Life should never be seen as merely a box-ticking exercise, but sometimes that process can help to illuminate the situation, like a spotlight shone on the star of the show. Gina Andrews, the most successful female amateur rider ever, sits at her kitchen table, metaphorical pen in hand. Tick, tick, tick.

“Ten point-to-point championships, more than any other female,” she says, the information coming almost dispassionately, not even the faintest trace of vainglory, delivered as though she was reading from someone else’s roll of honour.

“More winners than any other woman in points, most winners in a season. A winner at the Cheltenham Festival in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir, a winner of the Aintree Foxhunters’, getting pretty close to 500 winners in all.”

And then, into this wild whirlwind of winners, Andrews drops the bathos bomb common to all the sportsmen and sportswomen who have taken their discipline in both hands and bent it to their will. “I’ve been very lucky.”

Luck, of course, has had a lot less to do with it than modesty would have you believe. Andrews, 32, is a master of her craft, has reached the top on the rising tide of her own ability, but sometimes the purpose of all that tick-tick-ticking is not to show what has been done but rather which boxes remain unfilled, unfulfilled. Andrews already knows.

Next Saturday she will ride the well-fancied Latenightpass in the Randox Grand National at Aintree, a race that somehow always contrives to produce a story surrounding the winner, an annual jolt of life-enhancing, life-changing glory in a sport that frequently needs the assistance. And sure, Latenightpass has the form and experience to run a big race on the big day, but his story makes him look two stone well-in.

Andrews is an amateur jockey riding a horse trained by her husband, Tom Ellis, and bred and owned by her mother-in-law Pippa. This family horse has graduated from the point-to-point field and the hunter-chase arena, the sort of career trajectory that once characterised the Grand National but now ranks as an anomaly, a throwback.

As elite racing steadily sheds every last vestige of its former romance, Latenightpass resembles a time-traveller from the past, materialising as if by magic in a modern landscape, out of his time but in his element.

“It’s a fantastic story – he’s the epitome of a family pet,” says Andrews. “He’s a really bonny little horse, very professional, loves his work. He has to go out first lot otherwise he won’t settle all morning.

“He was a natural jumper from the start, very economical, never does more than he has to, and although he has a slight tendency to jump right it doesn’t affect him.

“He has surprised us every year and even more so this year. He has improved a lot – he wasn’t rated high enough to get into the National before this year but he is better than ever at the age of 11.”

Professional amateur

The description of Latenightpass as ‘very professional’ is a neat counterpoint to Andrews’ status as an amateur. That word is often used as a pejorative, an indication of a dabbler, a dilettante, but Andrews is nothing of the sort, as that earlier box-ticking exercise underlined. She is as professional an amateur as you will find anywhere, and indeed might once have dropped the ‘Miss’ and taken the shilling - as her younger sister Bridget has done - but she has no regrets about the path not travelled.

“Once upon a time I did consider it, but there are very few professional female riders now and there were even fewer back then,” she says. “I wasn’t attached to a big yard – if Pam Sly had had 40 horses rather than 20 I might have considered it even more strongly, but it wasn’t the case.

“I decided I was better off being a good amateur, trying to be the best amateur, and taking my opportunities in the amateur races at the big festivals.”

That is where Andrews and Latenightpass first left their mark on a wider audience, with their record in the Foxhunters’ at Aintree a sturdy 2-1-4. Latenightpass has gone clear over the big fences three times and Andrews has got round in all her six rides over the course, flawless statistics that give them a distinct advantage over many of their rivals this year.

Celebration

Their success in the 2022 Foxhunters’, marked by Andrews’ gleefully all-out celebration that mirrored the famous salute performed by Mickael Barzalona when winning the 2011 Derby on Pour Moi, was almost as good as it gets for all the unsung heroes of the unpaid brigade.

Nevertheless, the Grand National has been fairly kind to amateur jockeys over the last 40 years or so, the ‘Mr men’ averaging one winner a decade – Charlie Fenwick on Ben Nevis, Dick Saunders on Grittar, Marcus Armytage on Mr Frisk, Sam Waley-Cohen aboard Noble Yeats.

However, the race wasn’t even on the radar for Andrews and Latenightpass before the improvement shown by the gelding this season.

Last autumn, Latenightpass was sent from Ellis’ yard a few miles across Warwickshire to join Dan Skelton, the intention being to campaign him in cross-country chases at Cheltenham, with an eye on ticking another of those boxes for Andrews.

“The move was more about fulfilling an ambition for me – I was keen to have a go,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking about winning, just wanted a spin round.

“But he was second the first time, and then people started getting ideas, so we thought we’d see how he got on the second time. And he won, and here we are.”

That Cheltenham success sent Latenightpass up the handicap sufficiently to book a spot in the National, a vital manoeuvre given that the race has changed dramatically on many fronts since Andrews’ father Simon rode in it 35 years ago.

Invasive surgery has put a different complexion on the ‘world’s greatest race’, and although Latenightpass has made the final field in some comfort, Andrews is certainly not in favour of the most recent alterations to the race.

