced his retirement last weekend, and took his final rides at Fontwell on Sunday.

Best known for his association with Oliver Sherwood’s Hennessy Gold Cup and Grand National winner Many Clouds, he also won the Aintree showpiece on Pineau De Re for Dr Richard Newland.

Both those wins came after Aspell had made an earlier decision to retire in 2007 when in in his own words: “I just felt like I’d run my course”, but an extended break from riding saw him rediscover his hunger, and he returned in 2009 with renewed vigour.

Before his initial decision to hang up his boots, he’d ridden both Supreme Glory and L’Aventure to win the Welsh Grand National, and another of his big race wins came on Shotgun Paddy in the Classic Chase at Warwick.

He has always been renowned for his knack of getting the best out of staying chasers, and more importantly, perhaps, as a benign and encouraging influence on his weigh room colleagues, young and old.

Modest

Richard Johnson is 43 in July, but retirement is not on his mind, and barely five weeks after breaking his forearm badly at Exeter, the champion returned with a double from two rides at Musselburgh on Thursday.

Bookmakers who considered paying out of the title race last month are probably glad they didn’t. For all his modesty, Johnson is possibly the most enduring competitor in modern sport.