ROA Owner of the Day: Allson Sparkle, Mighty Thunder

As the voice of Owners, the ROA are consistently promoting the impact and benefits of ownership whilst working to make ownership more rewarding.

Once again we will be hailing our popular “ROA Owner of the Day” for the Aintree Grand National Festival, which showcases an owner with a runner at the meeting. We are also proud sponsors of the Aintree Festival Leading Owner Award. Both initiatives will be championing Owners’ successes and their contributions to the sport.  

Today’s (Saturday 9 April) ROA Owner of the Day accolade goes to Colin and Nicola Drysdale from St Andrews. They own Mighty Thunder, who runs in the Randox Grand National Handicap Chase (5.15pm), the most famous jumps contest in the world and, at £1 million, by far Britain’s most valuable.

The Cheltenham Gold Cup might be Britain’s most prestigious jump racing prize, but the pool of owners in with a realistic chance of winning it is pretty small.

That is not the case with the Grand National, even if modifications to the fences over the years have made the race less of a lottery than it once was. It’s still a handicap when all is said and done, with the 40 runners all having the same theoretical chance of winning, at least in the judgement of handicapper Martin Greenwood.

The Aintree spectacular is also perhaps still the one contest above all others liable to get the pulse racing, and Colin Drysdale, who owns the Lucinda Russell-trained Mighty Thunder with wife Nicola under their Allson Sparkle company name, was certainly getting pumped up when speaking on Thursday afternoon.

He says: “I’m excited, nervous and trying to keep my lunch down! Everything seems to be building now. I’ve tried to keep it in the back of my mind for weeks, but it’s becoming very real. I’ve just seen on Lucinda’s FaceBook page Mighty being loaded onto the horsebox, so it doesn’t half start the nerves jangling.

“The National has been a lifetime fascination for me. When I first met Lucinda she asked what I wanted to buy a racehorse for, what my ambition was, and I said, ‘I want to win the National’. At that time Lucinda had not won the National, and she said, ‘So do I’. It is going to be an excellent day, I can’t wait.”

Russell has now experienced the elation of winning the famous prize, with One For Arthur in 2017, and the successful jockey that year, Derek Fox, is again the man in the plate for trainer and owners this time.

Fox has ridden Mighty Thunder in two of his three starts this season and, while on the surface his 2021-22 form does not entitle him to serious consideration, Drysdale believes he will give the rider a great spin.  

“If you look at his form this season, it doesn’t look very exciting, but his first run was in a very hot three-mile Charlie Hall Chase,” he says. “He’s not a three-mile horse, he was put in there just to get his speed up a bit and for a cobweb blow, so we were actually quite happy with fourth place there.

“After that we went to the Becher to try to give him experience over the Aintree fences, but unfortunately weather conditions that day were abysmal and he just doesn’t like heavy ground, so we made the difficult decision an hour before racing to pull him out. He’d have hated it.

“We then thought we’d go for the Welsh National three weeks later instead. But the same thing happened, the heavens opened about 48 hours before, it never stopped raining, and the ground was absolutely abysmal. But because the same thing had happened as before the Becher, we just thought we’re here, it’s the Welsh National, we’ll give it a go.

“We should have stuck to our gut instincts though, as he just cannot handle that sort of ground and unfortunately we had to pull him up. Lucinda then tried to give him a confidence boost in the Edinburgh National in February, and he was travelling like a dream but almost as soon as he hit the front he was pulled up.

“Tom Scudamore, who rode him, reported he had gurgled badly, and said he thought he needed a wind op. So we put him in for it. The surgeon said often there’s not a lot to see but in his case there was an obvious obstruction, which has now been removed.”

The now nine-year-old, who also had wind surgery in 2018, is reported to have benefited from it, sparking hopes that he will give a good account of himself at Aintree.  

“We’ve had him out for a racecourse gallop at Kelso, and he was spot-on there,” reveals his owner. “And then after his last bit of hard work before the National, he wouldn’t have blown a candle out. I gave him a cuddle after the workout and he was bone dry. So he’s back to the old Mighty, thankfully.”

