Evan Williams happy to state his case in Grand National
Despite the rise of Welsh-based trainers in recent years the principality’s success in the John Smith’s Grand National has been through jockeys rather than horses.
Neale Doughty, on Hallo Dandy in 1984, and Hywel Davies, riding Last Suspect a year later, both won the race but the only time that Wales claimed the prize with a horse was when Kirkland won in 1905, although Peter Bowen came close when McKelvey finished three-quarters of a length second to Silver Birch in 2007.
The name of Evan Williams is already etched into the National’s roll of honour although that dates back to when he rode to win Royal Mail in 1937, but the current Evan Williams hopes that he can deliver that long-awaited victory with State Of Play.
Having given up dairy farming on the family spread, 10 miles west of Cardiff, almost 10 years ago because he could not make the figures add up Williams then found himself calculating potential losses beyond his control. “People said I was mad selling my dairy cows. But I wasn’t making money and I was training point-to-pointers just to try and keep the farm going. I started training about 12 in 2001 when the foot and mouth came in the spring.
“I’d sold the cows the autumn before and I had beef cattle and, although we didn’t have foot and mouth, you couldn’t sell anything because of the restriction on the movement of animals. It finished a lot of people but I was able to sell my cattle in one go.”
Williams then decided to enter what amounted to a game of poker in which the stake was just about all he had. “The Irish boys couldn’t sell their pointers, because there hadn’t been any point-to-pointing, so I put all my money in and bought 18 horses. I didn’t have any owners for them but I managed to get them sold the next winter.
“Most of them turned out to be good so in 2001 I was staring down the barrel of a gun and 2002 I was champion point-to-point rider and champion point-to-point trainer.”
From there the switch to the professional game was as obvious as it was successful and at the heart of the story has been State Of Play. Williams bought him at Doncaster Sales in August 2005 and the horse made an impressive winning debut for his new trainer two months later in a novice chase at Chepstow and followed up with a comfortable win at Plumpton six weeks later. He was then pitched into Grade One company for the Feltham Novices’ Chase at Sandown in the December, but he struggled against some top-quality opposition and was tailed off.
Since then Williams has opted for the patient approach and kept State of Play to a light campaign. He won a valuable handicap at the 2006 Grand National meeting and then the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury the following November. An ambitious tilt at the 2007 Cheltenham Gold Cup saw State Of Play run a sound race to finish sixth to Kauto Star, but the horse has somewhat paid the price since; not quite good enough to take on the top horses but good enough to find himself at the top of most handicaps.
That said, State Of Play gets into this year’s National on a 5lb lower mark than last year when he ran an encouraging fourth to Mon Mome. But his one appearance subsequently, pulling up behind Denman in the Hennessy, raises some doubts although Williams is more worried about the state of the going at Aintree than State Of Play’s last run. “We've always been keen to train him with the National in mind and he's always better after a long break,” he said. “He's very, very well. He's had a great preparation and has not missed a day's work.
“It's always nice to be reasonably weighted but the weight is perhaps the most trivial piece in the jigsaw. Around Aintree I think it's the luck you need most. As long as the ground is good to soft we've got no worries. It's the extreme going that will be a cause for concern.”
If the ground is not in too much of a state, Williams clearly thinks his horse is ready to play.
Evan Williams's Grand National record: 2009 State Of Play (4th)
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