“Reducing the field? Forty runners down to 34? It’s all part of a slippery slope,” she says. “If 30 horses can run in the Foxhunters’, why is the limit for the National only 34?

“We all know the answer – it’s because millions of people watch the National and not all that many people watch the Foxhunters’. But the same accidents can happen in both races.

“It’s ridiculous. They’re just pandering to the ‘anti’ brigade, constantly trying to please people who don’t like racing, never will like racing, and would like the sport to be banned anyway.”

Stamina doubt

The fences have also been tamed since Andrews had her first ride over them in 2012 – “they’re certainly not as big as they were, although they are still considerably bigger than normal jump-race fences” – but they are not the issue for Latenightpass, a footsure jumper whose Achilles heel is more likely to be the distance. The silly question gets a shrug of an answer.

“Will he stay? Who knows?” says Andrews. “He wasn’t stopping at the end of three miles, five furlongs over the cross-country course at Cheltenham, but that’s a very different race to three-five around a normal track, it’s all sharp twists and turns and probably not such a test of stamina.

“He didn’t see out the extended three miles and a quarter at Cheltenham a few years ago, but I gave him a more confident ride there and he didn’t get up the hill. He likes to race prominently – that makes sense in the Foxhunters’, where if you get behind it’s very easy to get hampered, but I’ll be a bit more reserved on him in the National. Still, who knows?”

The old pro Latenightpass has returned from his sojourn with Skelton and is back in his old box at Ellis’ yard, the five-time champion point-to-point trainer having taken out a full licence, telling the Racing Post: “I’ll never get another chance to train a horse for the National who’s owned and bred by my Mum and ridden by my wife.”

His wife is a famously laid-back character who reckons she will sleep like a baby the night before the National. Her sangfroid extends to taking a ride in the Foxhunters’ – Fairly Famous – on the Thursday, when more pragmatic riders might be cocooning themselves in cotton wool and waiting out the clock, but it will be business as usual for the unshakable Andrews.

The juxtaposition is irresistible. Fairly Famous on Thursday, very famous by Saturday night? The great power of the Grand National, more than any other race, is to bestow widespread, forever fame on its chosen few.

For all her achievements in the humbler environs of the point-to-point circuit, changing in draughty tents at Alnwick, Charm Park, Horseheath and Larkhill, competing for huge trophies and minor prestige, the hubbub of Aintree on the biggest day of them all will be something new for Andrews. She knows it, embraces it.

“You ride your entire life to have a chance in these races,” she says. “To finally get that day ... I’ll cherish it forever. And the circumstances, on a family pet of a horse, makes it mean so much more.

“I know that I’m nearer the end of my career than the beginning. I’m not going to ride forever, because there are other things I want to do with my life, so to get this chance now makes me feel very lucky.

“The National will be a different ball game for me, of course, but I’m pretty relaxed about it. I’ve achieved a lot in my career, and whatever happens there’ll be no regrets, no what-ifs. I’m just hoping for a great ride round on a great little horse.”

Half a lifetime ago, Gina Andrews won on her first ride in a point-to-point at the age of 16. That was the first box ticked, and since then it has been tick, tick, tick all the way. Andrews sits at the table, the metaphorical pen poised; one more to go.

THIS year’s Grand National is second time around for the Andrews family, with Gina treading in the footsteps of her father Simon, who rode hunter-chaser Newnham into 10th place at Aintree in 1989, the year of Little Polveir.

Newnham had won the Foxhunters’ at 50/1 the previous year with Andrews in the saddle, which in those days automatically qualified the horse for the National. But if Newnham was assured of his place in the big one, it was much more of a struggle for his jockey.

“I couldn’t do the weight,” he recalls. “Newnham was down to carry 10st - and I came back from my honeymoon in January weighing 11st 10lb.

“I managed to lose a lot of that, I was the fittest I’d ever been, and Michael Johnson [owner-trainer] said I could ride him if I could do under 10st 7lb. In the end I put up 5lb overweight and that was good enough.”

Andrews was peeling off the pounds up until the last minute - “I was in the sauna the night before with Jimmy Frost and Richard Guest, and I went without breakfast” - and, as a result, the day passed in something of a starvation-induced blur.

“I was extremely hungry, I remember that much,” he says. “Newnham was 50/1 again and was out of his class, but he was a brilliant jumper and he never put a foot wrong.

“The other thing that really sticks in my memory is jumping alongside Richard Dunwoody [on West Tip] at Becher’s Brook first time - that was a thrill. We were up there all the way on the first circuit, but the ground was too soft for him and I just concentrated on getting round. There were a few behind us at the line.”

Comparisons

He fields the obvious question with a laugh – “there is no comparison between me and Gina, she’s pretty good” – and is proud that he and wife Joanna pointed Gina in the right direction, ushering her up the ladder from pony races to her first point-to-points and on to where she stands now at the top of the game.

His daughter won’t have to fret about making the weight on Latenightpass, but there’s still plenty for a father to be worried about.

“I’m getting nervous now, we’re getting closer,” he says. “I feel the pressure even if Gina doesn’t seem to. She’ll need luck, of course, but she has a much better chance than I did - all she has to do is finish better than 10th.”