He continues: “They did water the course on Wednesday, but there’s been no significant rain since and the forecast is for it to be dry on Friday and Saturday, so they’re predicting a good to soft surface, which would be spot-on for him.

“So, as far as we’re concerned, the wind op has been successful, Mighty’s in very good form and the ground conditions will suit him. Let’s see what happens, I am very hopeful!

“Lucinda is quite happy that he seems to have been forgotten about. His two pull-ups were for valid reasons, we believe he’s right back to his best, he may even be better than his best to be honest, so I reckon that he’s going to represent really good value for anyone who follows him on Saturday.”

At the time of writing, Mighty Thunder was a general 33-1 chance, for those who are tempted to bank on a return to form. 

“We’ve got some staff coming down, some good friends and family,” adds Drysdale. “There are 12 of us in total in our party, we’ve got a table booked for the day and we’re just going to try to enjoy it. 

“We live in St Andrews, on the north-east coast of Scotland, so it will take us about five and a half hours to get down there, which isn’t bad.”

Mighty Thunder’s eight victories to date have all come closer to hand, the biggest of which came a year ago, when Tom Scudamore - son of Russell’s partner Peter - partnered him to a famous success in the Scottish Grand National at Ayr, before which he had won the Edinburgh National and finished second in the Midlands version. 

“We were allowed to go to Ayr but weren’t allowed to touch the horse or anything, there was a separate area for owners and no crowds,” recalls Drysdale. “It was one of the best experiences of my life, but with no atmosphere whatsoever.

“The difference is going to be incredible between that terrible atmosphere at the Scottish Grand National last year and what Aintree is going to be like on Saturday. I was at Ayr for the Scottish National last Saturday and the atmosphere was absolutely electric, it was first class. I did have a touch of sadness thinking how poor it was the year before. 

“Hopefully we’ll never go back to that again, but I’d still take having a Scottish National winner with no crowds anytime and can’t complain.”

Mighty Thunder is one of three horses the Drysdales own, the others being three-time winner Aurora Thunder and Thunder In Milan, who at £80,000 was easily the most expensive of the trio but, somewhat typically, the least successful, so far at least.

“Aurora Thunder had a terrible fall at Ayr last Friday but she’s a tough little mare and she was absolutely fine after it,” reports her owner. 

“Lucinda schooled her herself a few days later just to see if she was okay, and she didn’t back off anything, it’s not put her off at all. She’s a really good prospect actually.  

“As for Thunder In Milan, because I’ve always had my passion for the National and wanted a National horse - I didn’t realise Mighty Thunder was going to be a National horse - I decided to push the boat out and go for something I thought would be good for the National.

“He is out of Baby Briggs, who is a full-sister to Ballabriggs, the National winner, and he’s by Milan, the sire of One For Arthur, so you’ve got Grand National winner on one side and Grand National winner on the other side - and he was tailed off in his last race! So it does not always go to plan.”

Neither, to put it mildly, has the Drysdales’ business during the pandemic. Allson Sparkle Ltd is Scotland’s largest independent on-trade wholesaler as supplier to more than 3,000 pubs, clubs and hotels throughout the country, and the hospitality industry is still suffering, especially north of the border.

“In Scotland they are still insisting on masks in hospitality, which is very difficult for the staff, and I would say trade is back to around 85 per cent of where it was pre-Covid,” says Colin Drysdale. “I think once we lose the masks it will return to business as usual. 

“The trouble with hospitality is that no-one can get staff any more. It seems to be, for hospitality, out of the frying pan and into the fire, for two years now. But we’re getting there. It’s a lot better than it was.”

Pleasure will definitely come before business on Saturday, though hopefully some sparkle and celebratory drinks will be a feature of the owners’ big day out on Merseyside. 

“I think it’s going to be a really good race this year, there are some exciting horses in there, I think it will be great,” says Drysdale.

Let’s hope so.